KARL BARTH AT THE SPA

EASTER SERMON OF KARL BARTH
TALKING WITH PRISONERS
LUXURY HOTEL READING

These cool sheets on the Heavenly Bed
with all these pillows
in white pillow cases
propping me up as I pray.

Pray and read. At prayer.
We know well are plight and Thou
knowest it better. Wherever
people are gathered today.

Because I live, you will live also
John's Gospel says. ¿y todavía
no me conoces? El que me a visto
a mi, a visto el Padre. I'm stuffed,

just back from barbecue,
pulled pork shoulder and brisket--
and I didn't eat too much! Finished
my cole slaw and baked beans!

Oh, those burnt ends!
Barth delivers the captives in God's name,
not because we enjoy dealing with God,
not because we believe he's easy to follow--

no, none of that! Not because of promotion.
I'm on vacation and I live a very different life.
I know what is at stake here.
My life is at stake. My very life.

Like the man in the starched shirt says,
People die for these white sheets
on the Heavenly Bed. What more
could we do to have you stay with us?

Jim Bodeen
29 November 2017

Shards of Memory




HIKING BROWN'S RANCH TRAIL LATE NOVEMBER

Leaving my small town on a small plane
in the middle of the night, I'm reminded
what Emily Dickinson said about the mind,
how it needs what it can't know--

more than it needs any Aha! Take me there!
I tell the bus driver. Take me where news
I can't remember can't run intersections,
where everything from now is old. Older,

he asks, than Brown's Ranch settled
by E. O. Brown, a Scottsdale entrepreneur,
early part of last century? He ran thousands
head of cattle on 44000 acres. Before that?

Before that they were unwanted newcomers
to Yavapai and Apache. They came early 1600s,
hunting, occasionally raiding Pima settlements.
Desert farming Hohokam settled in valleys,

about 1300s. Before them, agriculture
became important about 1000 Common Era.
Earliest evidence places nomadic bands
on Brown's Ranch 9000 years ago.

Yavapai and Apache resistance
led to Army forts and reservations.
How far towards oblivion do you seek?
Tell me about Sonoran Desert mercies,

toward drought and famine. OK,
we'll pass under power lines before you walk.
The sun comes up over Tom's Thumb
and backlights ocatillo for the camera.

This is early light dramatic shadow.
Here, the beauty of oblivion, not knowing.
Exhaustion of trail or beauty? Water thirst.
Another bus ride back. A woman slakes fear-

thirst mixing what renews for one like me.
Organic frozen fruit chunks, clear cider--
sparkling--and Passionfruit. Float orange
slices on top with skewers of dried fruit.

Jim Bodeen
28 November 2017


SHARDS OF MEMORY

When they all came,
they slept in sleeping bags,
they slept in the desert,
they build shelter from materials
that manipulated visions.
It was a manipulation
by nature of the self.
Coyotes, bobcats, javelinas.
No straight walls,
no smooth walls,
no right angles.

Always stories,
always stories.
Flat sides of rocks
and no place to sit.
Public side, private side.

Jim Bodeen
18 November 2017






Saying what must be saved

WHAT RAY CARVER SAID

            I'm searching for phrases
            Bob Dylan

We save so many things Ray
said, but we never met. He said,
Use it up, going from short stories
to poems, until he gave the page

all he had. I stumbled
into the Oregon town he was born in
once coming back from the ocean.
We pulled off to have a sandwich,

snapped some pics at the memorial,
went into the small library
and took his books off the shelf
and read poems for an hour. The Dylan

epigraph comes from Tempest,
the song, Just After Midnight,
and Dylan's punching in,
going to work. Just after

he sings Searching for phrases,
describing his process of writing,
he sings, to sing your praises.
My take on this is the muse.

That you --you and I--we live,
Zev, in the era of Dylan,
and we know that.
Knowing that pretty much

does us in, finishes us.
We're so thankful for this,
we're speechless. The others
at the table, we owe them

the kindness we owe family.
With that one exception we're allowed.
I don't have to spell it out.
We don't have anything to add.

Jim 
27 Nov 2017 /Scottsdale, AZ



¿Cómo está su vida litúrgico?

