IT DEPENDS ON THE GEOLOGIST
Dead ice, Kate says.
Dead ice?
It’s not moving.
It’s only called
a glacier if it’s moving.
Is that calving then,
those fallen ones?
Jim Bodeen
24 July 2024
THE ODD VOCATION OF A FOLLOWER
THE ODD VOCATION OF A FOLLOWER
Blind Bartimaeus
Almost eleven pm
When vision arrives
Void of all content
Yesterday is left behind
For a way of life
Jim Bodeen
21 July 2024
SATURDAY MORNING MID-JULY
SATURDAY MORNING, MID-JULY
Late start, and back
from half-mile walk
and it’s hot quick
slice of melon
in my mouth
screen door behind me
when Sammie calls
Gpa do you have any eggs
I’m in the middle
of making waffles
How many do you need
Two
Are you
coming to get them
Yes
I tell this to Karen just
like this when
she comes out
to the porch with
her coffee and two
biscottis adding
I didn’t say
the grocery store
is closer than
Gpa’s
Jim Bodeen
13 July 2024
MOUNTAIN REPORT
MOUNTAIN REPORT
for Pastor Phil, Pastor Audrey, Doctor Karen, Physic’s daughter Gretchen,
for walker Myron, 83, on the trail to the Fire Lookout, who asked the question
Unless the ecstasy be general.
Doctor William Carlos Williams
from The Mind’s Games
I belong to the North Dakota diaspora
of the 1950s--
but we
were thrown out
before
it all began--
and before the oil
What is this diaspora?
Poets, pastors, physicians,
the physics student
the one
who
asks
The poets a feckless bunch
The pastors a feeble bunch
And then
others
on this mountain,
walking
Jim Bodeen
10-12 July 2024
AND SHE COMES TO SIT WITH ME CARRYING TOAST AND ORANGE JUICE
AND SHE COMES TO SIT WITH ME
CARRYING TOAST AND ORANGE JUICE
Back and forth cradling
bound books, changing shade
trees as sun moves
through the garden
our granddaughter comes
by early returning her grandmother’s
forgotten hat after
independence day finds
me eating cherries
spitting seeds in a cup drinking
iced coffee far from
last night’s fireworks
her grandma smiles
beneath her hat
I’m reading poems
under the birch tree
Jim Bodeen
5 July 2024
HONOR THE JURORS
HONOR THE JURORS
"For some reason everything about him was white: his
new birch-bark shoes had not had time to grow dark..."
--On Bachus Iron Belly, Doctor Zhivago
Angels in China! Can’t you hear I’m talking to you?
Old man, Doctor Zhivago
No jury duty today.
Walk the half-mile block.
Turn fountain on.
The tiniest bugs and spiders
are attracted to the white pages
of a book. Whether it’s morning
or afternoon, sitting under
trees in the garden, a small
spider will catch my eye,
walking its many steps,
drawing my attention
away from words
towards ink and the peculiar
architecture of letters.
The tiny spider is only
interested in the light.
It cannot be otherwise.
Jim Bodeen
1-2 July 2024
AT THE END OF THE WEEK, YOU WONDER ABOUT US
AT THE END OF THE WEEK
You wonder about us
Karen had come to bed
with news of the fires, the numbers
of people left with nothing, saying,
We’ll go as soon as we can
go through our clothes, maybe tomorrow.
Summer fires leave families
on the reservation without a toothbrush.
Homes are gone.
Just north of the res another fire breaks out
beside the fireworks stand. Red and blue lights
flashing with the flames. Platoons
of men in hard hats and hoses.
The long house in Toppenish is locked up.
At the health clinic a woman gives us directions
to the community center in White Swan.
They ask where we are from
when we sign in, mother, daughter, boy friend,
grateful clothes are sized, too. Perfect,
Perfect—what we need now, broom,
mops, Lysol, Windex, wipes.
We are so far from the news
Everything is news.
They ask us if we want to stay for lunch.
A display behind glass at the health center
catches my eye. June is Men’s month.
Footballs and hats in front of these stats:
Men more than 17% likely than women
to have cancer, 50% more likely to have hearing loss,
50% more likely than women to die of heart disease--
and yet men 50% less likely to seek preventative care.
Women outnumber men 8 to 1 by age of 100.
There’s a bicycle chain here. Condoms
in all colors, paint guns for war games,
a yellow softball. More numbers:
75% of suicides are by men,
Smokers die ten years earlier than non-smokers,
eat fruit and vegetables, get 150 minutes
of exercise a week. Wear blue for your son, husband,
friend on June 16, Men’s Month. Bundled
sage to clear the air.
The community center
for the Yakama Nation’s located
at the White Swan Ranger Station..
Signs tell people information they need.
How many in the family. Ages. Sizes.
The area they’re from.
Karen wants to keep going.
We stop in front of St. Mary’s Catholic Church.
At Signal Creek Road. Established 1889.
Ft. Simcoe’s another ten miles out.
My friend Cy started teaching at Ft. Simcoe.
Job training then, state park now.
I get out of the car and photograph
peeling paint of the old wagon,
the rusting wheels, sunshine and shadows
underneath coming from afternoon sun.
The U.S. Army arrives in 1856.
Mool -Mool Spring Village sprung here
from bubbling waters before Lewis and Clark.
We’ll return to White Swan
to eat at the Hub, the only place to eat,
across from the high school. School’s
out for summer, but it’s full of young people
happy to be here, see friends.
We split a hamburger, called The Charger--
looking at photos on walls--
100 years old we’ve never seen.
The Indian School, Strive to Achieve,
and more than a dozen pictures of Celilo Falls.
Black and White. First parsonage
of the Methodist Church, 1870.
This is Turtle Island.
Braided men in hats playing Stick Games.
The new phone camera picks up details
one can’t see in the pictures.
Eating a hamburger in a booth, the camera
zooms in on families fishing
on wet wood platforms over the Falls. Light
reflects on glass mixing with river spray,
French fries, my notebook, all wet.
No one’s fishing there now. The night before,
on television, the state of our nation
all seemed under water watching
lie after lie. My own President lost.
We’re miles from that now.
Even the fries feel right, healthy,
no high fructose syrup in the ketchup.
We take the long road home,
in and out of Fort Road, criss-crossing
the Laterals I and A, Branch again,
and graveled corners. Slow
it down. Stopping for peanuts and
cherries at the fruit stand in Union Gap.
Gary Pucket’s not here and the gap
widens. Saint’s Barber shop
in white, Where a Man Can Be a Man
and curl his mustache, Saint the Barber,
white washed right here. Blue Barber Pole
on top, mounted. It’s stunning what we believe.
All of it. These days in June.
Women at work.
Wear blue for the fathers,
wear blue for friends and co-workers.
Wear blue for your country.
The fire season is just getting started.
Jim Bodeen
20-29 June 2024
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
