Via Negativa

I infer that my heart must learn
to live like a fragment from eternity,

because eternity doesn't ever offer
itself up to mortal understanding.

My friend said I must come
to terms with the idea of

reconciliation— that it will either happen
when it's time, or it will never happen.

What could it say when the bees 
rush out of the hive, having decided

not to establish their colony? In the apiary, 
ants and mites thicken the empty combs.

Fainter by the day, the odor of beeswax 
on gold curtains frayed at the seams.

Early up and by coach (before daylight) to the Wardrobe, and took up Mr. Moore, and he and I to Chelsy to my Lord Privy Seal, and there sealed some things, he being to go out of town for all Christmas to-morrow. So back again to Westminster, and from thence by water to the Treasury Office, where I found Sir W. Pen paying off the Sophia and Griffen, and there I staid with him till noon, and having sent for some collar of beef and a mince pie, we eat and drank, and so I left him there and to my brother’s by appointment to meet Prior, but he came not, so I went and saw Mrs. Turner who continues weak, and by and by word was brought me that Prior’s man was come to Tom’s, and so I went and told out 128l. which I am to receive of him, but Prior not coming I went away and left the money by his desire with my brother all night, and they to come to me to-morrow morning. So I took coach, and lighting at my bookseller’s in Paul’s Churchyard, I met with Mr. Crumlum and the second master of Paul’s School, and thence I took them to the Starr, and there we sat and talked, and I had great pleasure in their company, and very glad I was of meeting him so accidentally, I having omitted too long to go to see him. Here in discourse of books I did offer to give the school what books he would choose of 5l. So we parted, and I home, and to Mr. Selden, and then to bed.

war for Christmas again
with some pie

and the weak old light
of a star

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 23 December 1661.

"All things of the world are bowing   
or being taken away." ~ Linda Gregg


What do I know of being chosen
in order to be branded, sold, 
gutted, instead of merely left 
behind? In the branches of the fig 
tree, its limbs skeletal in winter, 
crows conduct their own cold 
symphonies. They are good
at surveillance. They descend, 
dark cloud knocking on roofs; and I 
imagine every worm of kindness grows 
still in the soil. Neighbors bring out 
an industry of leaf-blowers. The tree
whispers, there's no end to what 
we'll gather into bags today.  

Are you hungry?
Thirsty? Tired? 
What hurts 

in your throat? 
My devotion is
not my sadness.

My sadness 
is because I 
could not find

the fishbone 
barb, or cradle 
enough 

to make
your sadness
stop.

~ after Sei Shonagon


All I have no influence over, 
what I can't control: nerve 
pain shooting down my right hip
and thigh at night. Pencil strokes
of grey outlining my hairline.
The way my mind climbs up a never-
ending stairway whose end I can't
see, except I know it's still 
a long way off, cloaked in mist
and overhung with rocks. The way it
tries to reverse direction, believing
it will come, with patience, to the point 
before everything changed, before a rift
in the earth made mosaics in every wall.  

Centuries ago, the moon fell
in love with a comet which blazed

then burned away into nothing. I
don't know if this is true. Perhaps, 

even now, no one notices her plain but 
beautiful countenance. Tea leaves darken 

in their little gauze tent, and the water 
begins to amber. Why should I feel ashamed 

to write about such a small pleasure? Shawls 
of milky fog wrap around the mountains. 

In the norning, tea-pickers gather withered 
leaves for steaming and drying, and marvel:

the merest brush with heat blooms a little
film of joy that spreads on your tongue.