Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
summer’s end
a bumblebee embracing
all the petals
*
morning spider making way into wait
*
The two most recent posts from my photoblog, Woodrat photohaiku. If you’d like more of this kind of thing, there’s an emailed version you can subscribe to, just as with Via Negativa, The Morning Porch, and my writer’s blog, DaveBonta.com (which bizarrely has more subscribers than the photoblog). I generally post a couple dozen times a year, more in the winter than in the summer.
Up early and to look on my works, and find my house to go on apace. So to my office to prepare business, and then we met and sat till noon, and then Commissioner Pett and I being invited, went by Sir John Winter’s coach sent for us, to the Mitre, in Fenchurch street, to a venison-pasty; where I found him a very worthy man; and good discourse. Most of which was concerning the Forest of Dean, and the timber there, and iron-workes with their great antiquity, and the vast heaps of cinders which they find, and are now of great value, being necessary for the making of iron at this day; and without which they cannot work: with the age of many trees there left at a great fall in Edward the Third’s time, by the name of forbid-trees, which at this day are called vorbid trees.
Thence to my office about business till late, and so home and to bed.
winter forest
the vast iron-work of time
called trees
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 14 August 1662—a slight revision of my original draft from 2015.
For what it’s worth, I spent the same several hours on this erasure poem as I usually do, playing with every possibility I could see. And unless I start running into lengthy stretches of unimprovable first drafts, I’ll continue to attempt re-writes of each erasure at least till the end of 2026. In 2027 I’ll catch up with the annual PDF compilations, and make a decision at that point about whether to keep going. In the meantime, when I do find a poetic draft I can’t improve on at all, I will link back to it in the footnote to the next new or revised erasure.
Up, and Mr. Mayland comes to me and borrowed 30s. of me to be paid again out of the money coming to him in the James and Charles for his late voyage. So to the office, where all the morning. So home to dinner, my wife not being well, but however dined with me.
So to the office, and at Sir W. Batten’s, where we all met by chance and talked, and they drank wine; but I forebore all their healths. Sir John Minnes, I perceive, is most excellent company. So home and to bed betimes by daylight.
upland voyage
the well we all bore
into daylight
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 17 June 1662.
The bird ID app Merlin kept urging me to participate in Global Big Day on Saturday, as I was walking in the Thickhead Wild Area near Boalsburg, PA. I finally decided to try to write a modern haiku for each bird I heard or saw. I failed, of course, but here are the passable efforts.
black-throated
blue warbling
here here HERE
ovenbird
the silence must be preserved
for a dome of leaves
wheezing pine
a black-and-white warbler’s
elegant stripes
giddy with
some sun-flooded bush
hooded warbler
mossy trail
a black-throated green warbler
dreaming out loud
last year’s leaves
still worth a rummage
eastern towhee
scratching an itch
without a pause in the song
chestnut-sided warbler
twisted limbs
the witchedy call of a common
yellowthroat
mourning dove
the dead oak encircled
by whispering birches
passing
a chickadee’s inspection
doddering birch stump
one monologue
leads to another
red-eyed vireos
tanager
husky-voiced singer
in scarlet
hairy woodpecker
the sun beginning to beat
on my neck
the buzz
of blossoming treetops
cerulean warbler
yellow warbler
the rhododendron’s one
yellow leaf
songs without birds
the brown thrasher’s
vast catalogue
blowdown calling
an American redstart back
from Venezuela
tufted titmouse
the hectoring tone
of my hunger
wood thrush
all the sweetness of time
flown by
Thickhead Wild Area, Rothrock State Forest
May 10, 2025 – Global Big Day
given back
to the forest
my walking stick
missing you
the blue
of a distant lake
almost April
maples redding up
for the breeze
walking home
the shush
that crushed stone makes
a raven’s croak
there’s nowhere to hide
from these blues
One of those crystal-clear days in early spring when you can fool yourself into thinking it’s warm because the sun is so bright. I hike up to a favorite spot for a thermos of tea. I’m reading War News II: 12/9/2023 to 6/3/2024, an excellent and searing collection by Beau Beausoleil.
war news
the cold boulder
at my back
Walking home, I have a terrible thought: in a time of great lies, words are losing their power to change hearts, including our own, and therefore those of us who are religious, however obscurely so, ought to consider switching from prayer to sacrifice. Something more than performative gestures must be at stake.
killdeerkilldeer
the smell of cow manure
somehow sweet
At home all the morning; and in the afternoon all of us at the office, upon a letter from the Duke for the making up of a speedy estimate of all the debts of the Navy, which is put into good forwardness. I home and Sir W. Pen to my house, who with his children staid playing cards late, and so to bed.
home office
a fort for my child
playing late
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 28 December 1661.
At home all the morning; at noon Will brought me from Whitehall, whither I had sent him, some letters from my Lord Sandwich, from Tangier; where he continues still, and hath done some execution upon the Turks, and retaken an Englishman from them, of one Mr. Parker’s, a merchant in Marke-lane.
In the afternoon Mr. Pett and I met at the office; there being none more there than we two I saw there was not the reverence due to us observed, and so I took occasion to break up and took Mr. Gawdon along with me, and he and I (though it rained) were resolved to go, he to my Lord Treasurer’s and I to the Chancellor’s with a letter from my Lord to-day. So to a tavern at the end of Mark Lane, and there we stayed till with much ado we got a coach, and so to my Lord Treasurer’s and lost our labours, then to the Chancellor’s, and there met with Mr. Dugdale, and with him and one Mr. Simons, I think that belongs to my Lord Hatton, and Mr. Kipps and others, to the Fountain tavern, and there stayed till twelve at night drinking and singing, Mr. Simons and one Mr. Agar singing very well. Then Mr. Gawdon being almost drunk had the wit to be gone, and so I took leave too, and it being a fine moonshine night he and I footed it all the way home, but though he was drunk he went such a pace as I did admire how he was able to go. When I came home I found our new maid Sarah come, who is a tall and a very well favoured wench, and one that I think will please us. So to bed.
after the rain
lost in the fountain
a fine moon
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 28 November 1661.
At the office all morning, at noon Luellin dined with me, and then abroad to Fleet Street, leaving my wife at Tom’s while I went out and did a little business. So home again, and went to see Sir Robert, who continues ill, and this day has not spoke at all, which makes them all afeard of him. So home.
the morning din
road to street leaving
a little tin ear
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 24 October 1661.
