Are you just eating snow?


















LIGHT THROUGH TREE WELL


















FATHER WITH HIS DAUGHTER ON SKIS,
WITH GRANDDAUGHTERS,
AFTER 14 WINTERS WITH NO SNOW

for Krista Bodeen

Descending Hourglass
story-tossed through moguls--

Paradise Basin opens for daughters
in powder returning the dream body.

Jim Bodeen
3 January 2011





















AT 40

--for Tim Bodeen

He was three years old
when his father put him on skis.

He shows his father
a new way down the mountain.

Jim Bodeen
3 January 2011
















THE SKI TECH WORKS THE FATHER'S SKI SET

--for Tim Bodeen

Thirty seven years on the mountain together.
Consider that. The ski tech knows the father's moves on snow.
He knows his father's more interested in the mountain than the ski.

One year he gets the father a pair of skis to get him off his back.
It takes him longer to show him a new way to descend--
the father that concerned with form.

Jim Bodeen
3 January 2011





















CELEBRATING KAREN'S BIRTHDAY EARLY

Riding fumes of holiday blues,
city entrance to see our son, and the sun,
to see each other, say Happy Birthday
in the aftermath of ChristTruthBirth
left to culture as overstock,

looking for something after spending,
leftover resurrection possibilities, dharma
perhaps, something the artist said
between women, put on walls
by corporate sponsors--He just goes on

trying things--God does. That's enough,
along with a couple of photographs of you,
art object, only door to the soul snapshot
against art's faith try, reflection
in the window, quiet ChristTruth you,

not yourself in this, but Christ
lifted from a midwest crib,
found in blindness, may be
God gift, baby Moses in urban reeds,
you at the door when the door opens.

Jim Bodeen
1 January 2011


TWO QUESTIONS FOR THE BOY
ON SKIS SPRAWLED OUT BESIDE THE SKI LIFT--
ONE FROM THE GRANDPA, THE OTHER FROM THE GRANDSON

Do you need some help?
Are you just eating snow?

Jim Bodeen
30 December 2010


WHERE BACK AND FORTH COLLIDE




















WHAT HAPPENED TO CHRIST
ACCORDING TO THE CHRISTMAS LETTER
FROM MY FRIEND

for Pastor Ron Moen

The chapel went up in flames
just before Christmas, 1953.
Before vespers. My friend,
a student in seminary, and Jesus?

Jesus ran free, fleeing the flames,
free to roam--the run of the university,
kindling wherever he went,
"fiery awareness." Ever inflammable,

my friend says, crossing time,
"with the mysterious love of God,
in Christ," now roaming streets
and neighborhoods, hanging out

in prisons. Hanging out, suffering.
With the suffering. My friend,
who sees me as I am, still hangs
with me after 20 years. He nods

before and after we talk.
Sometimes he laughs. Both of us
more at home in prison
than roaming free, reaching for candles

flickering with burning spirits
not ours, burning a Christ path.
"Freeing us to kindle," my friend says,
repeating "fiery awareness" a third time.

This man knows me in all my fires.
He knows what he gives my stubborness.
He guesses I'll stop at Jesus fleeing the flames.
My friend is a grandfather on his way

to spend time with his children,
the parents of his grandchildren.
He knows about the baby in the manger.
Neither of us knows what happens next.

Jim Bodeen
25 December 2010

















ON THE PATH OF LISTEN AND SKI

for Steve Pulkkinen

Finns on skins in World War II.
My climb out of Paradise Basin.
Practice on back country skis with a released heel
and skins holding me to the mountain traverse--
dressed to be found in case I go down.
This pleasure is not the history of pleasure.
Soviets offer Finland two pounds of dirt for one pound of gold.
Finns dress in white with an unlimited supply of skis.
Ski Patrol is the invisible enemy, mobile.
Dark uniforms make easy targets. Sweating
under my helmet with too many clothes,
I lose too much heat in the climb.
Fast moving death in snow. Part of the history.
My hike claims its roots in prayer.
I don't give a hoot for military history
but I like the story of Finns on skis--and this:
at a wedding on a Caribbean beach
a man wearing a Panama hat tells me about Sisu,
his Finnish ancestors, displaced persons--
"DP's" arriving by the boatload at midcentury.
The word Sisu says all about us.
Whatever it takes. You can beat us
but you're not going to win anything.

