Storypath/Cuentocamino:

IN THE PEW READING MERTON WHILE BELL RINGERS PRACTICE RINGING

IN THE PEW, READING MERTON

WHILE BELL RINGERS PRACTICE RINGING

BEFORE WORSHIP, THE SMART PHONE

IN MY POCKET CALLS ME,

And when the phone call comes,

my friend has been pulled over by police

without a license. Would I come

and get him? He’s close. It’s Palm Sunday.

Jesus on a donkey.

And when the grace is gone

we no longer seem to reflect on it.

His car is in the church parking lot now.

He’s walking. And my car is on the curb

where he was stopped. This is what

I know of what’s real and what’s not.

He sits beside me in the pew

and I hand him back his keys.

I thought I had resolved the problem.

I guess not. I do not know who is

speaking these words. Him or me.

For any problem you got. Here we go.

Two choirs surround me singing.

Two choirs singing and ringing.

Jim Bodeen

Palm Sunday, 2026

NOTE TO PASTOR JILL ROSS WITNESSING AT THE BORDER

We lift up our eyes to You in heaven,

O God of eternity, wishing we were poorer,

more silent and more mortified.

Thomas Merton, Dialogues with Silence

Happy Birthday, Pastor Jill.

Thank you for praying for me.

You’ve always been a monk like that, praying for others.

You make things easier.

And Merton.

When I found him in 1968, just back from Vietnam,

I didn’t know his body was already gone.

I wouldn’t know for certain

until after I was sure he’d gotten

that photograph from the other side

of the mountain.

For those looking for that photograph

is something I pray for. I was reading Four Quartets

with Brother David in the garden.

I wanted to say these things without using words.

I didn’t know how. All I had was Happy Birth Day

Two words. Hyphenated. I didn’t know about the bombs

when I went to bed. Lucky for Merton.

I thought maybe you could feel my breathing.

Or maybe, maybe, you knew I was walking

by hearing my footsteps.

Jim

2 March 2026

LOVE IN 2026 AND BEYOND

for Barb and Cragg

My hope is in what the eye has never seen.

Thomas Merton, Dialogue with Silence

So many flowers.

So much paint.

So much material to work with.

Silk butterflies from Japan.

So many ways to remember

Harriet Powers. So much gathered

testimony. So many threads.

Barb, Karen, Harriet.

So many mothers of beauty.

The yellow iris bulb is a world.

Jim

5 March 2026

THE GIFT OF LUCILLE CLIFTON

FOR PASTOR ANN MURPHY

She has the voice poets and pastors wish they had.

Doesn’t fall for seduction.

Born with 12 fingers and 12 toes,

revelation accompanies her birth.

Lucille Clifton appears in 1936

like Rosalee Tompkins on this post card.

She writes, feathers waving as we dance

towards Jesus. She’s with Phillis Wheatley,

who stamps these lines valid. Phillis

who gets her name from the slave ship Phillis.

Lucy, light, Luz Bel. My mother’s name.

Every time I read her poems I get an education.

She knows what women know. Knows men.

Knows these too are your children,

this too is your child. She knew early

what this was about.

She is always dangerous, Lucille Clifton.

Jim Bodeen

African-American History Month, 2026

POST SCRIPT FOR WIL HAYGOOD

This was Vietnam. This was the war

where it was time to speak one’s mind.

Wil Haygood, Black Struggle in Vietnam and at Home

Mail had already been stopped when LBJ

landed at Cam Ranh Bay, Christmas, 1967.

Thank you for War Within A War, Wil Haygood.

I’m at the 85^th Evac Hospital, Qui Nhon.

No mail. We’re together, talking shit.

We’re together 4 April 68, too. Dap.

My sign says, This way home. I’m

with the brothers, listening. It’s Tet.

If we survive this, they’ll send us back to the States.

Martin. Then Kennedy. Your credibility

dapping. What’s goin’ on Lou Rauls?

We’re evacuating 700 Gi’s a month.

Everything but the music. OK.

I’d say, Everything and the music.

