INDIGENOUS DYE

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Evolution of the foot
Single-hoofed ponies
Evidence of vanished toes

Not saying too much
Not really seen
With a notebook on his lap

Jim Bodeen
26 October 2010

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CLEAN AND DESCEND

Picking up after grandkids go home
I spot the lime green shopping bag by my chair,
wonder how I could miss it. Inside,
Moon Over Wings, Tom Aslin's book
I've been looking for the last two days.
Now I understand. Grandkids.  
The poems take me into the depression
I could not see. When Karen
returned from the M.S. workshop
she gave me two things the doctor said:
Put Prozac in the water supply.
Depression is 100 percent.

She also said there will be a cure.
Karen's four nights gone
to the museum city in Mexico.
I imagine her life without me.
Mine without her.
Her laughter over four decades.
My pathetic hand-crafted lattes
steaming in the kitchen.

Jim Bodeen
26 October 2010


CALLING THE DOG

—for Tom Aslin

When the phone rings
I know there is trouble somewhere
and I have been called to trouble.
Once my son brought home
a lost dog and didn't name it Joy.
It was a kind of phone call that dog.

I used to believe that we could make things
easier for others living a certain way.
I don't believe that anymore.
Riffing on that one takes us into another song—
walking is all. Answering the phone.
Saying, Sure, that's fine. That's what blood

cells are asking from me. My brain,
so slow to respond and say Yes.
Leaving the State of North Dakota
as a child I carried an open wound.
I promised my mother while I ran from her.
I never overcame that promise and sometimes

let temptation cover it with shame.
When that happens I chew my fingernails.
Last week I listened to a poet
walk us all the way into his depression
and watched young people
writing on the back of their hands

in blue ink. He was telling them something
about themselves they were grateful for
even as they covered themselves
in another kind of language. I came home
and read his poems into my dreams
remembering my parents. In the morning

I picked up his book and read again.
Carrying his life around the empty house
I misplaced it, and have been searching for it
like my mother looks for her lost camera.
I've never been much for anything but poetry.
For a long time I had to pretend I was somebody.

Jim Bodeen
25 October 2010

SEAT KJM

—for Kevin

Any empty seat
Quiet rider
On and off at his own choosing

Knots like a sailor's
Indigenous weave
Dye made from blood of insects

Most rare commentary
Reader, poet—rarer yet,
poet reading

Jim Bodeen
26 October 2010

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