Jim Bodeen
24 December 2010
























THE WITNESS WATCHES ONES WHO HAVE
SURRENDERED ALL AS A THING OF BEAUTY

for Erica, Karen, Vonnie, Evelyn, Kelli, Roxana


What will happen to them? is a question
of our disbelief, drawn into a circle so tight it travels thrown
into the arcs of stars, in starlight.
The special ones, children of atrocities,
attract the light of the universe, turned
to magnets of love and weightlessness,
sometimes returned to small towns
as ambassadors of love, still clothed
in vulnerability that cannot be penetrated,
still breathing daily life with no insurance policy in their name,
belonging to God, given to God, embraced by God.
Their call, the one we listen for, saves us all. Sometimes.

Jim Bodeen
23 December 2010




Out of the Loopin
Goat rocks dream ice Christ
Ski light dark time boom

Boundary flags wave
Goodbye to the light
Drop Flash White Speed Show

Man Ski stands in wind
Descending songline's
Listening tower

Jim Bodeen
22 December 2010


















CARRIED ACROSS DARKNESS ON SKIS

Sound never stops
Sound arrives and arrives
Like shapes of morning

Jim Bodeen
21 December 2010


















BEFORE TIME IN NORTH DAKOTA

Before North Dakota
In the office before it was an office
Holding office, here, before it all, held--
Given these knees, a kind of rent, on loan
Further back than the Kiva
Kiva before the word
When all was Kiva coming up from below
Before Chaco
Dark on this day
And plenty of time to look for light
Found something in all that
A found something
The tiny skin boat carries a man over snow

Black Forest Ham on a sweet roll
The dream of the oatmeal raison cookie
Inside the mouth
Oh
Tiny jolts of brown sudden sugar
Sweetness inside spiked raisons
Fermentation of light
Oh, Oh
Fog blown, pale disc in afternoon sky
Gone, O, already

Jim Bodeen
22 December 2010


















IT IS NOT THIS, BUT TOWARDS THIS

for Eric Don Anderson

It is one of the life studies. It is mine. The calling remains one of my "red threads."-- one that I wake to daily--going way back, way, way back, as Van Morrison sings. Back before such things as seminaries, back before any of the great religions, way back, back to when there was only music, or parts of music, what is called music, and some heard something maybe, and it was there, way back, lodged solid somewhere, back to the back L. Cohen sings about in all songs, touching down before skipping off stars in "Who Shall I Say Is Calling." Clues perhaps in the great and only songline. Back to that, towards that. Further back than that. I meet you in crossing the street, or back there, on the corner. I hear something coming from you you're not trying to say. Dying for that. You were there, someone, something...where back and forth collide. How are you? How were you? When and to what? Blood beautiful pumping in the brain bicameral. Traffic from there. Traffic across the border of the brain--listening there for dropped fragments of song. Dropping from your fingers like stardust. Dropped like breath. Breathing. It's never been about anything but that, heard notes in others, in the other, freely shared unaware of what it is coming forth on the tongue in spite of themselves--in spite of ourselves. Never learned away, never schooled for something else often off targetly called higher, apprenticed to that and that only, call it what you will.

Jim Bodeen
21 December 2010

Sunday's Word

BODHISATTVA BRINGS HER RAKUSU BY THE HOUSE

for Carole Folsom-Hill

His friend sews her rakusu
prior to taking her vows.
"Having vows to break is the bodhisattva path."
His friend shows him patches of cloth
given by her friends.

"This is the beginning of learning."
He looks at her words in the notebook.
The circle of oak from the tree
in the community garden
binds the decades they have in common.

The patched together piece of cloth
worn around the neck. The pattern of patches
mirroring ice fields. Stitching her rakusu
she takes refuge in the breathing.
Practice with all for the benefit of all.

Jim Bodeen
20 December 2010

Carole Folsom-Hill's Rakusu Robe





















THE WITNESS

And what does the witness do now?
Cautioned by prosecutor and judge already.

Asylum not granted.
Murdered parents is fact not questioned.
But terrorized? Tortured?
A few phone calls.
Rumors.
Generally credible and consistent testimony has not established the case.
A few phone calls.
Rumors.

And has the State not looked deeply into this?

The witness enters the courtroom with priviliged eyes of a citizen.

How in the wind?
How itinerant?

The judge said "Good luck."
It's over.

Is the witness complaining?

Jim Bodeen
18 December 2010


PUTTING LANGUAGE IN THE HANDS OF THE JUDGE

When the word for wait is hope
When the word for hope is wait
When the word gets taken away
When the law becomes the word
When the word becomes dictation

"OK folks, that's it. Good luck."

