Skies are the color of blue slate, waters the tint of a camphor jar when the fisherman pulls out his coldly gleaming catch. This is the moment that divides before and after: What is your greatest wish? We know that even as he takes out the barb and throws back the fish, the edge of the sky recedes and grows more distant. His wife will make him go back more than once to ask for a boon. The stucco on their walls is a flaked and dirty white; the floor, littered with poultry droppings, the smell of things that don’t fly very far. The story never says much about her, or why she can’t seem to keep a clean house, though it has only one room and a window overlooking the outhouse. Technically they don’t own the land, but it’s at the edge of town and so far no one has made any trouble. Who can blame her for wanting a little more room? She’s had her eye on the adjacent lot, wants to plant vegetables, fruit, and flowers, sell them in the market. Whereas the scope of his ambition has always fallen across that surface of the water where he can stand, knee-deep, no further— whatever doesn’t escape through the holes in the net, he gets to keep. He doesn’t question this arrangement, believing it builds character. The fish catches both of them by surprise. Or rather, not the fish, but the possibility that it could be something more than itself. Like anything that might be equated with fate, it either changes them forever, or fixes them even more firmly in place. Overhead, millions of tiny lights adrift in that inverted bowl.
Emotion vs. insight
Up betimes, and down with Mr. Castle to Redriffe, and there walked to Deptford to view a parcel of brave knees of his, which indeed are very good, and so back again home, I seeming very friendly to him, though I know him to be a rogue, and one that hates me with his heart. Home and to dinner, and so to my office all the afternoon, where in some pain in my backe, which troubled me, but I think it comes only with stooping, and from no other matter.
At night to Nellson’s, and up and down about business, and so home to my office, then home to supper and to bed.
a red rave is good
seeming to be an art
to ice all pain
but ink comes only
from the night
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 2 November 1664.
Sand bar
Up and to the office, where busy all the morning, at noon (my wife being invited to my Lady Sandwich’s) all alone dined at home upon a good goose with Mr. Wayth, discussing of business. Thence I to the Committee of the Fishery, and there we sat with several good discourses and some bad and simple ones, and with great disorder, and yet by the men of businesse of the towne. But my report in the business of the collections is mightily commended and will get me some reputation, and indeed is the only thing looks like a thing well done since we sat.
Then with Mr. Parham to the tavern, but I drank no wine, only he did give me another barrel of oysters, and he brought one Major Greene, an able fishmonger, and good discourse to my information. So home and late at business at my office. Then to supper and to bed.
sand is good and simple
the only thing like a thing
since the wine bar oysters
brought me to bed
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 1 November 1664.
Postcard from another life
We were both on the same train, the countryside steadily unrolling green through a humid morning. There are some kinds of uncertainty that don’t ask for resolution. Like not being able to remember who fell asleep first. Or if we bought from hawkers a bag of roasted corn, or a packet of boiled quail eggs. In those days there were no toilets, not even a separate baggage coach. Someone played music from a portable radio. We were on our way to the beach, or returning from there. Everyone was on some kind of holiday though it was the middle of the week. The aisles were speckled with little bits of sand— gritty sugar sifting into our sandals. The sea was a postcard announcing itself before we arrived: its mineral smell, and then at last thin white lines of moving text glimpsed through trees.
In response to Via Negativa: Sandbar.
All Souls’ Day
Under every surface, the tooth of a buried
word: forgotten names for moss and salt,
schist, blunt artifacts of skin and bone
shed by reptiles in the trees’ blue shadow.
Small papery hulls and speckled stones,
a body once grafted to its exoskeleton.
In the cool interior of a nine-sided tower,
once we listened for the spirit of absent
choirs, a chant that called all doors open
to everyone who sought refuge there. Where
are the seeds the wind bore from the old
country, and what offerings do the dead
most favor? Sometimes, in our petulance, we
forget to leave them a dish on the counter,
a cup of water. Crawling through narrow
tunnels, it’s hard to track the vein of ore.
Some days, there’s a trace of metal in the air;
if not, a tenderness: night scents soaked with
the aura of distance— all that points
to heartsickness as well as destination,
pouring out of the flowers’ white throats.
