#102 Who knows what they mean
His life's last stories
Why not return to poems
Rain, ice in mountains
29 December 2018
Beyond Itself
#101 Have I sought
thee in my songs
Thought I had a date
with my wife, she went shopping
with her daughters
Jim Bodeen
28 December 2018
Apocalypse in Song
SKIING ON SOLSTICE,
practice for what’s coming.
Music for non-participants
in a participating family.
This is music: Lower lights,
Los Lonely Boys. Silent
Night, nothing else, all
bright.
High Camp Winter Solstice.
One could almost forget
why one comes. Hoarfrost
outgrowing fir needles
they came from. Yesterday’s
rain what we had then. Shine
your light on a mountain,
Song coming first, shine your
light,
from Bi-lingual Aretha--
English and Latin in her
Daddy’s
Detroit church, stone-cold,
arriving in car stereo,
elevating
sensibility. Adore,
adorare,
speaking formally.
Asking in prayer. To call to,
from orare. Ritual in song,
O come
let us adore him,
Songs in a dark time—
voiced memories, mixed.
Boys from North Dakota
summers
in choir gowns. We Three
Kings—
boys becoming, jack knives
in pockets beneath robes, tried to smoke
a rubber
cigar—it was loaded
it
exploded –if they could
hold it now—following yonder star—
director and congregation
alike
might think it wasn’t what
they heard—but they can’t,
and once you’ve heard,
seen, ejaculate dripping from
nostrils,
song gone forever, like the
boys
who will try again and again.
The little shits. Shine all
your light
on them. Go on, reclaim
the music, tonal response
to the friend, his gift of
song.
What child is this?
Laying in a manger. Jesus.
Little Lord, cooing, not
offended in the least,
preferring
even then, those boys
with jackknives, their tricks
sticking in grass beyond
and between outstretched
fingers. Spaces between notes
all is calm, calm down,
calming
cold and dark. Solstice
itself,
sun down Aretha’s excelsis
deo
Motown mine, more of this,
boys watching fire, Star
River,
we might not have been so
hard,
lower lights ourselves, not
kings,
that song our guide.
[for Rob Prout]
Jim Bodeen
22 December 2018
Yo--Dad! Is that you?
AT CHRISTMAS TIME, DAD,
when we sing carols in church,
that one line in the one song
I've been singing nearly all
of my 73 years, O come,
O come, Emmanuel,
plain chant antiphons
antiphons attached to Magnificat
at Vespers, like singing six
notes for four syllables, holding
that word, your name
folded into the middle,
Emmanuel, God Amongst
Us,
that has me calling you, remembering
too, the photos, and your passing
from a disappeared town
in rural North Dakota, all that
I've looked for, the country cemetery
with its grasses and mosquitoes,
that strange man, my grandfather
Victor who named you, I
have lived more than half my life
without you. Text from a century
gone, each of five verses opening
a name for Messiah, each day
of the week leading to Christmas.
I shall be with you
tomorrow.
Ero cras, from
original Latin text,
reverse acrostic, each chant
including an Old Testament--
Hebrew Bible name. Dad,
Father Emmanuel, walking around
in my dreams after all these years,
Tomorrow, then, old man,
tomorrow, yesterday and today.
Jim
24 December 2018
Wrapping the Light
HOLDING
THE LIGHT
WRAPPED
IN OUR HANDS
for Rob & Jackie
Set
to leave for the mountain
on
Solstice, doorbell rings—
my
friend with music
and
solstice candle—sit,
tell
me about these songs.
His
search begins in desert
heat
of summer. He listens
for
spaces, what came before
and
has roots in Texas,
making
it possible
to
reach across borders.
He
calls on Aretha
our
own me too
Lady
Day and Ella
packed
to travel
Motown
Christ
crossing
out of Pharaoh.
Aretha—our
Moses.
Star
river crossings
in
Solstice Song.
Winter
light in darkness,
visible
and moonish silver.
Music
wrapped
in
First Nation Mountain Wool,
parfleche
for the soul.
