LEARNING THE ROPES, APRIENIENDO LAS CUERDAS
—for Katie Lucille Pappas
Then someone came and tied rope to rope,
cord to cord, string to string, and drew
the water and drank. Then, everyone began to draw the water and drink.
—The Murmuring Deep, Havivah Gottlieb Zornberg
You ask me how it started. Well, it was
just a phone call to ask Miguelito to dinner.
—Learning the Ropes, Bill Ransom
I. CROSSING WATER
I’ve told this story before.
When I came home from Vietnam,
university students ask two questions:
Did
you kill any babies? Got any dope?
The drama teacher takes me into the hall
and shows me how to enter a room.
Call this one drawing water.
These are the dark sounds of Cante Jondo
in the lands of Lorca and Machado.
Of Paz, Guadalupe and Sor Juana.
Malinche and Cervantes are your grandparents.
Mine, too.
Grandpa, what did you do in the
war
It may be that your classmates
don’t want to give up
their cultural secrets.
Don’t be misled.
You have your own practice.
Your own agenda.
II. PARALLEL INQUISITIONS
Inheriting silence with its brutal weight
in the shadow of Lorca’s ravine.
Maybe go the other way
and take a bus to Ronda. Camarón de la Isla,
greatest of all. Flamenco singers. Carrying
a nickname! Given to him by an uncle!
His name José Monje Cruz.
The universal wound, lucha con el duende.
Duende wounds. Without the possibility
of death, no duende, the wound,
Camarón de la Isla. ¡Escuchiste!
Always open. Malinche and Cervantes.
A bit of the pocho in me.
Who marries who is the labyrinth.
Inner ear walking like we walked in Yakima
after picking peaches in orchard solitude.
Violent shadows alchemized.
Rilke arrives in Ronda stuck,
and he found it—inspiration. When the bus
driver opens the door
it’s your walk.
III. ALGUNAS NOTAS
No tiene ni pies ni cabeza
No me cuadras
Mucho ruido y pocas nueces
Pura boca
Solo tiene suelto
Coger el ritmo
Hacerme con el mundillo
Quedate con el cambio
Dar una de cal y otra de arena
Novatada, no estas super verde
Lanzar la piedra y esconder la mano.
A mi no vaciles
Corta el rollo
Basta ya
No me comas la oreja
Espabilla.
Espabilla y haz tu parte
IV. THE TRIGGER FINGER HAS A LISTENING EYE
He collided with the place, his encounter his.
The prayer in darkness being the essential prayer.
Spain asks only this, make fire.
Raw danger’s sacred breath. And breathing.
Dancing connections human, word-raw.
So raucous, purity becoming us.
This act of living, our full color defiance
between Guadalupe and Malinche.
She collided too. Which she me?
Taking poems to the prison
the psychologist said,
It takes 26 days for them to get real.
Anybody can pretend for 26 days.
But there’s something gonna happen tomorrow.
V. LLEVANDO MACHADO EN LA MOCHILA
WALKING THROUGH SPAIN,
THE GRANDDAUGHTER BECOMES AN ABRECAMINOS
Caminante, no hay camino
Se hace camino al andar
Antonio Machado
Machado in your backback.
Su mochila. The things you carry,
walking. Your walk. Wonder
in the long night burning every map.
And Lorca’s Duende—not only
the death drive, but the pathway to healing.
All Cante Jondo is flamenco,
but not all flamenco is Cante Jondo.
You’re walking in Málaga.
Find the Café de Chinitas, Lorca quotations
on the walls. Take pictures,
send some. The cross-shaped alley way
built for 17th Century nuns.
You’re in a temple that looks like a classroom
with scuffed-up floors and bad light.
Everybody’s on the road to find out--
everybody is.
Machado’s walk makes you wonder--
make you new? What’s
around the next corner? Through
that door. When your Uncle Tim
was 15, he and I flew to Yucatán
and worked our way north
through Chiapas on bus. Boarding
a shuttle in San Cristóbal De Las Casas,
I looked into eyes of campesinos
heading straight to asparagus fields.
Hey, Gringo, I have three wives.
Una aquí, y dos en Tejas!
--Lo siento, Amigo. Ud tiene
muchas problemas. Only so many
ways to say it. Years
later on graduation night, dressed-up,
a Mexican student,
calls me out, smiling, ‘Qué
Muñeca! One way again—
—Muñeco!
Katie—you ride the bus
with the chaos of the road
and your mother’s courage.
You’re 20. Your mom, 22,
seriously ill, alone in Morelia,
hospital phone calls, limited Spanish,
--Ella
necesita operación para salvar
su vida. Your mother hangs up the phone,
walks herself into surgery.
You don’t have to do these things,
but you carry them in your being.
The darkest rooms are full of light.
CODA
There’s room in your backpack.
Remember that stone you brought me
from Arizona that looked like
the Sangre de Cristo mountains.
I cut a wood round, polished
and hand-rubbed for the patina.
Suiseki sensei calls it a daiza.
Where your stone rests in the garden.
We’ll look at it next year
when you return.
What I did is what I do in these poems.
Love you—Gpa.
Jim Bodeen
16-21 September 2026
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