Jim Bodeen
17 December 2010


THE POEM WALKS A STRAIGHT LINE

Nobody will understand, Karen says.
Facts build the line, not me.
No place for story to get lost.
No place to get sidetracked.
Mind can follow multiple truths
placed side by side.
People get fooled but people aren't fools.
I'm trying just like the old man at Riverview.
I'm not asking anyone to follow.
I still have my teeth and my notebook.

Jim Bodeen
16 December 2010


TESTIMONIO, TESTIMONY

Immigration court in Seattle
Pueblo de Dios/People of God
Against the empire, man and woman, married--

Judge, prosecutor, defender
Turn it over to the notebook
which is grateful, without fear

Day Two, crossing three months,
Storypath/cuentocamino--look around
Notebook opens again for Parker T Ball Jotter

Jim Bodeen
16 December 2010


DHARMA DOWN 99

We're on our way
                     man
                   out of town
                go hitching down
                   that highway 99
"Night Highway Down"/Mountains and Rivers Without End
                    Gary Snyder

Weekday morning workday
humpday in all terrain outback
ski shop where my son's one
of the characters on the highway
heading into Seattle going
South all down the coast way
to San Francisco. Access the unseen
where you are, slouching
into the city. Watch him cut skins
for skis wanting outside boundaries,
go get the crew burgers
from Burgermaster creeping north
from the university of days past.

Passing out sandwiches the man
against the rock on snow in the photo
asks me how it is the father brings food
to a place like this. The likeness
in the photo's all the clue I need.
Anyone skiing against that rock
knows humility I need to get me
through the afternoon.
Hanging to a piece of ice, he says.
I need the other much more than the other
needs me, I say. But for my friends,
those edges would not have held, he says.
None of us are vulnerable though.
None of us. Let the ice stay ice.

Jim Bodeen
15 December 2010


SUNDAY'S WORD AT RIVERVIEW

I'm trying, the Vice-President says,
when I ask for the word, saying Good Morning.
Oh, Mr. Vice-President, you make me dizzy.
I'll carry your words all day,
repeating them to the nurse
as I go around the corner.
Mr. Gore says, 'I'm trying.'
I'll never need inspiration again.

The denturist has his dentures,
the nurse says, grounding me for the moment,
while I take in the reality
of Mr. Gore's steeper ascent.

Jim Bodeen
15 December 2010

SHOUTS AMONG THE UNSEEN

















WHAT'S IN YOUR PACK? I ASK JEREMY,
KEEPER OF MY DOG, SURVIVALIST FIREFIGHTER,
AND WHAT'S IN MINE?

Fire starter. Stick of honey.
Old Man's Beard, from firs, for fire,
gathered last week so it's dry.
Gather as I go. That's all you'll get

to burn if you get caught.
Water. Probe. Beacon. Gloves.
Phone. Fruits and nuts. First Aid Kit.
Splint. Flare. Ace bandage. Flashlight.

Snow shoes. Shovel.
Swiss Army Knife with all the bells.
Tarp and rope. Reaction time
comes from practice before you go.

Cold and hypothermia. Time matters.
Practice matters. With friends. With beacon.
If you get cold and wet, it might not matter
what's in your pack.

                    Jeremy doesn't ask, What's in mine?
Whistle. Sandwich. Diet Coke.
Leftover Halloweeen candy.
Flashlight. Gloves. Notebook.

Songs of Cold Mountain.
Benedict's Rule for Monks.
Crackers. A box of #2 pencils.
Camera. Whistle says, Meatloaf.

Jim Bodeen
13 December 2010



















THE AVALANCHE MASK EXPLAINED

Your own breathing puts you at risk under snow.
Your breath exhales carbon monoxide
into an area that will kill you in minutes.
This mask, not the ones used by hockey players,
will give you an extra seven minutes.

Jim Bodeen
11 December 2010




















HOGBACK, GOAT ROCKS, PARADISE BASIN

Lovins walked us into Goat Rocks
crossing Hogback into McCall Basin
more than 30 years ago, and we camped
beneath Old Snowy under stars. High point
of the Crest Trail in Washingon State.
We walked the ridgeline
of a watershed dividing the state
looking at different vegetation
under our left boot than what we saw
under our right. On that first hike
we followed a man in his 70s
hiking on crutches, wondering
about our own feet crossing
into a future we couldn't imagine.
Once, on the 4th of July,
my own young family
walked across the snow field
of Hogback on a scorcher of a day
and dropped into Shoe Lake
with two small tents and a terrier.
Karen and I and our three small kids.
The storm that hit that night
had me wondering if we could get out
We stopped one fleeing backpacker
and gave him Lovins' name and number
with instructions to come after us.
My friends and I kept returning
until we knew rock and trail
better than we knew our neighbors.

