AT THE INTERSECTION OF THE BROKEN ARROW

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 Passion fruit. Float orange
slices on top with skewers of dried fruit.

Jim Bodeen
28 November 2017



IN BELL RINGING IS THE INHERITANCE OF THE WORLD,
AN INQUIRY INTO THE PLACE AND LEGACY OF THUMB PIANOS


Music runs all of the time, everywhere,
I know that, have known it since the day of the cymbals,
so long ago, now, it comes up in the forge,
emerging from fire, before the hammer.
Along with the surprising accompaniment
with the bells, and their strange alloys,
diversity in sound survives
under the surface of the empire, ringing.

I live in the country of Ella and Miles
in the era of Bob Dylan. To be sure,
this is still whispered out of hearing
of the cognizanti writing their papers.
It's a big world, isn't it.
A big world made up of nothing but music
and all of its silences. Living
in the land of song carries with it

vast invisibilities, moving you
at all times. My country
is not a safe place. My country
is not a safe place, either.
Harmony is not sameness.
Oh, the pearl work inlay on guitars.
The resonator. The guitar is under stress
even at rest. The best ones are built

at the edge of self-destruction.
Look at the yellow and gold
about to make a match.
Watching Janis in those old clips
feet stomping the floor, her foot
separating from the heel of her shoes
to make a better hammer hitting the floor,
she is not yet 27, but she's nearing

the time of her leaving, already singing
break another little piece of my heart.
On a day like this, one is tempted
to say, I just listened to all the music
of the world. Madera de mi tierra.
Salute the four cardinal points.
Shakuhachi inseperable in its roots
from early modern Japan.

I don't have any remaining tears.
Noh masks and flutes, staging the sacred.
Kultrún drum of the Mapuche
where the healing of the machi took place,
where I was born after the reading of the urine.
So many instruments running through
walking ears, ears for the people.
Even the walking stick a drum.

Jim Bodeen

2-3 December 2017



















AT THE INTERSECTION OF THE BROKEN ARROW

Trade routes for the nomads.
Enter the people.
The Sinaguas at intersection.
Stopping here. Stopped here.
Unable to move. Staring?
I don't know what to call it.
Stated like this, I don't hear
their names until we've left.
Sinaguas. Those walking without water.
Sinaguas didn't have water, kept on the move.
Who gave them this name?
Kept moving, losing water.
Desert, even then. Not translate
at the Visitor's Center.

Karen likes the comparison charts
at the Monument Visitor Center.
What's going on in Europe
when Sycamore beams make the roof
for Montezuma's Castle 700 years ago?
Here we are during the time of preservation.

Descendants of inhabitants
know this place by other names,
Sakaytaka and Wupat'pela,
the place where step ladders go up
and long high walls. This,
an ancestral site in Valle Verde.
Hopi elders say, Parrot,
Bear, Water, Cloud, Bearstrap,
Bluebird and Spider all lived here.


















Creosote Bush. Larrea tridentata--
Among the oldest plants on earth.
Roots soaking up water,
leaves developing a coating of resin.
I put three leaves in my mouth and chew.
Not only coating my teeth in oil,
it numbs the tongue. This is the left-
over taste in barbecue, caused by fire.
O pharmaceutical wonder, treating
toothache, dandruff, colds, body odors,
chicken pox and sprains!

Sycamore Beams 700 years old
survive, strengthening the roof
at this place where ladders go up.
Public access and souvenir taking
survived into the 1950s. Star-shaped
brown leaves fall into dusk-lit sky
surrounding the giant tree, 120 feet high,
cool to touch because it's full of water.
It won't grow unless
it's nourished by creeks.

I place my notebook on the ground
with the green passport stickers



















from this place, four of them
and a page of conversation overheard
from the volunteer Ranger,
former teacher, collector of Kachina dolls,
who's read all of the Tony Hillerman books.



















