Via Negativa

March 13, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Great White Father

Up pretty early and to my office all the morning busy. At noon home to dinner expecting Ashwell’s father, who was here in the morning and promised to come but he did not, but there came in Captain Grove, and I found him to be a very stout man, at least in his discourse he would be thought so, and I do think that he is, and one that bears me great respect and deserves to be encouraged for his care in all business.
Abroad by water with my wife and Ashwell, and left them at Mr. Pierce’s, and I to Whitehall and St. James’s Park (there being no Commission for Tangier sitting to-day as I looked for) where I walked an hour or two with great pleasure, it being a most pleasant day. So to Mrs. Hunt’s, and there found my wife, and so took them up by coach, and carried them to Hide Park, where store of coaches and good faces. Here till night, and so home and to my office to write by the post, and so to supper and to bed.

ear of ash father
who promised to be stout
serves rage

and we left to hit
hide aches and faces
and stand up

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 13 March 1662/63.

March 13, 2026March 13, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

Impossible Labors

river in November light between bare woods and mountain

There's always someone we applaud:
for endurance, for courage, resilience
in the face of terrible fortune. Go back 
to the old tales and find her counterpart:
the girl who spun and swept until the room
turned dizzy with gold, the girl who tufted
feathers and turned them into shirts without
holes. She poured water into jars not designed
to hold, carried wind and fire in paper, 
counted millet and wheat, pebbles and
pearls. No one asked why she must keep
doing this. No one asked her to stop.
The rules were already in place, but
being rules surely they could be broken,
amended, rewritten, undone. Tell her 
to put down the spindle, tell her 
to throw the needle into the hay.
Tell her rest shouldn't be 
a door to another test.

March 12, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Muted

Up betimes and to my office all the morning with Captain Cocke ending their account of their Riga contract for hemp. So home to dinner, my head full of business against the office. After dinner comes my uncle Thomas with a letter to my father, wherein, as we desire, he and his son do order their tenants to pay their rents to us, which pleases me well. In discourse he tells me my uncle Wight thinks much that I do never see them, and they have reason, but I do apprehend that they have been too far concerned with my uncle Thomas against us, so that I have had no mind hitherto, but now I shall go see them. He being gone, I to the office, where at the choice of maisters and chyrurgeons for the fleet now going out, I did my business as I could wish, both for the persons I had a mind to serve, and in getting the warrants signed drawn by my clerks, which I was afeard of.
Sat late, and having done I went home, where I found Mary Ashwell come to live with us, of whom I hope well, and pray God she may please us, which, though it cost me something, yet will give me much content. So to supper and to bed, and find by her discourse and carriage to-night that she is not proud, but will do what she is bid, but for want of being abroad knows not how to give the respect to her mistress, as she will do when she is told it, she having been used only to little children, and there was a kind of a mistress over them.
Troubled all night with my cold, I being quite hoarse with it that I could not speak to be heard at all almost.

my head full of tenants
I never reason with
I have no mind for war

fear having come
to live with us as a child
that could not speak

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 12 March 1662/63.

March 12, 2026March 18, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

Not Unmarked, Spinning

     Again, the blare of warnings, agitation of
bodies fleeing rooms or hiding in place.
     Can't fathom the terrible seed that ticks then
detonates inside an anger so great, it must
     express itself in violence. No training prepares 
for what we fear the most when guns
     go off in a hallway, a classroom. Not theory nor
hypothesis. Bodies falling to the floor: the
     irrefutable conclusion. Sirens down the boulevard:
just moments ago we pointed out blooming trees, 
     kalanchoe shrubs tucked along walkways. Mid-morning 
limps now toward noon. What lightness there was
     moves slow like a barge, though we tell ourselves 
not to forget it does exist. Sometimes, just
     one unexpected gesture does that. One kindness
prodded to the surface that breaks the crust,
     quieting the turmoil winged black as crows.
Remember what in us is soft-boned, fragile,
     sweet— sometimes all we can do is hug each other
tight. Every day, new ripples of violence 
     unspool. No one is unmarked, though we 
vow not to let it change the human in us. 
     We will ourselves to survive, though rearranged 
exquisitely by grief. In this, just as
     yesterday and tomorrow, life goes on. Birds on  
zoetropes flicker on a spinning drum.

