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.

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.

tunnel vision
the darkness returning
each of our words

*

re-blogged from Woodrat Photohaiku

upland voyage
the well we all bore
into daylight

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 17 June 1662.

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

home office
a fort for my child
playing late

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 28 December 1661.

after the rain
lost in the fountain
a fine moon

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 28 November 1661.

the morning din
road to street leaving
a little tin ear

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 24 October 1661.