The Desert Storm sticker on the tool box.
Fry Bread Power sticker on the tool box.
Outside the entrance to Montezuma's Tomb,
we talk, I served, back from dentist's,
mouth numb, sand painters, Navaho,
arms around each other, Karen
buying jewelry, photos,
we empty our wallets and fry bread's free.

Pink Jeep Tours, no deaths in 57 years.
Red sandstone of Sedona, Fault lines.
Earthquakes. Notebook doesn't work.
Give myself up to the ride. To Jeep 83.
To Pete, our guide, who says
as we climb in, This is my third day
on the job. He takes Karen's hand.
It's late afternoon, late November.
Clouds bringing out the colors,
reds, browns, deep greens from Junipers
500 years old in mid-life. Red dust,
too, from Jeeps traveling.
Pete says his medication is good,
it's working, and kicking in.
Ride the White Line Sedona YouTube
young extremists on dirt bikes,
traversing and turning. Broken Arrow Trail
126. How did we find this place?
We listened. Video camera battery
runs down. IPhone camera good
as it is, can't see it, and I scale down,
move into tiny fragments of root,
dust-red sandstone on green leaves.
Pete talks to us of Vortex Sedona.

Jim Bodeen
30 November 2017





KOKOPELLI AT THE FRY BREAD STAND

Rodney opens his trunk
to show his paint supplies,
his brushes, sands, and stones
for Kokopelli, kokopilau,
wood hump in Hopi,
symbol of fertility
through mischief,

.

















prankster, hipster.
We make a movie
right there at the Fry Bread Stand
laughing about it, EM just back
from dentist numb and laughing.
When I ask him to teach me
how to laugh like that
he bear hugs me
and shows me another stone.
We're both laughing at Karen
selecting earrings and hair accessories.
These earrings, too, will get every woman
in the village pregnant.


EXPERIENCE APPRENTICESHIP

How one works  
depends upon
how one can work.

Where one is
and resources for slowing down.
When you can go slow
and for how long.

Can you stop.
And can you stay.
How long can you wait.

Because you have to keep moving.
Movement makes it possible, too.
What can be absorbed.
Stop and go.
Set and release.
Spaces in between
where vortex goes.
Vortex swirling.

Here now
we have seven nights
with bed and kitchen.
A detachable car.
Internet connections.
Museums, pink jeeps, and guides.
National monuments with storyboards.
Exile, voluntary and involuntary.
Volunteer storytellers.
Bookstores in National Parks
with the best books.
At Montezuma's Castle,
I have a choice. Stay with Kachina dolls,
take these books, carefully assembled here,
or, from Images of America series,
expensive and superior local history?
How much energy available? To me?
I take the book on Sedona,
where we're driving to. Best history
on place I haven't been to yet.
Sandstone city named after a man's wife.
Taking it with these questions.
Will it open for me? And how?
Whose voice will it be.
In Sedona, after lunch, I try.
It doesn't work. But the jeep ride guide,
Pete, the one who says
I have new medications,
they're working and kicking in,
taking us over these rocks,
gives me the voice I need,
a half dozen details,
and a way into the book.
This is vortex for me this morning,
a swirling funnel of images
from yesterday, gathered mostly by others,
over time, thousands of years with people,
millions with the landscape,
gathered for me today
in luxury setting with the best coffee
in the world. It's all working.
Pete says this is his third day
on the job. Let's go.
Believe me. Vortex. A mass
of whirling fluid or air,
especially a whirlpool or whirlwind.
That fault line!
"We were caught in a vortex of water.
"We were in a pink jeep driving up red sandstone
"We were in a whirling vortex of smoke
Merging in traffic.
Traffic of book, ideas, voices.
Stopped in time, before time and after.
Dust from ocean floor raised by sheets
of tectonic plates into mountains
and worn down again. Cyclones,
eddies, maelstroms swirling.
Black hole of creation.
Vortex of the poem,
Ezra Pound
That one. That vortex.
A century long poem made new
triggered by a man driving a jeep.
Vortex is the art of movement itself.
A single image from ten thousand
daily frames, the swirl
of ecstatic sobriety
one man walking with one woman
over time's recording.
The practice!