634-5789, Wilson Pickett. Call me,

it’s a song. I’ve danced on the porch

at Motown. It’s closed on Friday nights.

A boy, relocated from North Dakota.

Your p.s. I hear your eyes on Hegseth.

Jim Bodeen

5 March 2026

REGARDING THE MIRACLE QUILTS OF GEE'S BEND

REGARDING THE MIRACLE QUILTS OF GEE’S BEND

“Strike the rock and water will come out of it.”

Exodus 17: 6

Moses would love the quilts from Gee’s Bend.

The commemorative stamps would would startle and silence,

he might drop the stone. He’d look at the meteor shower

in Harriet Power’s quilt, and call it scripture.

Two surviving quilts proclaiming,

Nothing is missing, calling for a third

tablet of stone. He’d wonder what else he missed

lost in God’s clouds. Gee’s Bend, The Pettway Plantation.

A husband’s work clothes cut out and sewn

for God’s glory. Go down, Moses. Strike

the rock and water will come. All right,

Moses, and that water came. Grant you that.

But Egypt, now. Tears in the water.

Quilts for God come from God.

And that Middle Passage, Moses.

Call that Middle Passage what it is.

Quilts from Gee’s Bend testify, but

call Egypt by its real name.

Jim Bodeen

9 March 2026

FRIDAY, 6 MARCH 2026, BEGINNING A NEW NOTEBOOK

An art teacher, Jennie Smith, saw Harriet Powers' quilt at a cotton fair, and sought her out. Ms. Powers then, described each block to Smith, and because of that, we have Harriet Powers' words available to us today. This story documents how her grave site was rediscovered, and a new headstone dedicated. Harriet Powers's quilts are "documents in fabric." If you follow to her portrait, notice how she's dressed. She is "dressed up." And her clothes are also documents. That apron--look at it It's a uniform and a story. For instance, ask an indigenous woman about her apron, a Mexican woman about her "delantal." Its power and place. Look at the thread and imagery of the apron Harriet Powers wears. And in this image, below: Look at the falling stars recorded in cloth from 19 May 1780.

Harriet Powers lives now on the U. S. Commemorative Postal Stamp issued 28 February 2026, the last day of African American History month. Two of her quilts survive and can be seen in museums. Her story no longer confines itself to her quilts. I, too, survive as a fabric block of sorts. It is the first weekof March and my country has entered a new war, and the white chalk of days continues. On Thursdays I stand with others on a street corner for 30-minutes with my cardboard sign, shaped by taking apart a card box box. I have taken lines from Ukrainian poets and written them on the cardboard with different colored marking pens. I find the making of the signs a meditation, as well as a form of petitionary prayer.

My wife, Karen, is a quilter and fabric artist. She’s sewing today with others. I helped load her car with her sewing machine and materials. I put her fold-up wagon in the trunk to carry her machine. She’s working with little houses cut out on fabric. Each house is on a quilting square, or block, they call them. I made her a honey and peanut butter sandwich with some grapes for her lunch, and she sat down with me to eat her yogurt before leaving to quilt. She brought in two squares for me to look at. The houses have two windows, or two doors, they could be either, couldn’t they? I ask her. Yes, I guess they could. I intended them as windows, though. Flowers accompany either of them, be they doors or windows. They’re so colorful. They could be curtains, too! Yes. They could be.

She drove off a few minutes ago. She’ll be gone most of the day, cutting out little houses on fabric, creating a neighborhood of fabric houses blocked out on cotton. I can only see so far, and can’t imagine what else will happen during this day of documentation, Of creation. I have a couple of hours myself to do with as I like. I began a new notebook this morning before walking, so I have that set up before me, and I hope to write a couple of post card poems, attaching different panels from Harriet Powers’ quilt newly created in the form of stamps. I will take them to the Post Office, where the postal clerk will provide me with a hand cancellation across the stamp in red ink. I find this last step wonderful. It makes me a bit dizzy. All of this, to tell the truth, makes me dizzy—more than dizzy.

Jim Bodeen

6 March 2026