Via Negativa

The Doctor and I begun philosophy discourse exceeding pleasant. He offers to bring me into the college of virtuosoes and my Lord Brouncker’s acquaintance, and to show me some anatomy, which makes me very glad; and I shall endeavour it when I come to London. Sir W. Pen much troubled upon letters came last night. Showed me one of Dr. Owen’s to his son, whereby it appears his son is much perverted in his opinion by him; which I now perceive is one thing that hath put Sir William so long off the hooks. By coach to the Pay-house, and so to work again, and then to dinner, and to it again, and so in the evening to the yard, and supper and bed.

gun show me
some anatomy

a pen is a pinion
I am off and up

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 28 April 1662.

They come together in spring or summer, 
recalling the old timbre of brass bands, 

the vision of younger sisters waking at dawn 
to put on majorette's costumes and high boots. 

Their towns' most handsome will smile and wave 
from flower-bedecked floats, and queens touch 

the edges of butterfly sleeves, lightly holding 
the pearl of a smile. Though now in other climes, 

neither frost nor sun dampen the shine of chrome 
nor the flourish of cornets and euphoniums. Saints 

dressed as children or carpenters, farmers or 
fishermen are borne aloft in the streets, gems 

of paste winking from foil-covered crowns. Rice 
grains turned into petals dyed yellow and green 

curtain each window looking out— not over fields 
and volcanoes but train tracks and city skylines.  

Sometimes I hum as I wield the knife

over the rind of a potato, over the coarse

grain holding in the sweet gold of a squash.

Some mornings when I wake and feel the old 

familiar tendrils of that unshakeable 

sadness brush against my cheeks, I want 

to curl back into the shape of my own 

skin. It takes tenderness to peel away 

what held you so long in the dark. 

And so, much as I admire the self-

containment of the daikon, also 

I can't help loving how it's blushed 

with the palest stroke of green. 
 

The wheel and the chariot. The lever,

the nail, the spirit level. That moment

when the earth was unseated as center 

of the universe, after who knows how  

many scientists were publicly condemned 

for pointing out the sun. The feather 

and the ball, dropping at the same rate 

due to gravity. The compass and the caravelle,

navigation by the stars. The printing press,

moveable type, sewing needles. Pasteurized 

milk and clean hands in the surgery. With each 

discovery, how we then proclaimed a new 

pinnacle of human success. Pyramids and 

pagodas, spices and sugar; lower death 

rates, cures for most things except

the common cold, avarice, cruelty, and 

ego. Who wants the gold medal at the end 

of this race? The athlete crumples onto

concrete in a spasm of joy and pain.

Look at the birds of the air...
                          ~ Matthew 6:26 



They do not sow and neither 
                            do they 

      reap   Nor can they 
                         add or take away 

from a single 
              hour of my life 

      Yet they 
               clock the seasons and make

on the sky a moving 
                    wonderment of letters

      A language of such 
                         quick punctuation

I understand 
             is the nature of belief


One wing tilts
               The river follows

 
Meaning through your mother's  
        bloodstream 
       
                    at birth
                              Or through lactation

Mouth closed around a notch
        a node 
               
               to catch warm
      
                       milky spurt 

But now you are of 
               an age 
                        with scant 

                   or nonexistent childhood
records 

        When did your skin stipple
           with so much burn and loneliness
              

How many years
        
               did you see that double-stranded

shadow 
       helix behind closed lids

This condition 
                supposed to be endemic

in your part of the world
 
                           Spherical and enveloped
             Cells flood the brick-colored organ  

          Your hands helpless against the  
      flutter  
 
              as if some otherworldly 
force came nightly to feast

                            Then in the morning 
           the thing grown back

And you
        bound to the rock 

                           Your own eternal
                     observer