This is my 65th winter.
A threshold year,
and a 25-year old fight's been resolved
between skiers and Forest Service.
Hogback remains out of bounds,
part of the Goat Rocks Wilderness,
but a reachable dream for a man
with snowshoes and skins
with a back country ski,
along with a week of avalanche training
and gear ok'd by Search & Rescue.

That old man on crutches, he carried us walking.

Jim Bodeen
12 December 2010

STOPPED EYES WATCHING, OPEN
















WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT SNOW GHOSTS

Maybe I was given too many
tall peaks, the wild poet says.
The pastor says, Someday,
you'll have to come down
from that mountain. Another poet
asks me what a mountain is.
I ski in a basin called a begging bowl
located on a mountain
I've never seen the top of.
I stand, like another poet says,
one foot shorter than the other.
This is a way of walking,
the oldest poets say,
an odd way walked by
common ones laying
animal skins over white bones
where one never arrives
but crosses snow fields
singing ejaculates
of movements among the unseen.


Jim Bodeen
11 December 2010

















LA LUNA CAFÉ

Raúl's baby blue guayabera in a shopping bag
placed into my hand by his daughter

On a hanger by my bed gathering light
from the receding solstice sun

Jim Bodeen
10 December 2010



















STOPPED EYES WATCHING AND OPEN 

Goat on Highway 12
Hooves leap rock transporting cliff
Start winter on skis

Jim Bodeen
8 December 2010

















THRESHOLD IN SNOW

Skis transport
Skiing is transportation
Skis take one into the poem

Monks on skis
Carthusians in France
Praying for me
Praying for us all
On skis
Easy tracks in the begging bowl
Sliding into Paradise Basin
Falling, digging ourselves into deep 


Jim Bodeen
9 December 2010



COUNTING DOWN DARKNESS

WORD FROM SILENCE, WORD FROM NOISE

Blood beautiful pumping in the brain
First minutes after swimming

By my breathing, I know I'm here

Words looking into language
Each word calling for its own silence

Without silence, only noise

Coming from times out of silence,
we know enough of words to want
what couldn't before be said

It takes one's breath away to hear this call,
each silence, each sound, now a possibility reaching

Fostering spiritspace inside silence making the word
Silence a seed choice choosing while casting the guess

And the long wait for right conditions

"He put the word in the title and couldn't do a wrong thing
from there on out"

"We didn't know if she'd ever say it"

The walk down the stairs into the locker room, the dangerous descent

What about the walk back up

Breaking and making silence

Word from noise, word from silence

Entering water, body swimming in and out of word,
in and out of silence, what part invitation, what part inheritance?
The yes and no inside each word
The yes and no inside each silence

Yes and No in All

Severe beauty in northern plains winter landscape birthing ground

Varied spaces between two--sacred tension holding

Jim Bodeen
26 November--7 December 2010



THE GRATEFUL NOTEBOOK

Practices what I can only dream about
Liminal man, limited
Disappointing the invitation even in his vision
Grateful even for scraps

Who is not afraid to put down the seen and the heard

I thought you were my eyes and ears

Jim Bodeen
7 December 2010




Come on, we'll talk story.
Writing backwards to find out what happens first.
When my friend died he was no longer blind.

Jim Bodeen
7 December 2010

FLIES

THE DAY THE YOUNG BLACK WOMAN MEETS ME
ON THE STREET AFTER LOSING HER BED AT THE MISSION
WHEN SHE MISSED EVENING CHAPEL AND HER BUS
OUT OF TOWN, SHE TELLS ME ON THE SIDEWALK
HOW COLD IT WAS LAST NIGHT IN MILLER PARK
NEAR THE SCHOOL WHERE MY DAUGHTER TEACHES--
I'VE JUST RETURNED JAMES WRIGHT'S POEMS
TO THE LIBRARY--AND WALK HER INTO TACO TIME
BEFORE GOING INTO THE YMCA

Coming out of the Y after swimming I say,
Merry Christmas, God Bless, Turn Off Fox News.
Mr. Jefferson, reading headlines in the coin box, says, Fox Noise.
I ask him about Gil. Old friends. We have Gil in common.
They worked together when they could only work for others.
Alan Simpson, Senator from Wyoming tells us,
Sober up or sleep in the streets because
things are only going to get worse.
In a poem called War, the Canadian poet Patrick Lane
writes from the silence, listening, as the man catches flies
as they rise backward then holding the fist to my ear
so I can hear its buzzing. Mr. Jefferson tells me
he won't attend Martin Luther King services
because they're all held in churches that made slaves of his people.
World go about your business.
George W. Bush appears on talk shows telling Oprah
he's just another old man picking up dog shit in sandwich bags.

