I COULD RUIN YOUR DAY RIGHT NOW, FOLKS,

 

I COULD RUIN YOUR DAY RIGHT NOW, FOLKS,


and I just might. It’s the Fifth Week

of Lent and Easter remains two weeks off.

I’ve been with a group of Christians

reading poems, and as days lengthen,

and Jesus’s resurrection (as well as ours),

too far off to contemplate. People

have been struggling with metaphor

and as one who has walked with poems

I’ve been losing sleep myself. The fun part

(and the problem that follows) comes

right now, and I’m on my way

up the mountain with my niece

and nephew, and their dad, to ski,

I’m the uncle and it’s my job

to show them how to turn, part

of the Lenten experience, right?

My task to show them unweighting

and the downhill ski. They’re 5 and 7,

buckled in the back seat

and their Dad’s driving, talking

to his son about a video game:

You don’t want to wear a Yankee’s hat,

why not be an Oriole or a Red Leg?

To which his daughter begins singing,

Yankee Doodle went to town

riding on a pony, and her younger

brother catches up with her before

he sticks the feather in his cap.

And now I’m paying attention

as they sing again, after the feather’s

in the cap, and calls it macaroni.

I’m singing now myself under my breath,

my breathing hearing something coming

up from the deep. The feather.

The macaroni. That’s the answer.

The connection I’m looking for.

Christians will sing out in praise and remembrance.

I’m writing in my notebook as they sing,

singing as I write, I’m your Yankee

Doodle sweetheart, you’re my

Yankee Doodle boy. Sing it again,

the boy cries, mind the music

and your step and with the girls be handy.

Hear the sounds! I write.

The plosive Ds, the rich vowels.

The repetition and the over and over.

This is hot. The Long A and E

The Y and the elusive double o

singing doodle. All song and all sound.

Everything already loaded

into neuron pathway. Instant recall

and deliverance. Yankee Doodle

keep it up, keep it up. And again.

Yankee Doodle Dandy. Keep it up.

The delight and the repetition.

And the children singing in the backseat,

mountains before us. This ride

into the ecstatic. Forget London.

How fun being in this car singing

with my notebook, and just as fast

as I can write keep it up, just

that fast new lines from old lines.

I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy,

Yankee Doodle do or die.

This is no longer child’s play.

Even the voices have changed.

George Washington is gone.

You’re losing your audience.

Keep it up the pony says,

like is he the drive or the driver?

This is evolution as play.

The revolutionary song is deconstructing.

Where did the feather in the cap go?

What happened to the macaroni?

Oh, Yankee Doodle, don’t stop now.

You must keep going. You see,

don’t you where this is going.

This is not a Christian moment.

Look again at Yankee Doodle Dandy.

Consider him for what he is, a Yankee.

Consider the dandy. As a Yankee,

he bears no last name. The doodle

becomes a verb, a doodling.

The doodling is fun, encouraging, too.

A new kind of delight. Dandy evolved,

another shift in our breathing. Some-

thing else is going on. Something, fun,

the body doodling and fine, and OK,

oh yes. Are we approaching

the summit? Skis have been forgotten.

Lent itself is gone. All this joy

as we live out the dark time of book burning.

Poetry itself is suspect.

What is this macaroni? And delight?

Delight in the song? The song remains.

The song still sings. It’s all I can hear,

how can I sleep without singing?

I play Billie Holiday. I channel Frank Sinatra.

I try and bend the notes as Billie taught Frank.

The early upbeat catalog of song.

It’s beautiful. Even But Beautiful

returns from Lady in Satin

with all that sadness. You know

where I’m coming from, don’t you, friends.

After the encore with Lester Young,

after bending melodies, when the stage empties,

it all comes back. Past the metaphor.

All that willful disobedience, beyond

the immaturity. Do or die. Inside the song.

Die and die and die until

you’ve been born again. The poet exposed

crossing boundaries creating chaos.

Jesus will cheer.

Yankee Doodle comes right back.

Maybe you’re making dinner.

I told you I could ruin your day.

You will never be the same.

Poetry will do that. It will ruin you for life.


Jim Bodeen

15-16 March 2024

STUMBLING CAN BE LOVELY

 

MY FRIEND SENDS ME AN EMAIL

               --for Terry Martin


Stumbling can be lovely

A picture of a person

holding up a bike

after a fall


Once she showed

me where a word

came from

and it was like seeing

ball bearings

on your bicycle’s

back wheel


I wrote her back


That's what they say

those experts


Me, I’m an amateur

I practice lots

All us lovers

Sometimes it’s all we got

is our practice



Jim Bodeen

8 March 2024

AFTER YOU WALK THE CAMINO

 

AFTER YOU WALK THE CAMINO


You’re a pilgrim forever.

