SUITE FOR ANTHONY HEILBUT

SUITE FOR ANTHONY HEILBUT


1. FOR ANGELS STANDING AT THE FOUR CORNERS

“For me, that includes the many millions of ruined gay lives…”
      --Anthony Heilbut, Harper’s Magazine, February, 2017

I’m not spread across four States
hands in Colorado and New Mexico
with feet next door in Arizona and Utah.
No angel, either. Eyes strapped
to John on Patmos. I saw this,
reading the story in Harper’s.
I saw this. The number
that no man could number.
Revelations 7:9. Black gay corpses
outnumbering four thousand lynchings.
Let me try this in Spanish: Era
tan grande que nadie podía contarla.
Suffering in the pew comes down to this.
I saw this number.



II. ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THOMAS A. DORSEY

These songs, Downward Road, Creep Along Moses,
didn't come to me through car radio,
but the counsel in the North Dakota living room
before television. Not these songs exactly,
Tennessee Ernie Ford and Sons of the Pioneers.
My friend's Mom dies at 97, and I turn to Mavis Staples.
I'm trying to cross the Red Sea myself,
As is my habit, I'm walking the other way.
Still trying to have one more word with Pharaoh.
Precious Lord enters me before memory.
Tommy Dorsey was a trombone player.
I'm halfway through my life before I know.
When I hear who he was, what he lost,
who could I turn to but his song?


III. DOORWAY INTO THE DREAMING

Completing the unfinished
circle arriving at the sound
present from the start,
can it be remembered
how the story was read
that first time, catching on
by fragments in the middle,
dozing, then waking,
magazine still in hand,
asking, How did I get here?

Finding then the many rivers
and the long pull through January
cold with more snow
more shoveling,
and the always present,
and the always present,
hidden layer of ice,

snow, like waves,
drifting beyond the yard
entering the senses
and all the songs
for grandchildren,
all that traveling on skis
into the wilderness
to preserve their imaginations,
and the music-filled meantime drives,
into the mountain drives, new sounds
herring-bone steps into snow pleasure
snow cover, not snow cover-up
out of the suburbs of America.


IV. TOWARDS THE SURFACE

It coincided.
It did. It began
as coincidence,
social work,

and the burr
burrowing under the skin
all of it coming back
looking for all intents
and purposes
like anger


V. VERIFICATION

Re-reading, finding
the verse in Revelations,
after the fact. Fact-first,
in greater number
than the hangings,
the number that cannot
be counted, not connecting,
not yet, epiphany
like a tic in someone's breathing
as terror returns,
the revelation,
number that cannot
be counted, Biblical,
Revelations 7: 9,
that no man can count,
still not hearing it,
no man,
in the title,
not seeing it.


VI. AND THEN THE WORK, AND THE READING,
THE ALL AVAILABLE ACCESSIBLE MOUNTAIN,
GOSPEL ALWAYS PROCLAIMS GOOD NEWS

Where is God? I can't tell you
the El Salvadoran priest says,
but I can tell you this,
Not in the Empire. Holy smokes,

that this should surface
at a time like this, closing
The Gospel Sound:
Good News and Bad Times,

singing behind the beat.
First asking Karen,
How do you talk about back beat?
trying to understand how one sings

behind the beat. Are they the same?
Asking without a word of warning.


VII.  LETTER TO ANTHONY HEILBUT
INTERRUPTED CALL AND RESPONSE,
BEGINNINGS IN NOTEBOOK AND BOOK MARGINS
AFTER FIFTY YEARS OF LISTENING

Wheat still lodged itself in Jean pockets
from North Dakota when we found ourselves
in Seattle during the 50s. I was ten,
strange to every boy on the block,
selling brooms made by the blind.
Last night, reading in bed,
trying to get through The Gospel Life
after spending a back-and-forth afternoon
between your book and YouTube,
time collapsing. Gospel is
the music of grownups...bad times
will come in new ways. Thanks.
And thanks to Harper's.
To your covers all around.
At the paper shack down the street
from our house, smoking,
before starting our routes, an older brother of a friend,
played us the new song, What'd I say?
He was in Demolay. Some of these guys
might have made it to Harvard.
They were never spoken of where I came from.
Now 15, without a license, downtown Seattle,
alone in Birdland, I hear Ray Charles.
I see him.
He carries me through high school,
Modern Sounds in Country Music.
a working boy. The Elvis Christmas Album
with Precious Lord, I Believe, and.......