Jim Bodeen
Scottsdale, AZ
30 November 2017




LINES OF 5, LINES OF 7

Creosote leaf chew
Oil-coat savoring water
Text desert tongue test

Sinagua at crossroad
Karen comparing time lines
millennium chart

Seed pods of mesquite
Forest flour ground into meal
Baked into cakes

Mesquite sap candy
Adhesive and medicine
Common cold tree part

Writing all morning
Talk with Karen day and night
Ear and eye event

Her long loneliness
When I can't access wonder
It's a public death

*

These are the women who played with courage.
These are the women. These are the ones
who explore the virtues. Deciding
is the virtue of the will
temples of spirit radiating
from bodies, merging
with the fabric of sky.

These are the men who played with blocks
These are the men. These are the ones
who explore the virtues. Love
is the virtue of the heart who live
in house wonder, wondering in hallways
of house history. These are the ones,
women and men of the imagination.

These are notebook lines

*

IN THE TIME OF DYLAN

How to read houses from paper models.
Hands on wet clay shape a new thing.
Building it. Desert shelters.
Living in the time of the cantalever.
Sheer force, moments developed
in beams. Wind and earthquake stresses.
Midpoint balance. Frames for lateral loads.

*

Go fetch me a 5-man.
5-man what?
5-man rock.
Five guys?
You and four others.

Cherokee red names the color of my life.

A friend from home sends a poem
about the dark time we're in
and it's that dark.

Where I was last night
walking on lit path
Cosanti, the thing first

Ready, fire, first word
orient house proper
5 weeks to 5 years

Pull built environs
Implode together
Each one hand thrown pot

Craftsmen on five-count
Urban sprawl offense
Only cars connect

All in the notebook
Disparate image
Breath-way desperate

House before the thing
A bell in the yard wants wind
Light-rubbed patina


Jim Bodeen
28 Nov--2 Dec 2017


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


TRANSCENDING SEDONA

Sedona may mean pride in place
Sedona. The government refused
to give T. C. Schnebly a post office
in his own name, and Sedona
was his second choice.

today, but it's also the name
of the city founder's wife,

In Sedona you can still talk
to someone who knew its first settlers.

This is Oak Creek Canyon
with its many warm shades of red rock,
come up from sand ocean bottom
to make mountains, being worn
back down to sand today.
Credit iron oxide for the beauty.

Water comes from an underground aquafer
at Grasshopper Flat. Crops of squash,
corn and beans. Picnics of fried chicken,
potato salad and home-made ice cream.

We bring Vortex with us.
Vortex, Duende, and, ListeningGod,
Ears for the people.

Vortex sites powerful and strengthening,
man/woman/balance can be located and tracked
at Red Rock Crossing, Boynton Canyon--
from Junction of Highways 179 and 89A,
drive 3.2 miles West on 89A and turn Rt.
on Dry Creek Road. People on the Path
in Sedona. Diamond signals location on map.










Documentary Video Art, School of Art, Arizona State University
Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art
30 November 2017--13 clips. 13 Films in an hour, 4 minutes each, each from larger full-length films.
Filmed with IPhone. 




