INDEX FINGER DIPPED IN WINE

for Lucille Viola Bodeen, 9 April 1924--15 April 2011

Mom at Safeco Field, 2001

 

CALL AND RESPONSE WITH MOM

DRIVING WITH HER ON THE WAY TO OUR HOUSE

FOR COMMUNION, I ASK HER

ABOUT THE CONTINUING FALLS:

HER LAST WORDS

Oh, they're not that bad.

Jim Bodeen

15 April 2011

● 

REMEMBERING LIDWINA VAN SCHEIDAM

        1380-1433

Prayer and visions be yours Saint Lidwina,
on this your feast day, the 14th of April.
When your skates go out from under you
on the ice, your body no longer able to hold you
over all that slips and falls, you became one
for the disease never-before-named. Your name
gives suffering a new word. The fall,
the broken rib, the triggering complications.
Patron Saint of Ice Skaters and Multiple Sclerosis.
Shedding skin, body parts, and bones.
Sweet perfume from intestines in a vase.
One sore from head to foot from the age of 15.
38 years of suffering--Christ's three days on the cross
drawn out past the length of his life.
Patron Saint of Chronic Sufferers.
"When the rose bush blooms it will all be over."
Inspiration for Thomas a Kempis' Little Garden of Roses.
What a book. Leo XIII canonizes you.
You, so good to visitors in your little room.
Beginning to understand.
Your life as a prayer to God.
Suffering pilgrims know God will listen to Lidwina.
Your special love for Jesus in the Eucharist.
Living on Holy Communion for years at a time.
Fasting in the mean time.
Offer the pain to Jesus. Give it to him.
Reminding us, those of us in good health,
living in plenitude, in abundance,
to thank God as often as we can.
Now.
Your life, Lidwina, full and complete.
Driving one like me. God bless.

Jim Bodeen
14 April 2011

●

FRESH LENTIL SOUP IN THE ENGLISH TUREEN

--for Peggy Grimes

"I want you to take this home
with you when you go." She wraps
the blue tureen in newspaper
as we talk. She's starting

to give things away
and she's grateful
that her son's friends
have become her friends.

Karen puts the cotton-woven
cloth from Michoacan
on the kitchen table
where the tureen sits,

a roadside chapel calling
us to beauty as we walk
through the kitchen
for cracker or cookie.

The delicate ladle
is a bell calling us to make soup,
to take it all in, sop it up,
wanting bread, promising restoration.

Jim Bodeen
13 April 2011


LINES FOR DALE MILLER

We crossed paths over 40 years
talking God and Schools,
equally flummoxed by both.
Practicalities of his vision
confirm what his family knows.
He helped send teachers
into the homes of every family,
to find out what might make
things better for kids.
In the pew he asked any question
that kept his God authorized,
large, and free to be God of all.
The dog he loved to sit with--
ask his family about that dog.

Jim Bodeen
9 April 2011



BETWEEN THE SEASONS OF THE BODY

Water completes itself in rain

Water on the move
Melting, dripping

One of the core movements

Contraction and release out of the mountains

Jimmy Huega on skis
Jimmy Huega and his great can do
Jimmy Huega knocking his way through slalom poles

Can-do-disease-wracked body birthing hope

Jim Bodeen
11 April 2011

HOLY EUCHARIST WITH MOM

IN OUR LIVING ROOM

THE DAY BEFORE HER 87TH BIRTHDAY

The pastor asks if he can bring the food.

We look at photos of Mom

in her uniform dressed for the game.

Only eight years ago?

A choir of elders sings Dylan while we eat.

Knocking on heaven's door.

Pastor holds the wine for Mom.

It's strong, she says.

I dip my finger into the tiny cup

for the last drops of wine.

Moistened finger touching Mom's dry lips

ending the meal.

Jim Bodeen

9 April 2011

ANOTHER DAY ON SKIS

WORKING ON MYSELF ALONE ON SKIS

Week-long spring storm re-sculpts the mountain
and the world is new again.
Sandwich, orange, nuts, notebook,
small Redemptorist prayer book
by my friend John J. O Riordain in Ireland.
One layer under-dressed for spring snowstorm.
Reach for sun behind snow.
The morning stretches me out.
Skis cut me in and out of trees.
Two feet of snow over ice lets me move at will,
camber-cutting skis floating front and back,
only my boots over snow,
popping over and through new drifts.
Sweating by lunchtime at High Camp.
First the prayer before writing and speaking.
Surprised by Mary.
Mary is hope because we can do what Mary did.
Sit with the mystery of eating this orange.

Sit with mystery of spring snow.
Blizzard of grappel. Somewhere between
ice and corn flower, turning snow light and fast,
adding to what's been covered. A handful
of skiers on a 1000 acres of powder.
Hike to un-groomed west ridge line.
Father John walking after meals with his psalter.
Big man and that tiny book. Reading psalms.
30 years later. Still friends because I slipped a poem
under his door the morning we last saw each other.
His prayer insisting on a new program.
Differ without rancor as a man might differ with himself.
Twin tipped skis lift me through powder
past my knees. God can to anything.
So can these skis, I say, turning in the steeps
before falling untracked through trees,
falling into the drift away from tree well,
sunk in a fresh fix. Poles show me
how deep I've buried myself,
skis and shoulders securing me in snow
lodging me deeper each time I move.
Reaching for the camera I record
the underside of things as I rest.
I can get out of this mess after assessing the light.