PURSLANE AS SINGLE-ROOTED PARABLE

Don Eduardo y Luz walk us to the
community garden, late September
in Sacramento, where we pick
two kinds of eggplant, berenjena,
a small handful of serranos,
two California chiles, and I grab
the weed I've pulled for half a century in Yakima--
purslane with the tiny yellow flowers--
Jim, Jim, Jim, esta es yerba buena,
la verdolaga. Usamos en ensalada.
Sabroso. I'm wearing a Yerba Buena gorra
from San Francisco. Luz steams
the verdulaga before dinner, adding
it with beets to the salad. Part
of the resistance in her city,
Teología de la liberación es parte
de los raices de Pastor Eduardo.
Leo Los Salmos en nuestra recamarra
antes de dormir. En busqueda
de la felicidad. Gritos y clamores
de protesta. Gritos contra la injustia social.
Temas de Luz y Don Eduardo.
At breakfast Don Eduardo sings
the entire liturgy for me in Spanish.
El libro sobre los salmos está llamandome.
How is your liturgical life?
¿Cómo está su vida litúrgico?

Jim Bodeen
22 November 2017





AFTER-THANKSGIVING HIKE

















HIKING COWICHE CANYON WITH GRANDKIDS
THE DAY AFTER THANKSGIVING

All stones basalt, and I fear
we won't find much. Sammie
calls them meatball stones
and I call her metaphor

a find. Dheezus finds
a 5-pounder with a waterfall
down the center
we stash on the trail

so she doesn't have
to pack it both ways.
The girls smell
sage walking

through it, picking
leaves, rubbing them
into hair, stuffing
pockets. Sammie

sees money
building itself
into the horizon,
calls it out,

Show-off mansions.
We're walking the Loop
to Cowiche Creek
stopping where out

croppings create
photo perches
children knew
before they were born.

The girls remember
their hike on Mt. Rainier
this summer, when
they refused the trail

because feet threatened
mating grasshoppers.
Sammie finds a
fist-sized heart-shaped

stone with a lake in it.
Dheezus curls her body
into a ledge. We stop
on a sitting stone

large enough
for the three of us
and shell peanuts
discussing how plants grow.

Jim Bodeen
25 November 2017






Sky Canyon opens for children the way abundance shows itself in dreams. Oh, Jeez, we say, waking. Ears for the people is not everyone's crystal cup. How do we know the things we know before we were born? This is the mystery of children, and my option. It strikes me this morning that this was my mother's option also. At the time I thought it was a safe place to land.



THANKSGIVING, 2017







If you're going to San Francisco
wear a flower








THE POEM THAT WISHES
FOR ITSELF AN ETERNITY

            for Karen on our 49th Anniversary

Karen, you've been with me
every day of the poem.
Before you, seeking the poem,
the poem is all I wanted,
I wanted to be a poet
but didn't know
what a poem was
or how to make one.
When you came
I knew it was you
knowing a poem
was in order, in fact,
an order, and a poem
was ordered. When
you came, the poem
came with you,
you were the poem
but I didn't know,
I knew but didn't know
knowing I didn't.
You embodied me
without my knowing.
I never made
what I found in you
finding out in time.
I never made you,
finding out in time
that you made me.

Love, Jim
23 November 2017

ELEGY WITH SUPREME LOVE







from painting by Rex DeLoney

















NIGHT MOUNTAIN SKY SONG

Coltrane on a rainy morning.
Chasing Train.
A love Supreme. Acknowledgment.
Acknowledging. That big,

the music. Mark Karn
carrying music. Carries
Crazy Horse
calling up Neil Young,
Christ hunter Orion

calling on His Father.
Big love. Big love.
Bonhoeffer big.
Life Together. That one.

Joined by the stars.
One who wants fellowship
without solitude plunges
What we can't claim
right here in our hands.

Before the baptismal font
leaving worship
arms in wonder-reach
Christ secure.

A love supreme
A love supreme
A love supreme
A love supreme

Jim Bodeen

10 November 2017

Storypath/Cuentocamino: Larry Harwood Interview and Native Photos with Jim...

Storypath/Cuentocamino: Larry Harwood Interview and Native Photos with Jim...: Larry Harwood, 85, shows up at a book signing in Yakima, for Crazy Horse, the book by William Matson and the Edward Clown family. Harwood...

Larry Harwood Interview and Native Photos with Jim Bodeen







Larry Harwood, 85, shows up at a book signing in Yakima, for Crazy Horse, the book by William Matson and the Edward Clown family. Harwood has a box of photos and his grandfather's story--plus a story of his own. Jim Bodeen interviews and films him in his home.

