St. Pete poet Tyler Gillespie opened Ellis Hughes’ diary and came out with this ‘note’

In the pages of his diary, Ellis Hughes
sketched a bird next to some notes

when he wrote about his tour
as an Assistant Surgeon
in FL during the Seminole War.

Hughes documented people & places, mostly.

Creeks traversed. The rain. Soldiers, digging.
So, this delicate bird caught my attention.

He described its eyes as “brilliant black”
with crimson throat & “breast glittering gold.”

The pages are, like, two centuries old.
A faint trace of his cursive memory.
I put the digital diary in Photoshop.

The technology barely helped me better read the past.

But this poem isn’t about what’s lost,
details misheard or that ghostly bird

sketch. There’s a different image below it.
Hughes painted two glittering birds

with their long beaks crossed like swords

or fingers or another appendage, extended
like a line of thought. & maybe I’m just seeing
what I want. His notes are all in pencil or pen.

These birds – maybe a type of wren – watercolor
across its page. Soak his diary in orange, green.

A sunset red. & I won’t speculate on a man who’s dead.

Because there’s an ethic to the archive. Of handling
people’s stories. But I will say that the birds look pretty
gay. As in two dudes kissing. As in under a Florida

moon, I met a man who I later called home. & the two of us
made our nest from leaves & twigs & other scraps we found.

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This article appears in Apr 17-23, 2025.