March 2024 – Page 4 – Via Negativa

March 18, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Crisis actors

This morning early Sir W. Batten went to Rochester, where he expects to be chosen Parliament man.
At the office all the morning, dined at home and with my wife to Westminster, where I had business with the Commissioner for paying the seamen about my Lord’s pay, and my wife at Mrs. Hunt’s.
I called her home, and made inquiry at Greatorex’s and in other places to hear of Mr. Barlow (thinking to hear that he is dead), but I cannot find it so, but the contrary. Home and called at my Lady Batten’s, and supped there, and so home.
This day an ambassador from Florence was brought into the town in state.
Good hopes given me to-day that Mrs. Davis is going away from us, her husband going shortly to Ireland. Yesterday it was said was to be the day that the Princess Henrietta was to marry the Duke d’Anjou in France.
This day I found in the newes-booke that Roger Pepys is chosen at Cambridge for the town, the first place that we hear of to have made their choice yet.
To bed with my head and mind full of business, which do a little put me out of order, and I do find myself to become more and more thoughtful about getting of money than ever heretofore.

a parliament of ice
paying the dead to go away

in the news is a place
made out of thought

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 18 March 1660/61.

March 18, 2024March 18, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Greens

the green of moss on an oak
three years dead

the green of greenbriar
on which a deer has grazed

the green of a bench in the woods
where vows were once exchanged

the green of garlic mustard
before it becomes too bitter

the green of ferns that have borne
the weight of snow

the green of winter wheat in the distance
when the sun comes out

the green of lichen on a rock
finding everything it needs

the green of leaves that won’t return
to a toppled witness tree

the old green of trailing arbutus
rushing into bloom for a few cold flies

Plummer’s Hollow, PA
March 17, 2024

March 17, 2024March 17, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

The Years

river in November light between bare woods and mountain

It doesn't seem that long ago, the day
you hugged your children before walking 
          through sliding doors at the terminal, 

emerging on the other side in this land where 
you' d go to school, to find space where you might 
          listen more closely to the sound of your own 

voice. You peel back previous coverings you'd
been given—daughter, wife, mother. In other 
         words, you can't exactly renounce the things 

that life's brought you (and don't want to), but 
you can try to change your relationship to them. 
         So here it is. You learned about distance in ways 

you didn't know before: how it brings some things 
into sharp relief, how you're still paying dearly for others.

March 17, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Christian soldiers

(Lord’s day). At church in the morning, a stranger preached a good honest and painfull sermon. My wife and I dined upon a chine of beef at Sir W. Batten’s, so to church again. Then home, and put some papers in order. Then to supper at Sir W. Batten’s again, where my wife by chance fell down and hurt her knees exceedingly. So home and to bed.

a church in each
honest pain
upon a chin

a church to chance
hurt knees

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 17 March 1660/61.

March 16, 2024March 16, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Wherewithal

Once, we dreamed of walking 
the famed Camino, pilgrimage 
covering months and miles through 
parts of Portugal, France, and Spain; 
ending at the field of the star where 
the saint is buried. It could even 
have been the honeymoon we never 
had, since after we married, a winter storm 
bore down on Chicago and we wound up 
spending the long weekend with our guests 
in a time-share rental whose dining table 
was still strewn with crumbs of lemon
poppyseed cake and edible flowers.
But we are no longer young, having spent 
so much of our lives working for the where-
withal that gave us this mortgaged roof 
(shingles rattling above our heads in high 
wind), that made it possible to put children 
through school and pay various doctors 
for our ailments. How curious, this word
which means with or by means of which 
a thing or outcome might be procured,
typically by financial means—a compound
of adverb and preposition followed by
a suffix indicating condition or state.
The Milky Way, in legends of the Camino,
was made of the dust raised by pilgrims'
feet. So many souls walking the paths
marked by shrines and scallop shells
in search of penance or of miracle, 
the exhausting labor of each step 
a ransom for their requests.

March 16, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Depleted

Early at Sir Wm. Pen’s, and there before Mr. Turner did reconcile the business of the purveyance between us two. Then to Whitehall to my Lord’s, and dined with him, and so to Whitefriars and saw “The Spanish Curate,” in which I had no great content.
So home, and was very much troubled that Will staid out late, and went to bed angry, intending not to let him come in, but by and by he comes and I did let him in, and he did tell me that he was at Guildhall helping to pay off the seamen, and cast the books late. Which since I found to be true. So to sleep, being in bed when he came.

a pen bled out
to become a book

which I found true
to sleep

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 16 March 1660/61.

March 15, 2024March 16, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Thaw

"I shall not lament 
the human, not yet."
                          - Dorianne Laux


A nematode wakes from forty-
six thousand years of sleep. So
long buried in permafrost, it loses
no time and straightaway starts
producing babies. Under 
a microscope, it resembles 
a figure eight unwinding 
from infinity; a silk sash 
looking to tether itself
to something more than 
the icy silence of a tomb.
There are times you feel 
like you've come back 
almost from the dead 
like that—certain you'd 
promised not to give your 
heart again, not to leave it  
in the open like a slug 
tempting a scattering
of salts. Is this a weakness,
a fatal flaw hardwired not
in the brain but in the gut?
Mornings in summer,
waiting at the train station
a few blocks from the bakery,
a warm wave of milky scent 
rolls in on the wind. You think
of the child who hasn't 
spoken to you in years 
now, the mother you couldn't
return to the earth with your 
own hands. You teeter just
a little on the brink.

March 15, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Propaganda’s end

At the office all the morning. At noon Sir Williams both and I at a great fish dinner at the Dolphin, given us by two tar merchants, and very merry we were till night, and so home. This day my wife and Pall went to see my Lady Kingston, her brother’s lady.

all great tar
merchants err

till night and day
seem brothers

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 15 March 1660/61.

March 14, 2024March 14, 2024 by Luisa A. Igloria

Green

It was hot; I decided to stain three
       boards newly replaced on the deck,

their ghosts having rotted through 
       in the center, along their length. 

But the heart of the tree is still green
        even after it's hewn into lumber—

meaning, it carries a hidden store of
        moisture. Combed from a forest

holding rain, enveloped in humid
        shawls of fog, the heart of the tree

does not die easy. I can't tell what the birds
        see: the masts of a boat, the rungs of

a ladder, a quiver full of arrows? What
         is anything, before it dies in place.

March 14, 2024 by Dave Bonta

Performer

With Sir W. Batten and Pen to Mr. Coventry’s, and there had a dispute about my claim to the place of Purveyor of Petty-provisions, and at last to my content did conclude to have my hand to all the bills for these provisions and Mr. Turner to purvey them, because I would not have him to lose the place. Then to my Lord’s, and so with Mr. Creed to an alehouse, where he told me a long story of his amours at Portsmouth to one of Mrs. Boat’s daughters, which was very pleasant.
Dined with my Lord and Lady, and so with Mr. Creed to the Theatre, and there saw “King and no King,” well acted.
Thence with him to the Cock alehouse at Temple Bar, where he did ask my advice about his amours, and I did give him it, which was to enquire into the condition of his competitor, who is a son of Mr. Gauden’s, and that I promised to do for him, and he to make [what] use he can of it to his advantage.
Home and to bed.

purveyor of petty visions
hand to mouth
to theater

I act where I am
which is who
I promise to be

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 14 March 1660/61.