In response to Via Negativa: Lexicology.
All Saints Songs
with all the evening music
great as a prayer
Dave Bonta, “Red-Lined“
I awake early on the Feast
of All Saints and take
my coffee to the porch.
Once I would have stayed
awake until this hour, wringing
all the celebration possible
out of our All Hallows Eve.
I say a prayer for all those departed,
the ones gone much too early from the party.
Once I would have lit the candles
and declared my love
of thin spaces. Now I fear the hunger
of ghosts who are not ready
to leave and the hooligans
who take advantage of the dark.
I touch the pumpkin’s crumpled face
collapsed from the candle’s heat.
I put the gourd on the pile
of tree limbs ripped from the body
of the tree canopy during September’s storm.
I hear one lone bird singing
either a prayer to greet
the morning or a lullaby before sleep.
I look to the sky, still dark,
no message in the stars.
Lexicology
Very busy all the morning, at noon Creed to me and dined with me, and then he and I to White Hall, there to a Committee of Tangier, where it is worth remembering when Mr. Coventry proposed the retrenching some of the charge of the horse, the first word asked by the Duke of Albemarle was, “Let us see who commands them,” there being three troops. One of them he calls to mind was by Sir Toby Bridges. “Oh!” says he, “there is a very good man. If you must reform two of them, be sure let him command the troop that is left.”
Thence home, and there came presently to me Mr. Young and Whistler, who find that I have quite overcome them in their business of flags, and now they come to intreat my favour, but I will be even with them.
So late to my office and there till past one in the morning making up my month’s accounts, and find that my expense this month in clothes has kept me from laying up anything; but I am no worse, but a little better than I was, which is 1205l., a great sum, the Lord be praised for it!
So home to bed, with my mind full of content therein, and vexed for my being so angry in bad words to my wife to-night, she not giving me a good account of her layings out to my mind to-night.
This day I hear young Mr. Stanly, a brave young [gentleman], that went out with young Jermin, with Prince Rupert, is already dead of the small-pox, at Portsmouth.
All preparations against the Dutch; and the Duke of Yorke fitting himself with all speed, to go to the fleete which is hastening for him; being now resolved to go in the Charles.
the first word was oh
then presently you
is now any better
with my mind full
and vexed
angry words go out
in a dead mouth
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 31 October 1664.
Everything we loved of the wild, we took
The taste of air on the tongue; remembrance
of water before it swelled with dying coral.
From inside a cocoon of flotation chambers,
easy to speak of concern for the oceans’
disappearance. From within detergent commercials,
little narratives of rescue— birds slicked
with oil, unable to fly. When windows are
tightly sealed it’s easy to love the sound
rain makes: falling through cups in a copper
chain, down into a barrel. The fat of the land,
something to purchase from warehouse clubs.
At night, on the road, when beams cut through
the darkness: the shapes of furtive creatures,
following trails of disappearing scent.
In response to Via Negativa: Bird-lover.
Red-lined
(Lord’s day). Up, and this morning put on my new, fine, coloured cloth suit, with my cloake lined with plush, which is a dear and noble suit, costing me about 17l..1 To church, and then home to dinner, and after dinner to a little musique with my boy, and so to church with my wife, and so home, and with her all the evening reading and at musique with my boy with great pleasure, and so to supper, prayers, and to bed.
a red line
cost me my home
with all the evening music
great as a prayer
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 30 October 1664.
Hard choices
Tonight I manage to fill two shopping bags
with books: I’m thinning my shelves,
aiming for lighter, for less— Tomorrow
I’ll start going through closets, shed
old suits and shirts from their hangers,
fold and give them away. I imagine a house
with an airier center, uncluttered floors;
tidy drawers, before the immigrant’s penchant
for saving every little thing given or found
for a rainy day— No more assorted knick-
knacks in corners or rolls of used gift
wrap in bags. From such deep-seated memory
of want and hardship, this habit of hoarding
tinned food, good stuff, for use on another day
—that future during which we imagined we’d sit
and finally rest from our labors, from all the days
making bargain after bargain, figuring the sums
of hard choice against pleasure, ambition, or need.
In response to Via Negativa: Rooted.