Crazy Horse Cowiche Walk

Following the presentation of the book, Crazy Horse, The Lakota Warrior's Life & Legacy: The Edward Clown Family, as told to William B. Matson at Inklings Bookstore, Yakima, WA on 15 Nov 2017, Jim Bodeen walks Cowiche Canyon with the book, carrying the voices of Floyd Clown, Sr., Douglas War Eagle, William B. Matson, and Yellow Wash, Davis Washines.

After Martin Luther King's Murder: Letter from Vietnam


















READING LETTERS FROM THE VIET NAM WAR
FROM 50 YEARS AGO BETWEEN KAREN AND I,
I COME ACROSS THE LETTER TO KAREN, WRITTEN
THE DAY AFTER MARTIN LUTHER KING'S ASSASSINATION

Opening these letters I didn't know what I'd find.
This one, beginning 6 Apr 68, from a stenographer's
notebook, page torn from ring wire, inserted
upside down into typewriter, Hi love. Anything

here? I'm wondering, the date not triggering
the war mirroring ours, in America. I write
from the 85th Evacuation Hospital,
Qui Nhon, South China Sea: After Tet,

when we had our turn in Hell. Language
of the times, to Karen: ...terrible about
Martin Luther King. Last night I sat in
with four colored guys and on the radio

we listened to the eulogies and sorrow
expressed concerning the assassination.
These guys were hurt pretty hard and they
are not going to take it lying down. They

are young and millitant and deserve
the rights that we have. They are going
to riot all over this summer. I don't know
how bad that it will be. I want you

to be very careful. We can do more
for civil rights by just being ourselves
to all of the people that we meet.
That's what the letter says. No changes

in spelling or punctuation. That's it.
Who I was at 22. In June, Bobby Kennedy
will be shot as we prepare to rotate home.
What's still to come

walking into November, 1967.
Not as many folks around as I ask
my question: Where were you in 1968?
Believe me, politicians emptying

the treasure chest for the powerful
know their numbers. So many touchstones.
I cite twocca every chance I get: Gary Snyder
in Mountains and Rivers Forever, this:

Then the white man will be gone.
His follow-up. White man is not
a racial designation, but a name
for a certain set of mind--when

we all become born-again natives
of Turtle Island. James Baldwin
before and after: No label, no slogan,
no skin color...The Price of the Ticket.

As long as you think you're white,
I'm going to be forced to think I'm black.
It is the unalterable truth. All men are brothers.
A painting of Coltrane hangs in my room,

inspired by A Love Supreme, painted
by the artist Rex DeLoney, given to me
when he went home to Little Rock.
A love supreme. Acknowledge it,

bright paint. When my friend dies,
what I send his son. When I'm alone,
what I listen to at night. Returning, then,
some of us didn't go back to that country.

Jim Bodeen
15 November 2017



HIKING COWICHE REMEMBERING DAK TO


















HIKING NORTHERN LOOP TRAIL
COWICHE CANYON, 14 NOVEMBER 2017

I. Ears for What's Coming

During the day-to-day life,
not just hours on the trail
solid with your trekking poles,
There ain't no man righteous,
no not one, Dylan live
from 1979, in my head
heading out. Sunny,
cold and windy. Photograph
sage on top before descending
to Cowiche Creek. Intersecting
creek and trail in canyon,
eat just-picked Yakima apple
down to seed caves, then eat
the seeds, all of it, watching
two hawks circling sky
shelling peanuts into paper bag
before starting back up.

A Merton quote from one friend
exploring Chuang Tzu's letter to Wu:
One thing is necessary. Merton quoting,
What is your original face before you were born?
And then an advent poem from an old pastor friend,
with a line from Barth,  with Jesus saying
the divine life is all, Without you
I do not care to be the Son of God.

Brilliant Barth. My defensive question
surfacing between steps, Did Barth
make it easier for professional clergy
to get rid of Bultmann? I don't know.
I call the hike a Van Walk for Morrison,
then after I unpack my lunch on a rock
above the canyon, change it, now
Van Sandwich. Sending an image
on my camera phone to a friend,
he writes back, Van Louse Stairway.
This every day music every day.
Below this rock
the bridge is out.
Counting syllables
fresh ground peanut butter
and apricot jam sandwich.


II. 50 Years Ago This Day : The Battle of Dak To

I've been incountry
at the 85th Evac Hospital
3 months,
a quarter of a tour, 90 days
to prepare for November
and the 33-day battle of Dak To.
Torn-up eyes and uniforms
mirroring what can't be said
coming off stretcher after stretcher
from chopper and planes.