Gathered
songs,
Flash-back
Wipe Out
stopping
time vibration
living
time. I hold
his
voice as we light this candle
of
salvation that carries
him
each year
from
here to here.
I
carry his song
and
the songs of others
on
my way to the mountain
temple
at High Camp
in
the Goat Rocks
where
I sit listening
on
this waiting day.
Waiting
is what we do
to
discover time.
Setting
out, never knowing
what
I carry, what will surface,
restlessness
itself
a
form of hope and hoped-for
sufficiency
already present
in
the ringing doorbell.
Jim
Bodeen
23
December 2018
3 am Notebook
#90 What will thou offer
But I have been dreamed
But for my great toe throbbing
Coffee tucked in boat sleeve
How completely did I die
Where did I leave from leaving
Indian oars red canoe
17 December 2018
#91 One final glance
flowed
Looking at this page
A deer crosses the highway
breaks rear view mirror
Jim Bodeen
18December 2018
18December 2018
Meng Hao-jan at High Camp
SITTING WITH MENG HAO-JAN
AT HIGH CAMP SHARING FIRST
MOUNTAIN LUNCH OF SOLSTICE WEEK
"...perfecting that deathless way"
Meng
Hao-jan
wandering in your poems, Meng,
I've brought pickled herring in onions,
common bowl, sandwiches of fresh ground
peanut butter and wild clover honey. Crackers
for the herring, two oranges, an apple.
Instead of high mountain green tea
I've brought micro ground coffee
for your pleasure. You can name it
while we shell peanuts, peel oranges
releasing pungent juices into our High Camp
Temple, opening our nostrils. Sky clearing,
temperature warming, bad for snow
and if rain comes, we'll stay inside,
read your poems, laugh at the President's
trouble with concubines in the Capitol.
Oh my! The sun just broke through on Mt. Rainier!
This is break-out day. New ski boots
for old feet. Last year's muscles, practicing
packing books and keeping them dry.
I need a new case for eye glasses, will bring
another cup from home to drink from.
When I come off the mountain, I'll write
to the Viet Nam vet, New Orleans
Bayou guide, who showed us alligators
when we went looking for British Petroleum
violations. Nostalgia for polluters
in the Capitol? Let's walk out
and see if Old Snowy opens from clouds.
Jim Bodeen
17 December 2018
*
*
Children
get up early, cook noodles for lunch at High Camp. Winter snow dreaming. Five
years from Sandy Hook. That winter, too, found us in mountains. Those cries
reached us because of another fall. What shall we do? we asked ourselves.
Cloth-Goddess Mother Quilt makes a child’s vest from Chief Joseph Blanket.
Twice that now, these children, our children, snow-bound.
THE VACANT CUPS
#86 Worship with
tears, folded hands
American cans
Club members swallow weak selves
Swilling labeled beers
Jim Bodeen
14 December 2018
KAREN
NOTICING
always
surprises
her
eye
able
to
see
individual
stitches
paths
thread
follows
needle
She
takes
me
oh!
wait
to
the gate
of
no gate
knots
how
they’re
tied
one
way
on
one side
only
on
the fence
Japanese
Gardens!
I
failed
knot
tying
and
for that reason alone
never
became
a
scout
following
instead
Karen
he
surprising ways
Jim
Bodeen
12
December 2018
CRADLE SONG from the Royal British Columbia Museum, Victoria, BC Canada
CRADLE SONG
MOTHERS
AND DAUGHTERS SINGING
Karen
disappears again.
Something
from another place
has
called her. When I find her
maybe
I will find
what
she has found. This happens
when
Karen wanders
partially
lost—
I
am learning to trust it.
Here
she is in a cradle
by
herself, listening
to
singing from a cradle room.
Cradle
of Language
the
quiet sign says.
This
is Karen
in
the cradle by herself
listening
to mothers sing
to
their children, listening
to
children sing
to
their mothers
wrapped
in song-love
mother-love.
