HUMILITY BEFORE THE GATES OF BEAUTY



















WALKING COWICHE CANYON LATE OCTOBER

15 minutes, 2 songs from home.
Soundtrack from Vietnam the film--
                        after 50 years 
            by Ken Burns/Lynn Novick

Ray Charles remembering America
            how they sang it
                        as kids in school

You are my sunshine   sunshine now
            cool
                        soulshine

Second song a bridge
            Simon & Garfunkel
that water
                        still in trouble


*

Kick off shoes             in socks
            Boots in back              reading
Gary Snyder's poem
            from mid-August
Sourdough Mountain Lookout
            Snyder forgetting
                        what he's read

now in his late 80s

            20 years
after he wrote that poem
                        maybe more
unbound         
            poet     unbound poem

his friends in cities
            his poem resonating
                        pulling on boots

            Each next song
            a buddy
            reaching out

*

Folded,            blank sheet
            in pocket         handy

light pack
            with notebook
and Alexie's mother's
                        passing
            book,
                        gifted/grifted
            me
by Inklings book store owner

            Stopping
                        at first bench
notebook        
                        Sherman
talking             listening

            you don't have to say

I haven't been able
            to open that book
                        more than a month
                        now--
saying
            I had other things
            to read--
                        which is true
Everything good         between us      good
           
I became
                        an inkling
                        when
                        I came home from war






















*

ENTRANCES TO HOLY PLACES
MOST OFTEN HUMBLE--OFTEN NASTY
REFLECTING NEGLECT, AND--WELL--
CULTURAL BLINDNESS AND AMNESIA,
EVEN WITH SONGBIRDS, WATER RUNNING MUSIC

Bleached grasses against sun-warmed stone
changes things in a hurry. Time short,
October-pressed, late fall light
guarantees color and shadow
something to savor in every image
slow the camera down
            and--

            Look!

When I say, North Dakota,
it's not a good or bad thing,
it's everything--so much gold
in water and fallen leaves.


















Stop and sit by Ron Riehl's basalt
stone. Helen's memorial
midpoint in this canyon hike.
Ten years gone. Ron's dress shirts,

satin, silk. elegant, six of them
from Helen, given to me
for the rare occasion
of vestments--impeccably

cared for, starched formal
and Shakespearean,
like formal titles
set above the poem

a carved typeface, the seraph
itself an artist's signature.
Nature conservancy in a shirt,
remembers this, and more

as trail accesses water
where my dogs drank, cooled
themselves, those two black labs,
Lacy Dreamwalker, Sister Sadie Sadie.

This trail turns around.
Sitting on fallen basalt,
apple, and Mexican cookies,
las canastas, with a drop

of strawberry jam in center.
Walking back the afternoon sun
causes aspen leaves to fall
in front of feet on trail.

Jim Bodeen
26 October 2017









LOVE POEM

LOVE POEM

            for Karen

Did you leave the door open?
she asks. Are you hot?
Consider the first question.
Isn't that my work!

Jim Bodeen
24 October 2017

Those damn red threads!


TAILINGS FROM CHILDHOOD

Still in Dakota, a boy,
a Yankee fan, cutting up
my baseball cards
pasting them cut-out,
trophies from cigar boxes
(cards treasured by collectors)
showed itself as dreambody,

leading to five scrapbooks
of Yankee lore (including
ads of each player smoking
Camel cigarettes) during
5 championships in the 50s.
These lead to my only lasting
work, daily discipline in notebooks.

Jim Bodeen
14 October 2017

THE DAILY BRUISE

THE DAILY BRUISE

Work brings duende the teacher said
when I asked him about Lorca,
but when the only
work is waiting? Mischief
pulls the stool out from under me
again and again. Walking
into fragments. Ouch.
Shin guards protect baseball players.
This struggle with the duende
is the only thing that matters.

Jim Bodeen
14 October 2017

THE JOURNAL


THE JOURNAL #1

What to put in and what to leave out
is a conceit of editors. Geologists
know there is always more missing
to the record than rock columns can show.
Your cover will be blown
regardless of your skills.
Sometimes it's best to let people
know who you are before you begin.
Pull the car over and park.
Get out your little hammer
and tap away. You know
how much depends upon luck.
You don't always know
how lucky you are.