READINGS FOR THE 29TH OF NOVEMBER
COMMON PRAYER POCKET EDITION
A LITURGY FOR ORDINARY RADICALS
SHANE CLAIBORNE & JONATHAN-WILSON HARTGROVE

            --for Pastors Jim Engel, Obispo Medardo Gómez y Abelina Gómez, Ron Moen, Shane Claiborne, Paul Benz, Jill Ross, Mike Scheid, Eduardo Cabrera, Ladd Bjorneby, Emilio Benitez, Esau Cuevas, Mary Bosell, Alex Schmidt, Abiut Fajardo, Carol Nelson, Carroll Hinderlie(s), pastors all, Lars Claussen, Paul Palumbo, Eliseo Pérez-Álvarez, Chris Wogaman, Caroline Hellerich, Ron Marshall, Kerry Kesey, Phil Nesvig, Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, Dean Stewart, Martin Wells, Susan Briehl, Rabbi Abraham Heschel, and especially for Pastor Harald Sigmar;

            --for Fr. Stanley Marrow, S.J., Pastor Rudolf Bultmann, Fr. Thomas Merton, Fr. John O'Riordan, Fr. Dean Brackley, S.J., Brother David Steindl-Rast, Fr. Ignacio Ellacuria, Fr. Rutilio Grande, Fr. Jon Sobrino; for the Mary Knoll Sisters of Chile and El Salvador; Sister Elizabeth, Sister Mary Ellen Robinson, SNJM, Kathleen Ross, Sisters of the Holy Name, SNJM, and Sister Roberta Rorke, Sisters of Providence, Mary Rita Rohde, SNJM, Sisters of the Holy Name of Jesus and Mary, and those classmates from SUMORE at Seattle University.

            --for those poets with begging bowls and without collars, and in other traditions, monks all; all catholic workers, inside and out.


I. PRAYERS FROM THE POCKET EDITION

"We dream of a holy village in the midst of the urban desert"

"Advent is the season when Jesus put on flesh and moved into the neighborhood."

"Becoming the answer to our prayers: A few ideas"

"3. Dismantle a bomb. Or dismantle a theological argument that dismantles bombs."

"With his coming, we learn that the most dangerous place for Christians to be is in comfort and safety...Places that are physically safe can be spiritually deadly."

To find each day's scripture readings for the morning office, consult the following table. For information regarding the person or event commemorated on a special day, consult the 'Annotated List of Special Days.' pp. 105-151.

II. MY TAKE ON THE READINGS

11-29 Dorothy Day.  Psalm 139: 10-16. Micah 7: 1-10. Mk 13: 24-31

Micah first, post-harvest, gleaning.
Woe, woe, woe. To men and MSNBC.
My desire for first fresh fruit.
In your lover's arms, don't open your mouth.

50 years ago, when I was 23, newly married,
I found William Stringfellow's book
in Jerroll's bookstore in Ellensburg,
My people is the enemy.

Salmo 139: 10-16. Lo contrario!

Aun allí, tu mano me guiaria
ni las tinieblas serían oscuras para ti,
y aun la noche sería clara como el día.
Sabe todo de mi, Señor.
Aprendí esto como joven
en el estado de Dakota Norte
en mi pueblo. Supiste todo
de mi, incluyendo que yo
identicaba con los indígenas.

Begin by reading the wrong verse
in Mark. Go back to it this morning,
perhaps rushing now. Do I have
to do my lesson over? Fig branches
in spring. Sap running. Time--time
is urgent. It is when you're hungry.
If you're out in the cold
chances your neighbor knows this,
are high. You got it.
You're the neighbor.
What you gonna do, bro?

III. DOROTHY DAY AND THE ANGELS AT THE SPA

            8 Nov 1897--29 Nov1980

Entertaining Angels, title of the Paulist film,
doesn't Paul show up in the unexpected places?
An image from a friend in a moment of doubt,
You never know when you're entertaining
an angel. When you're working at this level
like Miss Day, you're blind to elevated talk.
It must come as epiphany, lifting and sustaining.
My take: she didn't see herself this way.