Jim Bodeen
4 December 2010

THE GRATEFUL NOTEBOOK





WHAT THE OLD PHOTO DOESN'T SAY

Phil hands me the picture without a word
when I open the door.
"My God, Phil, these are my kids.
This picture's gotta be 30 years old.
Are those Nick's kids?"

This is Freeway Lake. Phil and Gale
untied our scrambled lines again and again.
This is the day I threw it all in the lake--
rods, reels, tackle boxes, fish eggs.
The day I said I could be a father
without teaching my kids to fish.

Jim Bodeen
4 December 2010


POST SCRIPT TO THE POEM
LOOKING INTO MY LAST DAY
OF FISHING WITH MY CHILDREN

My kids had to compensate
for their father. What I didn't give them.

There were more things than fishing
they didn't get from their Dad.

Jim Bodeen
4 December 2010


GRANDPA, CAN I HAVE THIS PIN?

            for Josh

Let's see. Burning word.
Burning word?

That's what poets wear,
burning words.

Let me pin this on.
What do poets do?

They play with words.
They make magic.

Burning word, Katie.
Grandpa says it's magic.

Jim Bodeen
3 December 2010


POCKET NOTEBOOK AT THANKSGIVING

            for Katie

Did you write the crab one,
Grandpa? I eat crab, too.

Jim Bodeen
3 December 2010

PUTTING RAÚL'S POEM ON THE POETRY POLE

LINES FOR RAÚL TORRES

12 March 194526 November 2010

Torito would come into my classroom
during his break and sit at the round table
in front of the room, take out a sheet of paper
and begin writing. He loved to hear what young writers
said, and he would help them say it. Raúl

waited until they'd read their poems
and then read his to the class,
signing it, Torito, making a little tail
underneath his signature. The little bull,
helping us understand the history of grapefruit

migrant lifein our time. Ruby Reds,
the weight in his bag he turned into literature.
Raúl saying to us, "We can do it." He showed us
a side of macho we needed. He walked me
on the Chicano pathnot Mexican, Chicano

nuances in words, his great gift. One day,
he took the orange from my hand. I'd asked him
about gavacho, and the depths it reached beyond
gringo or huero. He began peeling the orange.
"See that skin," turning the underside to the light,

"...white, and always bitter." Amargo, bitter,
after taste of the weight of those grapefruits
in his bag. Freely given. That's the thing
about Raúl. He would give what few others
on either side of the struggle, rarely could

freeing us all. We'd laugh understanding,
relieved and knowing, released from ignorance
and racism still crippling children and teachers.
No bitterness in Raúl's teaching,
only his Olé, showing the way for all.

Jim Bodeen
1 December 2010


PUTTING RAÚL'S POEM ON THE POETRY POLE

    Soy el sueño de mi madre
    También fui su pesadilla.
           Raúl Torres

Exacto, camarada. Exacto.
It's not that grapefruit I took from my lunch sack
and held before you, you naming it,
Río Red, taking it from my hands, telling me
which field in Texas it came from,
el valle Río Grande, hermano del Yakima,
not that, that binds us to the same story.
No es el sabor que yo tengo
para la pinche palabra verde.
Tampoco no es porque
tú escribes poemas con el seudónimo "Torito."

Good words make good connections.
Hermano, compadre, carnal, compañero.
Words scorned by the patrones
even as they come from their mouths.
In the poem you gave me last week,
you give me one more, camarada,
closing a circle of protection, knowing
these words of affection have been terrorized
by Zapatistas machine-gunning peasants in Chiapas,
the last word they'll ever hear. Words we exchange
in poems, our forum for knowing.
Words the pendejos y pendejas
en los trajes y corbatas entienden
and know how to use, Hermano
being the favorite of the Christian Fundamentalist.

¿Cómo llegamos a la linea entre los lados?
Your truth beginning this poem, is mine, too.
The dream, and the nightmare.
Living in two worlds takes us invisibly.
Meaning comes in the tantras,
the sounds and gestures made
at the invisible points, connecting us
to multiple others we don't understand.
There is a world inside the line we can open and explore.
The dream and the nightmare.
Abrazos, tu compa, tu camarada.

Jim Bodeen
Spring, 1997