March 11, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Long in the tooth

Up betimes, and to my office, walked a little in the garden with Sir W. Batten, talking about the difference between his Lady and my wife yesterday, and I doubt my wife is to blame. About noon had news by Mr. Wood that Butler, our chief witness against Field, was sent by him to New England contrary to our desire, which made me mad almost; and so Sir J. Minnes, Sir W. Pen, and I dined together at Trinity House, and thither sent for him to us and told him our minds, which he seemed not to value much, but went away. I wrote and sent an express to Walthamstow to Sir W. Pen, who is gone thither this morning, to tell him of it. However, in the afternoon Wood sends us word that he has appointed another to go, who shall overtake the ship in the Downes. So I was late at the office, among other things writing to the Downes, to the Commander-in-Chief, and putting things into the surest course I could to help the business. So home and to bed.

I am that field
gone into woods

appointed to overtake
other thin things

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 11 March 1662/63.

March 11, 2026March 10, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

Return

We saw a blood-red moon
dangle over an arena awash with blue
light, and all I could think of was how
pain is a kind of weather, waiting
to pass through us as we count
the days to the season's turn.
Spears of wild garlic begin
to push up at the edge of the yard.
Soon, the pruned limbs of the fig
will recover, and start to push green
clusters out. Some mornings, the light
arrives like a sentence completely formed
for a state you still can't properly
articulate. Does it say endure, does it say 
you are more than a passing thought, more 
than the slow movement of color under ice?

March 10, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Realist

Up and to my office all the morning, and great pleasure it is to be doing my business betimes. About noon Sir J. Minnes came to me and staid half an hour with me in my office talking about his business with Sir W. Pen, and (though with me an old doter) yet he told me freely how sensible he is of Sir W. Pen’s treachery in this business, and what poor ways he has taken all along to ingratiate himself by making Mr. Turner write out things for him and then he gives them to the Duke, and how he directed him to give Mr. Coventry 100l. for his place, but that Mr. Coventry did give him 20l. back again. All this I am pleased to hear that his knavery is found out. Dined upon a poor Lenten dinner at home, my wife being vexed at a fray this morning with my Lady Batten about my boy’s going thither to turn the watercock with their maydes’ leave, but my Lady was mighty high upon it and she would teach his mistress better manners, which my wife answered aloud that she might hear, that she could learn little manners of her. After dinner to my office, and there we sat all the afternoon till 8 at night, and so wrote my letters by the post and so before 9 home, which is rare with me of late, I staying longer, but with multitude of business my head akes, and so I can stay no longer, but home to supper and to bed.

my sensible pen has taken
to making things little

till night and a multitude
of aches

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 10 March 1662/63.

March 10, 2026March 9, 2026 by Luisa A. Igloria

Need vs. Rest

You were taught that love—
the "real kind"— means giving

as much as you can for as long
as you can, until you hear

the clink that means the tank
is nearly empty, the stone

falling from a long way away
has finally hit the bottom of 

the well. Don't you know better, 
don't you realize after all

these years the flower doesn't need 
to be shorn from the vine in order 

for anyone to distill its fragrance?
Jasmine, trumpet flower, throats

that open in the deep of night 
to announce their need. But yes 

of course, you know: of the many
forms of service, survival is one

of the hardest. Add to that list
falling apart, losing yourself, waiting 

for the world to pour light back into 
your hands like a debt finally paid.

March 9, 2026March 9, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Poetry Blog Digest 2026, Week 10

A personal selection of posts from the Poetry Blogging Network and beyond. Although I tend to quote my favorite bits, please do click through and read the whole posts. You can also browse the blog digest archive at Via Negativa or, if you’d like it in your inbox, subscribe on Substack (where the posts might be truncated by some email providers).

This week: picnicking on ice, clock-time vs. earth-time, the enormity of the world’s grief, the sound of a fountain, and much more. Enjoy.

March 9, 2026 by Dave Bonta

Springing Back

on a gray bed of leaves
where a snowdrift lay

green feathers of delicate fern moss
flutter in the breeze

one fallen limb is frilled
with crowded parchment fungus

another with jelly ears
for a silent flock of robins

not seen since autumn
in their rhyming orange

a crab spider emerges
from under a leaf

to run in circles
beneath the accommodating sky