GRATEFUL FOR THIS, TOO

PLACES FOR CHILDREN NOT MADE FOR THEM

A room with a wall of mirrors
Steel chair with leather cushions
Open bottles of Wild Root Hair Tonic
A chair held by air, released to fall by the man in a white apron
stepping on the lever with his foot, unseen by the boy
The chair bigger than the boy, rising and falling and turning
A second mirror, smaller, hand-held,
giving the boy eyes in the back of his head

Jim Bodeen
30 November 2010


DRIVING HOME FROM FLAXTON AT NIGHT
ALONG THE NORTH DAKOTA-SASKATCHEWAN BORDER

The long curve on the highway turning North
brings the lights of the Aurora Borealis
across Canada, and Mom says,
Look, Wayne, light from the North Pole.
Dad keeps the road from disappearing
in whiteouts coming from wind gusts
and gaps in fencing. The heater
from the 51 Plymouth whines
and can't keep ice from forming
while windows fog, our hands
constantly wiping them to maintain
contact with road and stars.

Northern Great Plains highways
and snow banks are my inheritance.
Peterson's lived in Flaxton with five boys,
all gone now, as is the town.
Bowbells absorbed their children
when schools closed. We left,
early in the 50s, exiled before the diaspora
swung into high gear. Out west,
where I became my mother's biographer,
we got news that my barber,
who cut my hair in the basement shop
below the bank, where I first breathed in
the heady tonics of lotions for men
with my grandpa, was driving drunk
in a whiteout coming from Flaxton,
around the same long curve
where my mother pointed out the Northern Lights.
He hit a semi truck attempting to pass.
Burke County, leading the nation in dying population.
This dark memory fills with starlight,
an early solstice gift for staying up, from early rising.

Jim Bodeen
30 November 2010


HOW I LEARNED TO LISTEN TO GOD

The cries came from the kitchen
where Mom sat with Dad,
his feet in pans of water heated on the stove,
his feet blue, steam rising to mix
with cigarette smoke streaming from his lungs.

Outside with my spotted pony
in the fenced yard, the big house
owned by Great Northern Railroad
rose Victorian, larger than the Lutheran Church
across the street where words came

indelible, flashing hues of blue light
through snow in North Dakota wind
sweeping down from the Canadian prairie.
The cries and words arriving to the boy
holding his haltered pony in winter wind.

Holding the pastor's words in mittened hands
cupped like a snow hut, I listened for the next scream
from my father. Jesus Christ, Lucille,
he would cry, linking my mother's name with Christ's.
Don't take the Lord's name in vain, the pastor said,

The call from God is clear, and you will know.
Father's cries cursed God, the pastor said.
In the North Dakota kitchen where Mom and I
listened to ball games on the radio,
Dad's cries were prayers. I knew that

standing in snow. I knew what that meant.
Jesus was in the kitchen. I would pray
like my father taught me. God wouldn't blink.
I would carry the lie as my great truth.
Praying in snow, my pony's nostrils flared.

Jim Bodeen
29 November 2010



DRIVING MOM BACK TO RIVERVIEW
ON THANKSGIVING, TALKING IN THE CAR

A dark country road, Mom,
you're right. We're in Moxee.
Krista lives here, that's right.
Those poles are for growing hops.

They do look like skeletons.
We did have just about everybody,
the whole family. Not quite, just about. 
Who wasn't there? Who did you say?

Dad wasn't there. Wayne.
Were you thinking of Dad tonight?
He was there for a little while.
Yes he was, Mom. Yes he was.

Jim Bodeen
28 November 2010

3 comments:

  1. 'for a little while' what a bit of magic in this poem, in your life. kjm

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  2. the poem of the snow and the blue feet, the idea of prayer, the words the boy hears and carries, i really like the juxtaposition of the presence of your father in the last poem and this, and also something about the words from your father...this touches me in the best of ways.

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  3. jb, i drove a 51 plymouth cranbrook from 1966 to about 1969 maybe 7o. my aunt, a high school english teacher in olympia bought it new, gave it to me my junior year of high school. she still lives--in her mid 90's in Camas. it was so much a part of my life. your road poem here really tops this series, a fine run, these poems are new in the best ways. there are many left in the white out, enjoy bringing them to us as much as i enjoy reading them. kjm

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