Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
Pleasure boats circumnavigate a man-made
lake. At the edge of the frame, assorted
scenes of ordinary life: ice candy vendor,
mother pushing a sleeping child in a stroller.
Flies circle a sticky puddle of melted sugar.
Willow branches bend low enough to touch. You
know the smell of rain and the flicker of heat
that occasionally precedes thunder.
In the open, in plain
sight, can be the best
place to hide.
At my office all alone all the morning, and the smith being with me about other things, did open a chest that hath stood ever since I came to the office, in my office, and there we found a modell of a fine ship, which I long to know whether it be the King’s or Mr. Turner’s.
At noon to the Wardrobe by appointment to meet my father, who did come and was well treated by my Lady, who tells me she has some thoughts to send her two little boys to our house at Brampton, but I have got leave for them to go along with me and my wife to Hampton Court to-morrow or Sunday. Thence to my brother Tom’s, where we found a letter from Pall that my mother is dangerously ill in fear of death, which troubles my father and me much, but I hope it is otherwise, the letter being four days old since it was writ.
Home and at my office, and with Mr. Hater set things in order till evening, and so home and to bed by daylight.
This day at my father’s desire I lent my brother Tom 20l., to be repaid out of the proceeds of Sturtlow when we can sell it. I sent the money all in new money by my boy from Alderman Backwell’s.
all alone in a chest
I found a fine ship
the war has little boys
in fear of death
but hope is old and thin
a light in a well
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 6 June 1662.
To the Wardrobe, and there my Lord did enquire my opinion of Mr. Moore, which I did give to the best advantage I could, and by that means shall get him joined with Mr. Townsend in the Wardrobe business. He did also give me all Mr. Shepley’s and Mr. Moore’s accounts to view, which I am glad of, as being his great trust in me, and I would willingly keep up a good interest with him. So took leave of him (he being to go this day) and to the office, where they were just sat down, and I showed them yesterday’s discovery, and have got Sir R. Ford to be my enemy by it; but I care not, for it is my duty, and so did get his bill stopped for the present.
To dinner, and found Dr. Thos. Pepys at my house; but I was called from dinner by a note from Mr. Moore to Alderman Backwell’s, to see some thousands of my Lord’s crusados weighed, and we find that 3,000 come to about 530l. or 40 generally.
Home again and found my father there; we talked a good while and so parted.
We met at the office in the afternoon to finish Mr. Gauden’s accounts, but did not do them quite. In the evening with Mr. Moore to Backwell’s with another 1,200 crusados and saw them weighed, and so home and to bed.
I could join the war
give ore to rust
I would go be the enemy
for an afternoon
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 5 June 1662.
Cows in blue harnesses attached to helicopters rotate in midair.
They are being airlifted out of the valley because a glacier
has just collapsed on an entire village in the Alps.
There is logic to this, but what is the first point in
the syllogism? the last?
I wish I could say How funny or How strange or even Words
fail me.
In the yard, runways of mud. Evidence of tunneling. I suppose
it makes sense to try to live underground.
Rilke wrote: If we had to exist to become the one we love,
what would the heart have to create?
The idea gives me goose bumps— that everything
I love, including myself, I would have to also somehow
bring to life in the world.
When we invited the parish priest to bless our house,
he put a flask of holy water into the child's hand.
Go ahead, he said. It's you who will be living
in this space.
How's it going, I ask a friend. He replies,
Extremely well. We banter about his use
of the adverb— if that were true, what
could tomorrow's adverb possibly be? It gets
a bit philosophical after that. How true is it
that if one were truly happy, one would be
completely bored, or boring? Nirvana isn't
actually when you achieve a state of pure bliss
but rather when the twin torches of desire
and suffering are doused, and nothing disturbs
them back to life. So what does it mean that two
worms buried more than thirty thousand years in
permafrost have wakened? The first thing they did
after thawing was wriggle around, eat, and reproduce.
I don't blame them— that long a fast would make me
ravenous too. Goats, sheep, and deer have four stomachs.
Beaked whales can have up to thirteen. Nematodes, though,
are practically all stomach— They're all one alimentary
tract: mouth, esophagus, stoma, intestine, rectum, anus.
They're not more nor less developed than we are. Imagine
though what it would be like to live in a world where
no one needs to go hungry, where food lines are
an aberration— What would it take to live so close
to the earth and understand how grace is the condition
in which, together, we can live extremely well?
—Nourishing and being nourished, every mouthful
connecting us to the impulse to live for the pleasure of
the comeback, the vision of undifferentiated bodies.
Up early, and Mr. Moore comes to me and tells me that Mr. Barnwell is dead, which troubles me something, and the more for that I believe we shall lose Mr. Shepley’s company.
By and by Sir W. Batten and I by water to Woolwich; and there saw an experiment made of Sir R. Ford’s Holland’s yarn (about which we have lately had so much stir; and I have much concerned myself for our ropemaker, Mr. Hughes, who has represented it as bad), and we found it to be very bad, and broke sooner than, upon a fair triall, five threads of that against four of Riga yarn; and also that some of it had old stuff that had been tarred, covered over with new hemp, which is such a cheat as hath not been heard of. I was glad of this discovery, because I would not have the King’s workmen discouraged (as Sir W. Batten do most basely do) from representing the faults of merchants’ goods, where there is any.