Intimate stuff. Kon Tum Province
in the Central Highlands
in a series of never-ending battles.
Initiated again, emotionally shut-down
nurses lead medical teams
through acts of love, passion
unleashed and without measure.
Training and practice
enters collective primitive.
3 Nov 23 Nov, 1967 then, starting then.

Intimate in the
Central Highlands of South Vietnam.
The 110-hour fight for Hill 875.
Border battles to distract American
and South Vietnamese forces away from cities
in preparation for the Tet Offensive.
Today it can be seen on the Internet.
Search and destroy.
4th Division where my friend was
and the 173d Airborne Brigade--
Westy's fire brigade all shot up.
Intense fighting until the NVA
seemingly disappeared.
On one day November 23,
the day I would be married
the following year,
107 dead, 282 wounded.

The 4th Division too, my best friend's location.
So many different casualty counts--
here's one--208 dead, 645 wounded from the 173d.
Friendly fire alone killed 41 GIs on November 19th.
Earle Jackson, 173d medic who served on Hill 875:
"There is something gut-wrenching
about severely wounded men
that I will never forget.
It is that most become delirious and almost
always cry to their mothers."
All of this coming through us in men's eyes,
dead trees embedded in fear-filled faces,
torn and bloodied fragments of uniforms,
battle images that will make our country
one of the casualties. Wild terrain,
half the mosquitoes in the world
and a million leeches on sharp ridges covered with double
and sometimes triple canopy jungle

Dak To Vietnam photos,
Trees without limbs.
Trunks of a holocaust, a memorial in themselves.
The black and white photos in the museum in Saigon.
The dead journalists. Ho Chi Minh City.
Reliable ferocity. Dante's 3d Circle of Hell.
Karen takes me back for our 40th Anniversary
ten years ago today, 50 years ago, too, from today.

These are facts, and some of them, partially mine,
partly collective, adhering to each of us,
counting 50 years from that day to this one,
on a hike, eating apples. The love those nurses
gave to those incredibly young men
passed through us that November,
some like me, accessing possibility
beyond anything we had known.
Cost and blessing in clothes giving
themselves away each day
from hospital wards to sky flights,
up the Northern Loop Trail
of Cowiche Canyon.

Jim Bodeen
14-15 November 2017



BIG ENOUGH EARS























GET UP TO PEE

Syllables in his head
Child given a word
Late night wait chimes ring

Turns on the night light
Sleep gets its retribution
Let's give it a day

Document ice-stored
in winter fragments silk-wrapped
Raging Amos flipping dimes

Ears for what's coming

Jim Bodeen
13 November 2017




3 AM

FRAGMENTED

War knew about me
What I knew wasn't enough
Loose shards sorrow cut


Jim Bodeen
Veteran's Day
11 November 2017


That Year, This Year

A PSALM FOR THE YEAR
WE CAME FROM IN THE YEAR
WE ARRIVE AT AGAIN

Waiting outside my grand daughter's
working in the psalter, I fail to ring
the doorbell to find she's already inside.
I don't recommend this to anyone.
These psalms in English and Spanish,
two translations. I say this to give
myself a laugh. 1968 or 2017?
Trick or treat. The Lord's enemies
will be like the beauty of the fields--
las flores silvestres--they will vanish
like smoke--como el humo. Psalm 37.
My thumb is out, a hitch hiker,
calling on the Lord, It's me, It's me.


Love, Jim
7 November 2017

IN PRAISE OF PASSING SHOWERS

IN PRAISE OF PASSING SHOWERS
for Pastor Phil Nesvig

He was reading those psalms.
He had just sent a note to his friend,
the pastor. Responding, the pastor asked,
What do you mean? The mess you’ve made
of your life in the pew? He hadn’t remembered
saying that, couldn’t deny it now. The pastor had
sent him a passage from Luther: Let us recall our former
misery and the darkness—gather in the harvest…God’s word
is like a passing shower of rain which does not return. Salmo 8:
that was his psalm for today, his meditation he would carry.
O Señor, has puesto tu gloria sobre los cielos. Por causa
de tus adversaries has hecho que brote la alabanza
de labios de los pequeñitos para silenciar al enemigo.
He found translation in English not to take him far
enough, his own poverty necessitated translation
one step more re-moved: Su dominio, la aves
del cielo, y todo lo que surca los senderos
del mar. All that swim the paths of the sea.
Would his friend think that strange?
Could it be that the suffering
in the pew came from
places never felt
from pulpit
or choir?

