News from the New Moon





















AFTER THE MOVIE, AFTER SKIING,
WAY AFTER THE SHERIFF DRIVES OFF,
WAITING AT NORTHTOWN, CLOSER TO THE POEM,
NEWS FROM THE NEW MOON

Just out of Naches
on to Highway 12 West,
it starts snowing hard
and the camera
is in the passenger seat
but I can’t stop
because there are skiers
behind me and the road,
the road, is already slick.

It is March!
I have my skis too
but 12 is always
an invitation to stop
and I have received
the invitation.

The lane for slow traffic
arrives like a gift from God
and I pull over
and have me two minutes
alone with that snow
before the sheriff pulls up
lights flashing,
incredulous, calling me out
in that righteous voice
about this being a traffic lane
not the shoulder of  the highway.
Can’t you see? Are you blind?

I walk back to the car
and find another place
where I take this walk
where trees are covered up
by falling snow.

This is the Naches River
just up from where it runs
into the Yakima.
I got all kinds of things
in my head besides skiing

Morning begins with the blues,
Van Morrison and John Lee Hooker
singing, Live to Suffer.
John Lee (always arriving in a woman’s voice),
called out by Van, Go see a doctor.
John Lee whispering back,
Milk, cream, alcohol.
John Lee singing, I can almost smell those TB sheets.
All of this at the kitchen table
with movie clips of a March snow storm
and misplaced photos of a pine tree in morning light.
My wife wants me to pick up bird seed
for finches at the Coop. Driving
down the avenue, a young man with a backpack
crosses the rail road tracks.
Coffee from Northtown
at a small black table for two,
me and the notebook, William Chittick’s
telling the story of Shams before he meets Rumi,
from his newly translated in my lifetime,
Autobiography of Shams-I Tabrizi:
Me and Rumi. He begins
before Shams meets Rumi—Mawlana,
that translates, Our Master,
where Shams says,
I came into this world to look around.

It is days after Brussels suicide bombers,
during the time of Islamic State fighters.
The terror network has killed
more than 160 people
in two of the continent’s capitals
in the past four months.
Republicans in America are going apeshit.

I try to tell Karen about Robert Bly
and Coleman Barks and William Chittick,
about Camille Kabir Helminski and the weeping others
gathered at the tomb of Hafiz.

Jim Bodeen
24 March 2016


            

The Native Basket

PREPARING FOR HARVEST

       --for Ralph Sampson

Klickitat basket
woven from raffia
by the women

for berry picking.
Flat bottom.
Handles for wrapping

bracken fern
to hold berries,
keeping them from spilling.
This basket

smaller than my thumb
for the altar
under the rear view mirror.

Jim Bodeen
17 March 2016

Snow Storm

“WE’RE NOT WATCHING THE SAME MOVIE”

Snow storm on Highway 12 West

Big flakes and road covered
Slick, too, camera
wants a stop—
but where?

Limited options
in the two lanes
Sunday morning
Shoulder opens—access
and pull over

Walk through ditch
when the sheriff comes
lights on—incredulous—
Don’t you see the No Parking Sign?
You’re in a Slow Traffic Lane

Jim Bodeen
13 March 2016

Elk Teeth Visions

WHAT THE ELK BONES SAY

Elk bones tell us
you don’t have to clean
every bone you find.

Some of what’s learned
from collecting bones
gets lifted up in prayer.

Use rubber gloves
if there’s soft tissue.
Left in open air
to rot’s the best,
along with burial.

Bad things to do
include boiling or bleaching.

On dry bones
my friend likes
some steel wool.

Soaking in warm water
with biological washing powder
is ok for skeletons
with soft tissue. Take care
to rinse well, or enzymes
will eat the bone.

You don’t have to preserve
every bone, every breath
emptied of self. Dry bones
emptied of function,
coming into their own.
Not voices, but ears,
pure and unobserved.

Jim Bodeen
14 March 2016


ELK TEETH VISIONS

--for Marty

Driving Highway 12-West
to the Mountain, skis on board,
deadwood above the ditch
catches my eye—something
for the bonsai trees?
And then, bleached skeleton
of an animal, just beyond fence line,
Oak Ridge Wildlife Refuge.
Those bones might have
something to say to trees.
My landscape includes
the jeweler who fashions
for me, another vision,
winter counts helping me
to keep on breathing,
taking multiple forms—
sometimes lapel pins
with elk teeth, antlers
set in silver and bronze,
maps carved
will only be seen
by the dreamers.

Jim Bodeen
7-8 March 2016

















ROOTED TRAIL MARKERS

Photos of the teeth
even with the skull
mislead my friend
until we return
for a second look.

Extraction shows
how fragile
they are,
shattering like clay
before the pliers.

Easy, easy.
Wrap the tooth
in soft cotton
using a smaller
knife, wondering

what will never
be known.
A memorial garden
of any other kind

could not contain
all that gets remembered here—
these teeth—
sentries will see to that—
Philosopher songs.

Jim Bodeen
8 March 2016







PUMICE FOR THE TINY ROOTS

QUOTING GENERAL DAVID PETRAEUS

“Employ money as a weapons system. Money can be ammunition.”
               General David Petraeus, from Matthieu Aikins,     
               “The Bidding War," The New Yorker, March 7, 2016

It works the other way too.
Withholding money.
Withheld from one’s own people
it's a revolutionary act.
An invisible bullet.
Nerve gas.

Jim Bodeen 
5 March 2016


AFTER RE-POTTING TWO YAMADORI PINES
COLLECTED FROM PINE GRASS FLATS, PLACING THEM
SECURELY INTO CHINESE CERAMIC BEFORE SPRING EQUINOX,
THE BONSAI APPRENTICE SITS, AND READS, ENCOUNTERING
THE FOLLOWING SENTENCES IN THE NEW YORKER,
FOR THE WEEK OF 7 MARCH 2016


“The battle for Aleppo, which began in 2012, has left tens of thousands of people dead
and large parts of the city depopulated.”[1]

“America’s war in Afghanistan, which is now in its fifteenth year, presents a mystery: How could so much good will have achieved so little? Congress has appropriated almost eight hundred billion dollars for military operations in Afghanistan; a hundred and thirteen billion has gone to reconstruction, more than was spent on the Marshall Plan, in postwar Europe.”[2]

“Elsewhere Anchises,/ fatherly and intent, was off in a deep green valley…
but seeing Aeneas come wading through tbe grass,…
and Aeneas reaches for his father…
Three times he tried to reach, arms around that neck…
reached for in vain,…a breeze between his hands, a dream on wings.”[3]




[1] Dexter Filkins, “A Truce in Syria,” The Talk of the Town
[2] Matthieu Aikins,“The Bidding War: How a young Afghan military contractor became spectacularly rich.”
[3] Virgil, translated, from the Latin, by Seamus Heaney, from the Aeneid. Book VI.


Jim Bodeen
4 March 2016


SOIL-MAKING WITH MY GRANDDAUGHTER

Sitting on a plastic bucket
in the gravel yard where big dozers
move rock and logs,

my granddaughter holds
the spade in a pile of pumice.
She turns the blade

emptying tiny white rock
into the screen I hold in two hands.
It looks like panning for gold

to me, too, I say, smaller grains
sifting themselves into a pile
almost like sand. The tiny

roots of the bonsai trees
like the sharp edges
of pumice. Get one more

shovel full. We’ll get out
of here before that giant scoop
lifts us up and throws us out.

Jim Bodeen
4 March 2016.