After eating some fish that we had bought upon the water at Falconer’s, we went to Woolwich, and there viewed our frames of our houses, and so home, and I to my Lord’s, who I find resolved to buy Brampton Manor of Sir Peter Ball, at which I am glad. Thence to White Hall, and showed Sir G. Carteret the cheat, and so to the Wardrobe, and there staid and supped with my Lady. My Lord eating nothing, but writes letters to-night to several places, he being to go out of town to-morrow. So late home and to bed.
tell me a dead thing
and I believe
in that heat of discovery
I would have a fish
we bought it all
the cheat and the war
and the nothing
but night tomorrow
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 4 June 1662.
On a weekly radio show about words,
a caller asks about the use of amount
of versus number of. She is annoyed
when she hears people say things like
There was a large amount of people
at the protest rally yesterday, or What
is the amount of books that have been
banned under this administration? The show's
hosts agree: countable nouns should be
used for things or people to which we can apply
some discrete unit of measurement;
and uncountable nouns for quantities
that can only be measured as a whole,
like water, or sunlight, or time. But they also
remind the caller of how language
is always evolving— now we use words
that used to mean entirely different
things: a spinster used to refer to someone
who spun thread; in "Henry V," there's
a line that goes I love the lovely bully — apparently,
it used to mean sweetheart or darling, not
someone who intimidates or harasses through
aggression. There and their, its and it's,
your and you're— same, or different? Mantel, the lintel
or decorative shelf above a fireplace, where you
could put little framed pictures. Mantle, a cloak or
shawl; or that part of the earth between
the surface and its superheated core— where scientists
have recently discovered two large, continent-
sized structures. Made of oceanic crust and
other unknown elements, they've quietly
thickened under our feet through millennia; and we
don't know yet how exactly, someday, they'll
turn inside out everything else we know of this planet.
Up by four o’clock and to my business in my chamber, to even accounts with my Lord and myself, and very fain I would become master of 1000l., but I have not above 530l. toward it yet.
At the office all the morning, and Mr. Coventry brought his patent and took his place with us this morning. Upon our making a contract, I went, as I use to do, to draw the heads thereof, but Sir W. Pen most basely told me that the Comptroller is to do it, and so begun to employ Mr. Turner about it, at which I was much vexed, and begun to dispute; and what with the letter of the Duke’s orders, and Mr. Barlow’s letter, and the practice of our predecessors, which Sir G. Carteret knew best when he was Comptroller, it was ruled for me. What Sir J. Minnes will do when he comes I know not, but Sir W. Pen did it like a base raskall, and so I shall remember him while I live.
After office done, I went down to the Towre Wharf, where Mr. Creed and Shepley was ready with three chests of the crusados, being about 6000l., ready to bring to shore to my house, which they did, and put it in my further cellar, and Mr. Shepley took the key. I to my father and Dr. Williams and Tom Trice, by appointment, in the Old Bayly, to Short’s, the alehouse, but could come to no terms with T. Trice. Thence to the Wardrobe, where I found my Lady come from Hampton Court, where the Queen hath used her very civilly; and my Lady tells me is a most pretty woman, at which I am glad.
Yesterday (Sir R. Ford told me) the Aldermen of the City did attend her in their habits, and did present her with a gold Cupp and 1000l. in gold therein. But, he told me, that they are so poor in their Chamber, that they were fain to call two or three Aldermen to raise fines to make up this sum, among which was Sir W. Warren.
Home and to the office, where about 8 at night comes Sir G. Carteret and Sir W. Batten, and so we did some business, and then home and to bed, my mind troubled about Sir W. Pen, his playing the rogue with me to-day, as also about the charge of money that is in my house, which I had forgot; but I made the maids to rise and light a candle, and set it in the dining-room, to scare away thieves, and so to sleep.
four o’clock and I even
accounts with myself
off with the heads
of predecessors I knew
like an ice chest
in my further cellar
the war comes to me
in my sleep
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 3 June 1662.
"The federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour."
- www.usa.gov
Shouldn't we just be sitting
doing nothing— sitting pretty
in a garden or before a fire,
nicely balancing risk and reward?
We might take a quick look at
an investment portfolio before booking
tickets to Iceland or the Azores.
I read on my Kindle as I walked
going nowhere on a treadmill
at the gym: You spend your life
accumulating things... then
you have to maintain them. Likewise,
will we spend all our lives
maintaining our lives, for the sole
reason we'll wind up in
the shadow of the church tower,
next to our departed kin?
The Iowa senator defending Medicaid
cuts said We're all going to die,
for heaven's sakes. Sure, maybe,
but before that happens, I guess
we'll be required to work 80 hours
a month— nothing like a life
of hard work before we die and go to
either Jesus or the tooth fairy.
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: the grey scale, a rain of earth, a detailed intimacy, a Tennysonian absence, and much more. Enjoy.
Continue reading “Poetry Blog Digest 2025, Week 22”