Karen never heard
her
mother sing to her. Karen,
mother
and daughter. She had
a
mother, but it wasn’t her mother—
that
mother was taken from her.
These
mothers sharing cradle songs
with
Karen, with children,
are
her sisters,
and
they are the sisters of song.
Cradled
as we are—
museum-cradled
as it were,
receiving
what has been taken away,
when
I find Karen
I
find the song others have lost
finding
the song in Karen,
song
in others, and she brings me
to
song and to others gathered singing.
They
are all here and they aren’t.
The
mothers she listens to
mother
her, as do the singing children
who
are also her mother and sisters.
When
I sit with them here
pulling
a telephone from my pocket
they
are singing to all of us.
We
listen over and over
the
singing mothers and daughters
singing
to all of us.
Jim
Bodeen
Royal
Canadian Museum
Victoria,
B.C.
Canada
Yakima,
Washington
28
November--11 December 2018
MARGINALIZED / Los Otros Marginados
#79 If not my portion
Priests knew of poets
They just didn't matter--they
had been taken out
9 December 2018
Jubilee at the Japanese Garden
Shishi Odoshi / Rocking Fountain
In Our Long Life Together
It Is A Short Time
AT
THE JAPANESE GARDENS
WITH
KAREN ON OUR GOLDEN JUBILEE
In
our long life together
it
is a short time.
There are
benches
in
the garden, but there are no benches
by
the rocking fountain,
Shishi
Odoshi, but if you follow
the
path around and above,
you
can find a place to sit
and
still hear the bamboo
hit
the stone after it empties.
Shishi
Odoshi at one time
scared
away deer and wild boar.
That
would give lovers a chance
to
sit without fear. Bamboo
fills
and empties every 12 seconds.
In
my poem I’m trying to explore
time
with my beloved. I’ve been
reading
the love poem of Rabindranath Tagore
everyday,
Gitanjali. Perhaps
you
have heard of it. I was given
a
very old copy from a man
from
Bengal, his childhood book.
In
our long life together a short time.
Words
catch me by surprise.
What
are your thoughts, Karen,
on
water fountains? Rabindranath
would
call you, Beloved,
using
formal words, Thy and Thou.
What
is a fountain for? And who?
These
lines. What does it say?
Bells,
fog. I want to hear, but I’m not
asking
you to say a thing. Not really.
I’m
sorry you’re here before they light the trees.
You
wanted to see the lights
and
I want to be here now, alone.
For
me this is perfect, just us.
There
are no busses here. No people.
We
will have two hours to ourselves.
What
experiences we bring.
They
won’t all surface now from water.
But
the pictures of our lives
will
keep arriving.
Will
this music help us to see,
or
help us to remember?
What
must happen for marriage to thrive?
Will
song offerings be enough? Or needed?
You
are the sounds of water song.
Your
quietness is a sewn quilt .
Quietness
of Karen.
Filling
every 12 seconds.
Our
long life together not very long at all.
Did
marriage scare you, Karen?
Don’t
be cowed by the fountain.
The
jarring of the bamboo on stone.
Is
this my voice entering your world?
How
does the lover enter? And the old man?
How
can a man enter the room as a song?
If
this sound would scare a deer, what about the beloved?
What
about all this quiet?
How
does one sit in time?
Does
it intimidate, cow, or scare the husband?
What
does the man want from the woman?
Tell
me about the time you were hypnotized.
Do
you enjoy these steps, this path?
So
many questions remain.
Is
sitting an achievement?
Do
you have hopes for yourself?
Harmony
doesn’t mean sameness.
You
created that landscape for me in marriage.
A
stone cairn bringing us home.
You
are beauty surrounding the beauty
you
brought into my life. Here
with
nothing to do. Or say,
if
I could be quiet. Time is short.
This
repeating fountain is a temporary machine.
Your
love bests time testing mine.
Look
around. I’m staying put.
I’ll
be right here until the bus leaves.
Jim
Bodeen
7 December 2018
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