Via Negativa

Going forth this morning I met Mr. Davenport and a friend of his, one Mr. Furbisher, to drink their morning draft with me, and I did give it them in good wine, and anchovies, and pickled oysters, and took them to the Sun in Fish Street, there did give them a barrel of good ones, and a great deal of wine, and sent for Mr. W. Bernard (Sir Robert’s son), a grocer thereabouts, and were very merry, and cost me a good deal of money, and at noon left them, and with my head full of wine, and being invited by a note from Luellin, that came to my hands this morning in bed, I went to Nick Osborne’s at the Victualling Office, and there saw his wife, who he has lately married, a good sober woman, and new come to their home. We had a good dish or two of marrowbones and another of neats’ tongues to dinner, and that being done I bade them adieu and hastened to Whitehall (calling Mr. Moore by the way) to my Lord Privy Seal, who will at last force the clerks to bring in a table of their fees, which they have so long denied, but I do not join with them, and so he is very respectful to me. So he desires me to bring in one which I observe in making of fees, which I will speedily do. So back again, and endeavoured to speak with Tom Trice (who I fear is hatching some mischief), but could not, which vexed me, and so I went home and sat late with pleasure at my lute, and so to bed.

going to the sun with
my head full of wine
and my sober bones

the tongues of long-
denied desires
devour me

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 6 November 1661.

O for a windfall of care, to take us through
            the unkindness of days. The kind of care

not afraid of touch, not afraid to come close,
            you know? To ask Are you OK? Maybe

even to hug. The world is full of hard things 
           no one wants to talk about, even if we

really wish we could just let the moment lead
          from the cultivated labor of surfaces to

the awkward surrender of our innermosts. I wish
           we could sit without fidgeting, talk without

thinking of the quickest escape. Let's tell each 
           other, before they skitter like rocks into a well,

what words we've had to invent sometimes, to signal
           that we want to talk about love or being alive.

I am fond of them, love the way they flock 
to the light by the porch, any lantern left

on the patio, the one window which looks
like an orange stamp in the corner of any

dark envelope of a house. Their circling
is insistent; is trance, is lyric in search

of reassuring refrain. Moss darkens 
the backs of trees, so even in daytime, 

they look like they are signalling some
marbled meaning from underneath

the earth. We should be so lucky to be
streaked by their dust—a windfall, when

otherwise the world is over-careful.
Not touching. Not coming too close.  

When is it a haunting, and when a premonition?
I feel more haunted by the ghosts of the present
than the past. Some have stopped responding

when I call; and there are those that message or
text at all hours. After I get off the line with them, 
I am nearly always doubled over with sadness;

their voices carry so much suffering, and I am 
skewered by my inability to make their pain 
go away. This is how I know the ancestors 

do not become gods or angels when they 
pass from our midst— rather, we are warp and
woof in a fabric stretched and threaded through

with our shared griefs. But o, for a hundred moth-
mouths, to work on a rending that admits more light.

Tensile line, tether— you marvel at how surely
          a spider sends forth filament after filament
and swings its whole body weight into empty 
         space. How do you learn to be brave like that,
learn to trust that something set loose could still
        keep from flying off into the void? You put on
another pair of socks, pour water into the kettle,
        wait for it to boil. And I write “you,” though we  
know it’s just another way we try to keep some
        distance from the self, especially when it looks
at itself and feels too close. But yes,  I’m writing about 
       myself, now;  writing of how sometimes I can’t tell 
a window from a door, can’t tell the difference
       between premonition, undercurrent, a haunting.