This film can be rented at Amazon
immediately for two dollars, 97 cents,
and for seven days, it's mine. Karen
says she's going to the fabric shop
to look for material. Epigraph on black
screen opens the movie: I wanted the abundant
life. I didn't have the slightest idea how to find it.
Moira Kelly plays Dorothy Day. 1996 movie.
Film opens with young black woman
screaming in chains--jail cell or mental hospital--
can't tell, Day with her, Camel cigarettes
and a Zippo lighter--I can still hear the click
from mine--set in NYC, 1963, year
I graduate from high school. Martin Sheen
plays Peter Maurin, who (I find out later,
Googling, wrote Easy Essays in verse,
If we are crazy, then it is because we refuse
to be crazy in the same way that the world is crazy.)

Eugene O'Neill, all the artists, right there.
Alcohol and cigarettes. Artists looking for more.
Day writing, wanting that. The unprinted stories,
looking the other way. Love at the beach,
and a daughter, Tamar--there's a good
Old Testament name. Tamar won't go away,
and she won't get off Scot-free. Children
off the obsessed may learn a better way
but they'll pay a price. Day write.
(After watching the movie, wondering about Tamar,
I discover her youngest child, Kate Hennessey,
has this year--2017--published her book,
The World Will Be Saved by Beauty.)
Day's granddaughter Kate says,
All of  us are inside Catholic Workers,
outside the Church. Inside/Outside.
I think Buddhists the only ones to get this.
Whatever we'll have, we'll have,
all the great talk, passing the nun on a bicycle.
looking back at the old man, startled.
Shucking oysters. Cutting the hands
looking for pearls, what else?
Cynicism. The poor people--
they seem to like the church.
How the best stuff cuts both ways.
To be an honest woman.
Who says I'm not honest?

We have a good life, the three of us.
Why isn't that enough?
Who are you?
I am a Catholic worker.
Who are you?
You drink, you wet your pants, you vomit.
How could anyone love you?
I am not who I thought I was.
You look awful. That word. Awful.

I've been thinking about who God
wants me to be in a very lonely life.

(Title of her autobiography.
How faithful we are
serving the poor.)

Peter Maurin will lose the language
that I find online,
that I'll end with--
some unfinished business
for me at home--

The coat that hangs in your closet
belongs to the poor.

Jim Bodeen
29 November--1 December 2017

















ON PRESERVING MUSIC

Music moves people
through trade, slavery,
beyond colonies,

war, and the tourists.
Musical cultures
travel the Silk Road,

Atlantic slave trade.
You will hear music,
here, this place rattles.

Agbe bead rattle
yellow and red beads
Hands across stretched-skin

finger pathway strings,
Ancient harmony
Sounds cross thousand years

old rural folk song
Chinese zither propped
on player's body

Rubbing sorghum stick
Shang Dynasty Bells
tuned careful shaping

Mallet on upturned
mouths. Stone, drum, panpipe
on oracle bones

Inscribed pictographs
Hear, pattern, stomach,
Sound, color, ink, brush,

Two tones ringing bells
Buried bells, stone chimes
Rising dragons engraved

Dark opera stars
Stone, brush, ink
Hand Perfume River

Contemplating sound
Write poems, listen
ring bells, man on horse

rides along river
Immortal lovers
on ceramic pot

Walk on yellow leaves
Panpipe bird bones
in place of people
Preserving music

Jim Bodeen
1-6 December 2017



AT THE DESERT BOTANICAL GARDENS
20 ANGELS LIGHTING CANDLES
WHILE KAREN AND I WALK
LONG LOVE THROUGH TIME

Full Moon Luminaria
Yo Yo Ma strings sent our way
Churros dripping brown sugar

Jim Bodeen
2 December 2017


PORTRAITS FROM THE HEARD MUSEUM

            i.  T. C. CANNON

Two Spec5 soldiers in green fatigues
drinking beer in Vietnam. Looks like
a Coors can in the one man's hand--the one
with the big shades from the time, light

enough lens to make eye contact.
Screaming Eagles, Airborne, sleeves
rolled to the elbow. Feathers in their hair,
warriors, is one of them you, TC? The older

man on the left with his right arm
on the shoulder of the younger one in front.
Hand draped casual, intimate, covering
the eagle. 67-68. Tet. Those two Bronze