When I'd knew your story was calling the shots
I order the Dorsey songs, Gospel Sounds,
this time a man in his 70s,
and your big book on eros, literature and Thomas Mann.
20+some years ago at Garrett Seminary
reading the Hebrew Bible, I needed that Joseph story.
In Yakima we're part of the immigrant community,
but gospel flows through the Yakima River, too.
(Oleta Adams comes from the city school where I worked.
A sophomore girl came into class early each week
and sang My Eyes Are on the Sparrow for me,
because I was her teacher. If I learned late,
I knew early I was a blessed man.)
This morning, I too, spend a weekend with the Campbells--
thanks--and finish with your story on Aretha
from five years ago. By applying her ancestors'
sensibility to the American Songbook--
You're a churchwrecker yourself, Anhony Heilbut.

50 years ago this month, Army Sergeant in Panama,
I receive orders for Viet Nam. Med Evac.                        
In the summer of love, Karen and I spend a month
listening to Van Morrison, the Brown-Eyed Girl.
85th Evac Hospital, Qui Nhon, below Da Nang
on the South China Sea. We send all those kids home.
Tet started in January and lasted until
bombing stopped in July. All that music.
Enough about me. A few more things
about song and witness.
A few things about your Thomas Mann.


VIII. AFTER COMING HOME FROM THE BONSAI MEETING
DIPPING THE BUCKET INTO THE BIG BOOK

"Gypsies, Hungarians, prostitutes, homosexuals, vagrants, and exiles--in many cultures, these appellations are coterminous: any reader of Mann knows that these men are his brothers."
            Thomas Mann, Eros & Literature, Anthony Heilbut

Now that that's out of the way.

Sunny with a breeze, Wind picks up
driving me to another part of the yard.
Back from the mountain, mountain-held,
pruners in my hand,  holster
buckled on my belt. Add children

to that list up top. And old people.
C.S. Lewis reappears arguing with Eliot.
Midnight and moonlight made for other worlds.
Sehnuscht leaves the artist exhausted, disgraced.
He can never enjoy his passions.

Nothing cryptic about erectile tissue.
Never made it through Magic Mountain.
Music in the mail. Where is the music coming from?
Back from bonsai, Japanese black pine potted.
Fingers trace literature's roots in akadama .

Flattened by numbers that can't be counted.

Decades ago Jean Burden insisting,
the poet crosses the abyss without a net.
Here you name the surface.
Surface is abyss.
Only that which exhausts us.

I didn't make it through Magic Mountain
but I read every page of Eros and Literature.


Jim Bodeen
9 February, March, 7 April 2017




Stir it Up

THE READING AFTER EATING OATMEAL WITH KAREN

            "Be worthy of your food." Thich Nhat Hanh

Cutting a banana into Quaker Oats
as it boils, I place
a handful of frozen blueberries
into each of the empty bowls
and ask Karen if she'll stir
while I excuse myself, saying,
"That's my bowl on the left,
it has a few more berries."
When I return, Karen
has added some raisons,
"Is that OK? she asks,
adding, "We're out of brown sugar."
"We'll have enriched oatmeal,"
I say, reaching in the cupboard
for maple syrup. How could I
ever be worthy of Karen?
Remembering the oats and berries,
made half-dizzy by one spoonful
of this world's sweetness.

