This Morning

TALK OF THE PEDOPHILES

Freeflow the talk around the table,

changing direction like fast river

discourse. River Discourse in free-

fall word flow. God talk. God

talking. And just like that,

faster than eye can follow,

pedophiles find defense

in power. Sleep on that,

Big River, fast moving water.

My grand daughter walks a wall

with her mother looking into a closet

of clothes—Look Mommy

those robes are worn by God.

Mother walks River Innocence

with her daughter in holy light

dazzled by daughter's vision,

sitting with me, father and grandfather

in the small pew whispering

words. That's God, Grandpa,

seeing pastor walk in his robes.

Jim Bodeen

17 May 2010

WAITING FOR MARY

     —for Mary Campbell

Bachelor Buttons started popping

about an hour ago, and the sun

zeroing in, still has

two hours before the plane

arrives. Solidarity walks

in our garden this weekend.

Mary, who walks with the world,

brings her witness. Mary

is a blue guitar in the sky

over El Salvador. Her sombrero

is the blue song we can't

get out of our heads, the bird

in the song released, dale,

dale, accompaniment

be our way, interdependent

be our feet, dale,

la lucha tuya es pura,

free spirit giving itself to love,

dale, watered by the River Sumpul,

preparing Bachelor Buttons to open.

Love,

Jim

14 May 2010

THE POVERTY OF MEN

    —for Marty at 71

begins with their shoes,

often enough, expensive running shoes.

The poverty of men dresses in the rich cloth

of a dying tribe. My friend from an earlier

generation of men, explores this poverty

in small, abstract assemblages of found objects

that can be pinned to a lapel,

or worn on a baseball cap. In his 70s now,

he knows one lifetime to explore this bright,

but hidden river, is not enough for any single man.

Stay amused, he says to his friends who know

they're poor, Stay amused. Male and female elk

produce two teeth made of ivory, which he values

as objects whose size makes things risky

for his art. They're not teeth at all, he says,

but tusks, from an earlier time. He's given

his life to mining these rich fields.

Jim Bodeen

13 May 2010

FOR MEN ALONG THE WAY,

making small paths, go through twisted

knuckles and fingers that can't unwind.

Listen to men praying for each other,

in our one and the same unheard song

of misplaced chance. Men with arthritis

in cupped hands from too much work

and not enough toe-following gamble.

For we have not brought flowers of being

into our becoming, and now we are left

in solitary heads-thrown-back-laughter

and dogs in their comic merry-making.

Oh, Lord, let all cunning follow the ice

into disappearing. We pray as best we can.

Let us be checked into idleness.

Let us hold dominoes on painted red porches.

Hear the laughter coming from cars and be kind.

Jim Bodeen

12 May 2010

VIGIL ON MIGRATION

AT THE CORNER OF YAKIMA AVENUE

AND SECOND STREET ON MOTHER'S DAY

Nothing about believing.

Nothing about stirring the water.

Just trying to stay awake,

remembering what happened.

Whose testimony have you listened to?

How could one detail have been altered? Or left out?

How could it be anything but true?

Jim Bodeen

10 May 2010

LIGHT ASCENDING FROM THE WATER:

A SONG FOR MARGARET FULLER

Light of days, what word

lifts me from dream fields

carries me, what carries me

from dream fields makes me

blessed vessel sustaining

creation in the other time,

I too, I too,

and now this light into flowers

●

She went down in her boat

with her words and her baby

She went down in her boat

with her lover  She went down,

she went down, she never

was found, she went down

as the boat came home

The boat came home,

it did, it did, the boat

came home and went down

It went into the wind

it was lost in the storm

as the captain of maps

steered and floundered

He steered with no sound

as he'd lived without song

his boat could only go down

We sail around sound

we do, we do, we sail

around sound in our song

●

And nobody can say

what our work will be

Nobody can say

if they see it

It doesn't matter

if you don't see it

It doesn't matter at all

Jim Bodeen

10 May 2010

SETTING THE TABLE FOR MY SISTER

Our mom, Margaret Fuller, and Mary Colter,
three who crossed over, wait for you at the table
whenever you sit to eat. Colter designed
these plates after looking at pots of Mimbreño Indians
unearthed after 1000 years of sand cover.
She built her tower on the South Rim
of the Canyon at its highest point—

over 7500 feet, and her Kiva,

seen repeatedly in nature, recognizes
how one enters from above, by foot,
before descending. One must turn geologist
to imagine you sailing ancient oceans
in the Esperancé. Gifts arrive as one descends
even in boats. Bright Angel Trail contains
more kivas than one can photograph.
Colter wore waist-long strands of multi-colored

wampum shells and turquoise beads,

a Path of Truth ring on her finger.
Margaret Fuller's here because of your word,
transcend. My inwardness is grown insight,

she wrote. Can you sail with that?

Margaret Fuller, winged phoenix,

life within, life without, making talk and poems.
She edited The Dial with Emerson,
both transcendentalists. She, too,
needed more than Jesus, calling on Greek gods
to walk with her. "The blue sky seen above
the opposite roof preaches better than any brother."

No preaching here, sister. Mom remains.

Now she shows us how to fall. Her doctor
says she's found a way to go down
and not get hurt—still better to let her go
than tie her down. Amen. Mom remains
the wildest teacher we've ever had—hence,
the best. This morning, with Kick Ass Coffee
from Kicking Horse in Canada, I'm thinking of you,
and your story on your birthday—all you've done

with your life, and what you're doing.

Where you're going as you sail.
It's your birthday, the day gods give us
great permission to practice.
You sent me the word transcend
and a movie and I walked Bright Angel Trail,
a walk returning me home before I came back
with Karen. This poem's a coupon
for the meal with the women.
It's good any time, no expiration date.

Fuller, Mom, and Colter sit at table

whenever you pull into the harbor.
Unlimited seatings. I promise
not to listen in at what gets said.

Happy Birthday, and Love,
your brother, Jim
9 May 2010

LINES ON CHARACTER FOR STEVEN MEISER'S BIRTHDAY

It's fun to talk about someone

who knows things, because
of their strange competence—
but even better to talk with them.

What's better than this, is to talk

with someone who makes things,
and Steven, you know and make.
With you we enter the mysterious
coffee shop of knowing.

Even better—to tell someone:

My son-in-law races cars.

His blue Chevy goes 130 miles per hour.
It's not so much about speed.
It's about timing. About not
getting there too fast.
It's about relationships of all kinds.
It's not about the 10 seconds
in the quarter, either,
although there's nothing without that.
Hitting it just right—

No, talking about Steven,
talk always turns to character.
Something that's not part of any part—
a part of who you are invisible,
yet engraved and inscribed,
something that can't be changed,
but can be counted and seen.
That's how we talk about you
when we talk about what you bring
to the track for all of us

while you wait in your car

for those ten seconds that go so fast.


Love, Jim
7 May 2010


THIS MORNING

Piano lullaby comes from Karen's dream.
The grandpa that I am turns me in my bed

and I fall asleep in the middle of my own prayer.

The garden waits knowing that roses
will soon be eclipsed by a storm
of bachelor buttons that have taken over
the Path of the Mailman. Bachelor buttons
ask for nothing and bees come as they're called.
I sit before all of the facts with the best coffee

the world can produce. I have sat in the shade

and eaten the sweet berries like children

unable to stop until their bellies swell.

I refill my cup, piano keys

tapping both sides of the bicameral brain.

Jim Bodeen

6 May 2010