THERE IS ALWAYS ONE MORE THING
to praise, always.
Jim Bodeen
3 October 2026
LEARNING THE ROPES/APRENDIENDO LAS CUERDAS
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
SHE DESIGNS THE NEW ROBE
SHE DESIGNS THE NEW ROBE
A
vest with a high neck, Japanese lines.
And
she buys him a wool hat, black fedora.
A
Stetson. ceremonial, for his 81st birthday.
9
August 1945. He wears it, as it hangs
in
the closet, For underneath, in the brim,
He’s
tucked Ortega y Gasset,
And
the uniform of the mustache
From
1968, he wears it stashed,
Everywhere
he goes. He was the evac man
At
the 85th Evac Hospital, Qui Nhon.
His
mustache, the full bird colonel said,
Not
uniform below the lip. Cut
It.
The other colonel, full bird, too,
In
charge of surgery, says, Sgt Bodeen,
You
will not cut that mustache. This
Is
bone wax, It stops the bleeding. You
Will
wax it, let it grow.
Your
mustache will continue its work
As
it curls towards your eyes.
To
this day, that’s how he wears
His
uniform under that hat.
Waxed,
above and below
At
the same time. If you look close,
A
bit uneven on one side.
Jim
Bodeen
24
September 2026
MANY HATS
MANY HATS
Many Hats wore them,
Short-brimmed fedoras, each one
deep water worn
Jim Bodeen
18 September 2026
THAT ONE
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THAT ONE
That wooden spoon,
Robin and Sherry,
Hand-carved,
Makes music
From the carver’s box
Resting by the fire place.
Jim Bodeen
11 September 2026
LABOR DAY, 2026
LABOR DAY, 2026
For how can I endure to see the evil that shall come unto my people?
Esther, 8: 6
“All he can tell her is, ‘If you are silent now, and do not defend your people, you will have nothing to say in the world to come.”
Avivah Gottlieb Vornberg, The Murmuring Deep, p. 123
When my brother took me to see the Mariners play
on my 80th birthday, I saw those guys with signs
outside the stadium. They had bullhorns
and weren’t easy to listen to. Mordecai,
Mordecai. I have my own corner
of the street. Sack cloth and Stetson
hats become me. I dress up
my signs with colored Sharpie pens,
playing with inside and outside.
The people I stand with say,
Your writing is too small. Those cars
going by, they can’t read a word.
Turn your sign around I say
to myself as I turn and go
the other way—let them read
the other side. Keep walking.
Jim Bodeen
7 September 2026
'EACH IS THE OTHER AND BOTH ARE ONE' --San Juan de la Cruz
‘EACH IS THE OTHER AND BOTH ARE ONE’*
San Juan de la Cruz
“Deprendimiento”—Detachment for the purpose
of something greater.
The other inside
an imaginable God
calls for compassion
**
Jim Bodeen
1-3 September 2026
*from The Ascent to Joy, San Juan de la Cruz
**from The Murmuring Deep, Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg
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