Stars. I was there at the 85th Evac.
Hundreds of your guys went through us
all shot up. Almost 40 years after your crash,
reading your obituary, canonized by

Sally Monahan Zogry. We were at the Heard,
my wife and I, all afternoon. I didn't know.
We were being ushered out by guards,
when I saw something of yours, turned

abruptly. There it was. Your great work,
collected. Your statement from1974:
I must dwell in places where I am
always in awe of God and mortal men.

















      ii.  AWA TSIREH [CAT TAIL BIRD]

Seldom seen work in metal, silver, copper,
aluminum. Alfonso Roybal, water colorist
painter. Pueblo buffalo hunter with bow.
White gloves and moccasins, Buffalo head

dress. Dancing skirt. The rattles. Maybe
the greatest turkey ever painted. Red goblet,
black wing feathers designed to strut--
a good thing for self-taught artists anywhere,

the great artist caught in between cultures
at Garden of the Gods Trading Post--Colorado's
largest Indian store.  Michoacán-born
Charles Strausenback builds a studio

and brought in artists. Awa Tsireh
came as early as 1930. My parents
brought me here as a child, crying,
believing I could be a warrior, maybe

a scout on a pony, if  I could hold
that pipe and bring it to my mouth--
if I could wear those feathers,
I might be a chief. If I could wrap

myself in that Indian blanket
surely I would be warm. These
possibilities surface again looking
at the conch belt under glass.

Images in lithograph on walls
stare at me, an old man today.
I peer through the stereoscope
I may have looked through

as a boy. The post cards
in old touring cars among red rocks.
Frog, dragonflies, turtle form conchos.
Buckle in the shape of a frog.


       iii. MARIA MONTOYA MARTINEZ

My wife points to the family tree where she finds
Maria Martinez. San Ildefonso Pueblo,
Where Water Cuts Through
Po-Woh-Geh-Owingeh, in Tewa.

San Ildefonso is the home of potter
Maria Martinez. My old professor,
godfather of our twin daughters, led us
to her decades ago, showed us these

black pots. From a small classroom
a generation of artists emerges. In finished
pottery, a glossy, melted appearance
only used for decoration on the pots,

emerges. Smothering the fire, traps
smoke that deposits itself in clay,
creating shades to gunmetal black,
and highly burnished, black on black.


     iv.  PABLITA VELARDE'S STUDIO

Recreated right here in the museum.
How it is now. An occupied room
for the artist. Born on Santa Clara Pueblo
near Española, NM, at fourteen accepted

to Dorothy Dunn's Santa Fe Studio Art School
at Santa Fe Indian school, flat painting,
and water colors. There she is, life-size
portrait in cotton print dress, pencil

in right hand, left elbow on table,
hand raised, looking at me through
large clear glasses, smiling, Katsina
dolls behind her on shelves. Her table

extends into the studio, her small
electric sewing machine in front of her,
another table in front of that one
with paints and brushes, unfinished

painting. Off to the side, the 10-inch
(maybe) black and white television
from the 1950s. On the wall behind me
on viewing side of studio, Pablita's

timeline. In earth paintings
she used rock and mineral ground
into metate and mano powder
made into paint. From this emerges

swimming turtles and Koosa Clowns,
mischief makers dancing and cavorting
during  breaks at Pueblo dances.
Pablita's smile on the clowns?

She doesn't answer that question.
Here's a cubist Koosa, mouth rosy
and red and smiling from experiment,
eye lashes long and dark.


v. HOW IS IT NOW

How it is now. Occupied room
not set aside for the artist with pen and paint.
How it is now. Cowboy Indian Warrior painter,
for starters. American contradiction, history giving him

what he needed to break free. Notebook
and sketchbook. Art that doesn't separate.
Expression of breath.
He took his trained eye to war.