Notes in my back pocket with my handkerchief.

We all took a pair of Maria’s socks after she died.


Walking with Karen

Sudden hailstones in sunshine

Walking with Mary Oliver in her thirst.


Honor the work of a caregiver

When she was the first lady of California

The Journey upended her life.


When he gave me the walking stick

he said Jesus for sure. We’re both reporters.

When you’re dreaming the other


you become the other.

Her furrowed brow, queer and handsome.

Queer comes into the dictionary in 1513.


Connecting to the words of Emily Dickinson

I almost missed the rhyme.

There were some long nights in North Dakota.


This is everything I had in my pocket.

There was a bit of fudging only because

There remained a couple of fragments from an earlier prayer.


Jim Bodeen

9 March 2024

IT'S THE CURSE OF LUCILLE

 

IT’S THE CURSE OF LUCILLE

         [Talking with my wife, remembering my mother, after the game]


Even when playing

Double solitaire in cards

Rooting for others


Jim Bodeen

9 March 2024

ALTAR FLOWERS


 










ALTAR FLOWERS

            for M. H.


This is how the flowers see us

leaving worship. Just minutes ago

we were seated before them, these beauties,

Lutherans in Central Washington.

In our pews, mums and roses

below the cross, in between

the piano and the choir.

Our cross, an artist’s creation,

gold leaves opening upward like hands,

giving praise, give silent testimony to live,

an object transformed by suffering.


Minutes earlier we walked

towards this cross, and these petaled blossoms,

giving thanks for a Thanksgiving meal,

and after the meal, the pastor folds

a white linen cloth over the silver cup

resting on the altar, also beautiful,

even as this beauty yields to a life fully lived.

A full bouquet placed in water and arranged in a crystal vase,

once more in between, and standing in quiet beauty,

roses a winter pale, off-white,

pink at the top edge of unfurling petals.


Walking past the altar to stand

behind the flowers with the camera,

one can see what the flowers see

in our departure after worship.


What they see in us, we don’t know.

We have words for them,

ephemeral in their short lives.

And we did sit before them

and marveled at how flowers were possible.

Did we say we were also lucky

to be in their presence?

Perhaps not. But we saw them.

We took in all that we could,

and other things we are not even aware of

happened too. We glimpsed ourselves,

I’m sure of that, made more

beautiful because of their presence.


We remembered Marie, too,

we did, and smiled, remembering her joy,

remembering her Ballard roots.

Some of us were new, this Sunday,

and never had the opportunity

to know Marie. And they partake

of what she has given us. The flowers

are silent before so many things.

I’m one of the blessed ones,--

blessings surely, have nothing to do with luck.

Marie and I were confirmed in the same church

in Seattle—different classes--Prince of Peace Lutheran--

Pastor Olin Nordsletton. Pastor Ollie.

Both us glowed saying his name.

Marie told me, We had 59 of us

in our Confirmation Class.

I countered remembering what I memorized

besides the 66 books of the Bible in order.

Marie was a Ballard girl, that gave her some attitude--

and my wife, Karen, also from Ballard,

smiles at that one. Karen reminds us how Marie

loved providing flowers for Sunday worship.


And this morning, this Sunday,

these flowers, present, again.

Before us, as we enter, watching us as we depart.

Much of what we carry we carry unspoken,

uncertain and unknown to others. And yet

so many encounters with beauty, these mortal

blossoms with the cup and cross and altar.

These participants in beauty and our own unfolding,

as we ask ourselves, What just happened?

What was that taking place in our weakness?


Jim Bodeen

3 March 2024




 

BENEATH THE RADIANT MOUNTAIN

 

THE SUPER BOWL BENEATH THE RADIANT MOUNTAIN


Yes, this afternoon, sometime after three


Hours after the Gospel lesson in Mark


Jesus on the Mountain

dazzling, alongside

Elijah and Moses


About wore me out


Karen asking over coffee,

How did that happen


Jim Bodeen

11-13 February 2024

OTHER TO WHAT WE WERE SHOWN

 

THERE IS NO OTHER WAY

TO SAY THIS BEING OTHER

TO WHAT WE WERE

TAUGHT AND SHOWN

          --for B.G.


The prayer

that comes up

has no content

but here’s

your name

as I walk

and this is

my prayer


and it is

prayer

and prayer

it is


Jim Bodeen

4 February—9 February 2024