Jim Bodeen
26 April 2017

FROM The Bob Moses Poems

FROM THE BOB MOSES POEMS

Walking the living room,
I know, I've been here before.
Walking the yard, watching
buds burst in dis-belief--
bonsai firs, collected
from the wild. But back
to Bob Moses. In 1976,
he returned to the States
after ten years in exile.
Work built around voting,
not sit-ins. Robert Parris
when his name set fires.
Jesus of the whole project.
The tree planted by water.
Your 8th grade algebra teacher.

Jim Bodeen





AFTER VISITING THE CHILDREN'S CEMETERY

AFTER VISITING THE CHILDREN'S CEMETERY
ON EASTER SUNDAY, ACCOMPANYING GRANDCHILDREN,
MY GRANDDAUGHTER DHEEZUS SAYS,


I don't want to be buried.
I want to be launched to the sun.

Jim Bodeen
Easter, 2017

UPON DROPPING THE BONSAI BOOK

UPON DROPPING THE BONSAI BOOK
IN THE BOWL OF BREAKFAST CEREAL

Missed pleasures


Jim Bodeen
14 April 2017

Don't Let Your Baby Down

DON'T LET YOUR BABY DOWN

Looking for my hat before I go out.
Walking around the living room.
Finding it on my head.

Sounds of the garbage truck
starting and stopping.
Picking up dumpsters.
Hydrolic sounds. The lifting.
Pushing down the contents
into the truck bed. My dumpster
filled with rose canes
from pruning. Some
garbage, too.
Kitchen stuff.

The dumpster lid reads,
Garbage Only.
Each week I check to see
if they've emptied my dumpster
or left it because of some infraction
of mine, following the wrong rules--

for disobeying the lid.

Last night ICE agents rounded up
78 persons, mostly from Mexico
for deportation.

Eight minutes in the notebook.
90th day of the year.

Remember the impermanence.

When we can envision the death
of one we love, we are able to let go
of anger and reproachfulness.

We learn to love in a sweeter way
with those we love, to look after them
and make them happy.

Granola, blueberries, a broken-up half
of a chocolate chip cookie in my cereal.
Senator Chuck Schumer from New York--
his favorite food is breakfast cereal.
I read that in the New Yorker recently
in an article by Elizabeth Kolbert,
who has that book on extinctions.

The point? My cereal is delicious,
but I wanted oatmeal for Karen and I.
Almost drove to the store.
Arguing with myself that way.

Remember the assembly today? Karen asks.

Oh yeah, it's at the top of my schedule.

Your grand kids are Students of the Month.

Willie Nelson and Emmy Lou Harris sing
a slow, sad song, Highway 9, This old house
here by the store. Or, is it, by the spring?

Karen asks, Who's singing with Willie Nelson?

Emmy Lou Harris.

                                    Oh,
she says, opening the fridge. Don't put
something round on the top shelf.
Two limes rolled out and hit me.

I read these lines to Karen as she
eats her toast at the table where I'm writing.

All because of me, she says, laughing.

Well, lots, yes, I say looking again at the page.

I don't really want to empty the dishwasher
I say to myself, but if I do, I'll get
to listen to two or three more songs.
That's what happens.
Leonard Cohen and Jennifer Warnes,
one right after the other on the CD
Kevin made for me, For Jim in Mid-March.

There is still time to pot those black pines.
But now John Prine is singing Storm Windows.


Jim Bodeen
31 March 2017

Wiping Down the Skis with Flannel Cloths

LAST DAY ON THE MOUNTAIN
WITH GRAND KIDS

This afternoon we put skis away.
We wipe skis clean with flannel cloth.
The four of them, and me.
Yesterday's sunshine and cold
on memory's fresh face, burnished.
This year they found their way
without me. Mountain maps,
back packs, packed lunches,
re-uniting at High Camp,
taking care of the other, and time.
We don't put away time.
Time is the mountain we ski.
Time is what opens without talk.

Jim Bodeen
4 April 2017