At the front before he went to the front.
Walking into the museum, sign overhead,
We are on a path together, at the same time,
generations traveling together. My past

and future are at my side; you are never
too far from your past or future. From
Kathy Sanchez, San Ildefonso Tewa.
Population 524 in the last census;

from Eight Northern Pueblos. Pueblo
people asking throughout, How should
we be? How should we treat each other?
How will we bless and be blessed?

Indigenous Evolution stops me
going in and coming out. Twenty feet
of fence fronted by adobe, clay and glass,
colors of the Southwest. Tony Jojola,

Isleta and Rosemary Lonewolf:
The fence speaks to the endurance
of our culture, going through boundaries.
Visitors--those looking--are invited

to leave stereotypes behind and enter.
Here are the indigenous--T.C. Cannon's
Letters from Vietnam, speaking
of a thoughtful God. Here is full exposure.

Exposure to the sun. One who stood there.
Who wore Army fatigues. Resonating
with all that's personal--distinct
and blended, an established limitless future.

Jim Bodeen
29 November--5 December,2017
Phoenix, Az--Yakima, Wa

WALKING THROUGH SO MANY INSTRUMENTS

Timbila (xylophone), Valhila now played to accompany sung poetry, Lokangabara three-stringed fiddle, bowel lute, Sanga, Chisanji, Likembe, thumb piano, lamellaphones; preferred
instrument of story tellers, historians, and ritual experts throughout Africa, Lifela, narrative songs of migrant miners, Hosho, rattle, Ngoma, goblet drum, Ngoma, goblet drum Ngombi, arched harp, Lalo Guerero & Sonorra, Double bells, whistles, Tom Lyre, bardic poetry & praise, Side-blown trumpet, wood and cow pelt, Kurbi, harp, Ma'luf, Tunisia's oldest instrument Bendir, single-headed frame drum, Guniibi, all-night ceremonies, placate spirits Ardin, harp, lute, gourd,  lemon wood, hide, iron,Tidinit, plucked lute, wood animal skin, Darbukka, arabic poetry, Karkabat, clappers, iron, leather, Vul, walking stick, but in dances, stamped percussively, Court music, song and praise poetry, Mwami (Tutsi kings, bardic poet-singers, Bowl, spoons, objects, bows and flutes, One-stringed fiddle, A snake can kill an antelope but may be conquered by a bird, Lyaaly ddurdun and isagja dundru, double-handed hourglass drum, wood, fabric, animal skin, Atungblan drum, diviners, ritual experts, Provers, riddles, folk tales, dance, Yes, war and national pride, too, "And this is a museum, it's not a concert hall," the elder woman says to her grandchildren, Finacon, stories of everyday life spoken rhyme and rhythm rituals, Bracelets as rattles, Kora,Skin, Griots, professional musicians, praise singers, historians, traditionally griots performing for chiefs, patrons, politicians, A couple more, Komusu, praying for alms Shakuhachi, inseperable from early modern Japan, Noh maskes, flutes, Staging the Sacred, Kultrún, Mapuche drum, Maderas de mi tierra, Saluting the four cardinal points, Guitarrón, Jarana, Bajo Sexto, Vihuela, Tololoche, Marímbula, Teponaztli, Basic Beat Fish                                                               shapedguiro with striker,




TRAVELING WITH KAREN

At an auction event for La Casa Hogar,
a program for empowering women
in Yakima, Washington, where my wife, Karen
serves on the Board of Directors,

I bid on a week’s stay
in a luxury resort in Scottsdale/Phoenix.
The Auctioneer points at me, and says, Sold.
Elation with a let-down, followed by a melt-down.

What will I do in a luxury resort?
I’ll be with Karen.
I’ll see what I can see, find out what I can find out.
We’ll look for our better heart.

Jim Bodeen
8 December 2017

 Karen Bodeen


No comments:

Post a Comment