Jim Bodeen
3 November 2017



The Nudge

THE STEADY CRUNCH OF JUSTICE

After leaves fall, mulching North Park,
preparing a feast for trees on All Soul's Day,
I walk the yard somewhere
between chance and accident,
guided to Psalms 9 and 10,
study notes informing me,
One poem, here, combined,
a Hebrew acrostic. A friend
nudges me: it is a good thing
when the world rebukes you
for this walk. This day
recognizing Christ-lit indigenous.
Ni para siempre perderá
la esperanza del pobre.
The rebuke--se fortaleza--
it strenghens your dormant hope.

Jim Bodeen
2 November 2017

YOUR CLEAR EPIPHANY

DARK MORNING BEFORE FRIENDS

Your beautiful walk
your every day way

Jim Bodeen
6 November 2017


IMPARTIAL IN THEIR CRUELTIES

THE MPs WEAR THE UNIFORM, IMPARTIAL IN THEIR CRUELTIES

The new online dictionaries help so much with etymologies. But more, they open the words to others with similar questions. You find out what others are reading, and which words they're stumbling over. Lately it's been the big words, old timers, returning as big waves. Words like "revanche," words like "rebuke." They take him to old songs, too. He hears Mahalia, "I've been 'buked and I've been scorned..." These words carry such big hope for the world.

After Harvest, After the days of the dead, trees visit the cemeteries at night. It's story time.

The poet has a pass to leave the base. He has been given permission to walk into the emotional landscape. He must remember to return at the stated time. The thing is, there's no clock where he's going. How will he know? He huddles near the children. They are watching the cat as he throws the mouse in the air, playing with it.

Jim Bodeen
3 November 2017

The Petitions and the Silences

MAN RAKING LEAVES

Does the music begin when he
softens the hearts of the men by the gate?
Or does it begin when he turns around
to see if she follows? Breathing
through agony will give you
all you're seeking but resolution.
Passing through towns he stops
at diners, on the interstate
he pulls off in wheat fields.
He only listens. He makes no calls.
These he has given up.
The word, once blessed, abhorrent.
He looks around.
He makes so many stops.

Jim Bodeen
31 October 2017
MAN RAKING LEAVES

Does the music begin when he
softens the hearts of the men by the gate?
Or does it begin when he turns around
to see if she follows? Breathing
through agony will give you
all you're seeking but resolution.
Passing through towns he stops
at diners, on the interstate
he pulls off in wheat fields.
He only listens. He makes no calls.
These he has given up.
The word, once blessed, abhorrent.
He looks around.
He makes so many stops.

Jim Bodeen
31 October 2017

THE 46TH PSALM ON REFORMATION SUNDAY

In the 7th inning of the 5th game
we anticipate each pitch, secretly
pleased with our physical
conditioning. Aren't we attending?
We can hold this tension.
This is the song of post-moderns.
This side sings bold face.
The other side will sing italics.
This is the song of call and response
in our time. God is our refuge,
but he still hasn't had his turn.
We will not fear, though earth be moved.
Baseball is the game played without a clock.
We want something to happen soon.

Jim Bodeen
29 October 2017


HOW THE BLOSSOM OPENS THE PSALM

HARVEST SONG [Psalm 118]

Let the psalm be heard from hop vines
climbing towards September sun
at Cornerstone Ranch where blossoms
ripen for brewing beer. Two friends
at odds stir the mash. What is
the Latin word for brewing?
Bob Marley sings. Here
is the Valley I call home,
my son the one who dries
the flower that flavors the beer.
Tendrils curl towards all
that has been rejected.
Sew the hops into canvas bales.
This is the parable of the fermenting stone.

Jim Bodeen
29 October 2017


The Old Pastor and the Rabbi

THE WORD DERIVED FROM THE HEBREW
HEI LAMED-KEF, MEANING TO GO, TO WALK

The old pastor poems.
That would be one way to look at it now.
The way he handed me his library
one book at a time. Those prophets
make sense to me, I understand them,
I said to him, and he handed me
Volumes I and II, by Abraham Heschel.
Was the cover blue, a dark blue
in that traditional cloth binding
of the early 60s? Walking
across Edmund Pettis Bridge
the Rabbi felt his legs were praying.

Jim Bodeen
28 October 2017