Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
At the office all morning, at noon Luellin dined with me, and then abroad to Fleet Street, leaving my wife at Tom’s while I went out and did a little business. So home again, and went to see Sir Robert, who continues ill, and this day has not spoke at all, which makes them all afeard of him. So home.
the morning din
road to street leaving
a little tin ear
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 24 October 1661.
You’ve been courting disaster long enough. Isn’t it time you got hitched? You in a suit of rain, with your lucky feet. She in her thunderwear, the ship that launched a thousand faces as close as the phone vibrating in your pocket.
beach bodies rushing to water a stranded whale
from whiptail: journal of the single-line poem, Issue 10 (June 2014)
Before my salad days, I was sour as cabbage. I grieved as publicly as a mower for its meadow, cried on every occasion—a virtuoso of tears. Except, my mother noted, when she took me to the woods: as the sky filled with leaves, my last tearful gasp for breath drew in the leaf-mould and the silence and I would fall still. Grief may have been my natural habitat, but the forest soon became my strengthening medicine. Before I even learned to talk, I knew that long sighs could mean happiness among the pines, and that time passes differently in a sunlit glade. And long after I grew out of my bluest period, the forest continued to be a refuge from my own self-centeredness, a place where I could practice being human.
leaping rock to rock the children I never had
from Woodrat Photohaiku, 12 October 2024
At the office in the morning, dined at home, and then Sir W. Pen and his daughter and I and my wife to the Theatre, and there saw “Father’s own Son,” a very good play, and the first time I ever saw it, and so at night to my house, and there sat and talked and drank and merrily broke up, and to bed.
morning in
my own time
night sea
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 28 September 1661.
The next morning up early and begun our march; the way about Puckridge very bad, and my wife, in the very last dirty place of all, got a fall, but no hurt, though some dirt. At last she begun, poor wretch, to be tired, and I to be angry at it, but I was to blame; for she is a very good companion as long as she is well.
In the afternoon we got to Cambridge, where I left my wife at my cozen Angier’s while I went to Christ’s College, and there found my brother in his chamber, and talked with him; and so to the barber’s, and then to my wife again, and remounted for Impington, where my uncle received me and my wife very kindly. And by and by in comes my father, and we supped and talked and were merry, but being weary and sleepy my wife and I to bed without talking with my father anything about our business.
morning archway
a bad and dirty place
for Christ to sleep
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 18 September 1661.
(Lord’s day).
To church, it being a very wet night last night and to-day, dined at home, and so to church again with my wife in the afternoon, and coming home again found our new maid Doll asleep, that she could not hear to let us in, so that we were fain to send the boy in at a window to open the door to us.
So up to my chamber all alone, and troubled in mind to think how much of late I have addicted myself to expense and pleasure, that now I can hardly reclaim myself to look after my great business of settling Gravely business, until now almost too late. I pray God give me grace to begin now to look after my business, but it always was, and I fear will ever be, my foible that after I am once got behind-hand with business, I am hard to set to it again to recover it.
In the evening I begun to look over my accounts and upon the whole I do find myself, by what I can yet see, worth near 600l., for which God be blessed, which put me into great comfort. So to supper and to bed.
wet night
a doll asleep
on a grave
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 8 September 1661.
reblogged from Woodrat photohaiku
trail
turning dappled salamander
tail
curl
of an ache an oak
burl
one watery
eye between them
conjoined oaks
the shine of white-
haired youth
tussock moth
winding
up here
wild grapevine
ravished
by the wind
mother oak
Sometimes I think the loneliness would be unbearable if I weren’t surrounded by ghosts. But seeing fireflies this early in May gives me an eerie feeling. The crescent moon is nearly alone in the sky, glimmering through a scrim of clouds. The aurora got rained out, and now the night is loud with all the voices of water as it runs off a mountain.
It occurred to me recently that in hilly country, those who are afraid of heights like me might often end up on mountaintops, because going straight up a steep hillside usually feels safest. Going sideways is scary, and downhill too perilous to contemplate. So onward means upward simply to avoid the abyss.
making the stars quake mountaintop peeper
(Lord’s day). Lay long in bed, and being up, I went with Will to my Lord’s, calling in at many churches in my way. There I found Mr. Shepley, in his Venetian cap, taking physique in his chamber, and with him I sat till dinner.
My Lord dined abroad and my Lady in her chamber, so Mr. Hetly, Child and I dined together, and after dinner Mr. Child and I spent some time at the lute, and so promising to prick me some lessons to my theorbo he went away to see Henry Laws, who lies very sick.
I to the Abby and walked there, seeing the great confusion of people that come there to hear the organs. So home, calling in at my father’s, but staid not, my father and mother being both forth.
At home I fell a-reading of Fuller’s Church History till it was late, and so to bed.
in bed with all
my organs in me
reading till late
Erasure haiku derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 30 December 1660.
Office, and thence with Sir William Batten and Sir William Pen to the parish church to find out a place where to build a seat or a gallery to sit in, and did find one which is to be done speedily. Hence with them to dinner at a tavern in Thames Street, where they were invited to a roasted haunch of venison and other very good victuals and company.
Hence to Whitehall to the Privy Seal, but nothing to do. At night by land to my father’s, where I found my mother not very well. I did give her a pint of sack. My father came in, and Dr. T. Pepys, who talked with me in French about looking out for a place for him. But I found him a weak man, and speaks the worst French that ever I heard of one that had been so long beyond sea. Hence into Paul’s Churchyard and bought Barkley’s Argenis in Latin, and so home and to bed. I found at home that Captain Bun had sent me 4 dozen bottles of wine today. The King came back to Whitehall to-night.
where to go
white moth
out in the bark of night
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 24 August 1660.
What does it mean to look forward to something any more, in a world hurtling toward ecological collapse if not thermonuclear destruction? There was a bestseller back in the 1970s called Future Shock about the social and psychological damage incurred by modern society’s relentless drive toward progress… or so I imagine, having never actually read it. But it’s been on my mind lately despite that minor detail. I’ve also been thinking a lot about ignorance, both in epistemological and sociological terms, and not coming to any firm conclusions because I rarely do. That’s a poet thing, I suppose. Not knowing the future, though, seems essential to mere survival, let along progress, as the Rene Char quote in the sidebar here says: “How can we live without the unknown before us?”
This has been a horrific summer in many parts of North America, but here in central Pennsylvania we went from a severe spring drought to a very wet but relatively cool summer. Trees went from nearly dropping their leaves at the beginning of June to massive growth spurts in July—aided, I’m sure, by all the extra CO2 in the atmosphere. And part of what kept things cool for us was the haze from burning forests elsewhere, as I’ve mentioned in various poems. But one of the pleasures of haiku is being liberated from having to explain things. They can just lurk in the background, mostly inaudible to the reader. Distant flashes that can mean whatever you want them to.
The fireflies, who had been scarce early on, had their highest numbers toward the end of the season. I shot this 30-second clip of them on my phone at dusk last week, just as the weather was turning from muggy to cool. Three nights ago the katydids started up; in a week or so, their throb will be all we hear. I look forward to weeks of good sleep.