Jim Bodeen
12 October 2017



Storypath/Cuentocamino: AUTUMN DAYS

Storypath/Cuentocamino: AUTUMN DAYS: SEPTEMBER MEDITATIONS, THE MANUSCRIPT It is enough to sit with great trees and wonder, wild with wonder from a wilder God and an earli...

AFTER REXROTH, AGAIN

AFTER REXROTH'S TRANSLATION OF TU FU

Baseball playoffs and Hurricanes
have me pushing the back-and-forth
button on the television after dinner.
I look up and away from the screen
at the walls where my wife
hung her landscape quilt
of the Oregon Coast earlier
in the day, sun-streaming
threaded surf
made from cheesecloth
crashing cotton shoreline.

Jim Bodeen
7 October 2017

BICYCLING

RECALLING THE REPETITIONS OF PEDDLING,
A GOOD RIDE, RECOILING AND RECALL


Back from ride. Drops in the eyes.
Eyes good. Karen back from coffee.
A showing with her quilt. Healthy eyes.
My ride goes up Washington Ave
to the end. Johnny Wright singing Hello Vietnam.
I pull into an orchard between pears and apples,
glean an apple from the ground, Honey Crisp?,
sweet. Crunchy. Eating with one hand on bars
until I stop at light and turn on to 72d,
a 50-year old song booming
Or freedom will start slipping through our hands
fires we don't put out will bigger burn,
riding the sidewalk. This stretch full
of dumpsters with grass clippings,
this being Tuesday. It's quite a weave,
but walk free of glass. Last week one
handle bar clips a mailbox and I end up
in a private drive, but on my feet.
West Valley Library's between two lights
and I pull into bike rack and lock up.
Carrying a back pack just in case.
Check out new books. Pull out What the Hell happened?
Election of 2016, by the Rolling Stone editor,
walk to call number 759, to see if the Wyeth
books have come in. They haven't.
But this: 12 Centuries of Japanese Imperial Art,
carry it to the reading section, find this poem,
anonymous calligraphy, Let our Way, poetry
That we have rightly received
From the age of the gods
Not want in this world!
I take pictures with my IPhone
and when I get home find I don't have
some info in book I need. Sloppy work.
I'll pay for that and never know when!
Replacing both books on shelves
I'm back on my bike, peddling
uphill to light at Summitview,
shifting down into first gear
on middle sprocket, avoiding goatheads
as I wobble. It's mainly downhill from here,
fast all the way home, but lots of glass,
why is that? glass I know is here,
but fail to anticipate every time.
Zig-zag some, then safe past 64th
one mile to on flat paved shoulder
back to Washington and home.
Bump-stocks in Las Vegas bounce.
Like a song of repetition.
Bouncing. What gets easier comes
with leg strength and peddling.
Familiarity of the common.
Words in journals banging,
this ride ends at home with my
index finger on the automatic garage door opener.

Jim Bodeen
4-5 October 2017

Infinite Flow Wheel Chair Ballet

September Meditation #15



On the lawn in Ashland, Infinite Flow, the Wheelchair Ballet--bringing all this movement, asking these questions without actually asking them. So confusing, so wonder-making. One gets so dizzy.

All that has been painted over

NAGGING QUESTIONS

       for J. H.

How did you get here? the writer
asks the interviewer. They're talking
about aps. Siri. Navigators.
Camped outside of a theatre town
in Oregon, my wife gives me direction,
but even she's plugged in, relaying
information about the locals.
We're camped off Indian Road
following the green sign,
but Google's voice photographs
an earlier planet, advising a left
off Dead Indian Road.
Looking closer at the green sign,
come closer to local history
by noting what's been painted
over in off-color green.
How did you get here?

Jim Bodeen
28 September 2017

Elevation

ELEVATION

The way the voice came off the page
in letters never left him. That line of Whitman's
he loved so much, O what is it
makes me tremble so at voices,
resurfaced again. Nothing like it
could be found in so many poems.
Seemingly unrelated things,
and then the Journal. He'd kept
one with discipline four decades.
Where ever he looked, it spoke.

Jim Bodeen
29 September 2017