Jim Bodeen
8 April 2011

A DAY WITH KAREN ON SKIS

We stop on the mountain
and wipe her glasses.
She's wearing two pair.
One to see, one to shield snow.
Karen makes some nice turns.
We stop on the mountain for protein.
Sliced turkey from my pack.
I feed her from a baggie
with my fingers.
She is so beautiful,
snow curling her hair
as it touches her falling.

We're on our way to High Camp.
Stop here in the trees I say
so I can take your picture.

It is April. Karen wanted sun,
not this storm of snow.
I don't care what we get
knowing our skis
carry us again
into our long story together.

Jim Bodeen
5 April 2011

FOLLOW THE WASH

LISTENING TO JOHNNY CASH AFTER LEAVING
CHRIST IN THE DESERT MONASTERY

     Mister, here's a bag with all my money.
             Johnny Cash

On the second morning, early, dark.
Wheels humming with truckers pulling empty rigs
in protest of the price of gas, Cash singing,
It's hard to knock against the pricks--
Singing about the poor, walking in cactus.
Singing together, singing about our lives.

Empty yourself. Turn to power not yours.
Can't do a thing about a thing.
Pick up the receiver. Make me a believer.
Singing and dying, all songs with the same address.
The North Dakota town where I grew up
surfaces as a monk's chant.

I suspend my disbelief in order to believe.
I bow the body prayer after the monks.
I try to match my voice with theirs by losing it.
Walk the dramatic circle and kneel in the pit.
Johnny Cash singing gospel as the car rolls into Utah.

Johnny Cash in the great Kiva.
Cash singing faith of the family.
Singing what's left of the beloved.
Johnny Cash with kettle drums.
Born and dying. Alpha and Omege in the Kingdom Come.
In the tavern with Richard Johnson as a young man.
A game crossing. Song reeling pulling off the exit.
The simple faith given to children comes and goes.
Coming back in songs sung for the poor.
Born from below over and over.
Born from below in song and voice of the mother.
Monk-priest calling my face the face of the eschaton.
What a man comes for. Walking with no guarantees.
No por si a casa. No backup on this walk.

I bet my life every day on the story
I was given before I could choose.
Give my love to those in the poem.
Give my love to Rose.

Jim Bodeen
March 2008--April 2011

DESERT FLOWER HIKE

Christ in the wilderness--Chama Canyon

This flower goes on the cover of the notebook
called God's Foolishness. No sign-up sheet
for this hike. No one knows about this one.

                Laziness and Cowardice.
Two enemies of the spiritual life, Father Merton writes.
Most dangerous when thy show as masked discretions.

The little pocketbook--Merton on Solitude,
which he never saw, fits in my shirt pocket
with my memo book--cuaderno para memos.

Oh, oh--here's a barbed wire fence
with some fiercely wound energy saying, No.
I'm guessing it's a statement against grazing cattle,
but who knows...
                             here's a wash. Let's follow it.

Jim Bodeen
31 March 2008


FOLLOW KAREN, JIM

Our second step is achieved when one thinks not about pleasing himself, but instead follows the injunction of the Lord, 'I came...not to do my own will but the will of the one who sent me...' Jn. 6:38, Rule of Saint Benedict

That's all you have to do, keep your eyes on her,
for she is Christ making your sweet life real.
She makes it possible to kneel before the poem
with a straight face. Take yesterday

when you wouldn't pick up the phone
because you were listening at the table.
It took you long enough to be quiet.
That was Jesus in the kitchen.

It's good to sit with men reading poems.
The poem will never be worth a damn
if it depends on your will.
Bringing devotion to the table is the poet's task.

Jim Bodeen
14 March 2008

SONG OF EVANESCENCE



BEFORE THE BURNED UP MONK

IN THE GARDEN AT THE GUEST HOUSE

OF CHRIST IN THE DESERT MONASTERY

Charred in the charged moment

of his cry to the Lord, he is no more.

Wooden trunk in the sun,

burned past recognition,

tree or monk can no longer be seen

for who or what it was. What happened--

burned away. Photography cannot help,

burned as this one burned, from the inside

out, and outside in, set against sun and sky.

Yet here he is in the garden with me,

sitting on a stump beside him,

coming into focus. Made from a log,

size and shape of an ordinary man.

Holes drilled into the top of the log

on the side, ten inches down, to place

his outstretched arms. A chainsaw

has cut into the arms to place,

and hold, his opened hands--

hands and arms outstretched, open

and assenting to all that needed to take place

in order to make a perfect cross

burning a man. The monk in my head

tells me, Never love a cross, even in a garden.

This voice carries me through the Psalms

as I cross paths with the charred monk.

I see at the top, how the head has been placed

into the body, and the face, turned at an angle.

Burned out eyes and nose and mouth.

Eyes scraped open with a blade.

Shape of the nose remains, but the nose itself

has been disappeared, after-fact of fire.

The monk's back and shoulders

at the top of the log were created by careful

placement of his face in flames--flames burning

against the contour of the log--a face

reaching from a turn in its growth as a tree--

main branch turning towards the light.

The monk's face also retains the remnant,

or shadow, of a beard cut at a sharp angle,

to form his chin. There is a burned-out hole

where a heart should be, and one wonders

if birds nest in this emptiness. A monk's belt

from a white cotton rope is double-wound

around his waist with four knots cinching

and decorating charred remains in high ceremony.

Inexpensive beads have been placed on the monk's

right hand. Red and white beads discolored

by the sun. The monk's presence does not

tell his full story.

Did his mother receive the news?

Was he given a new name? Old name remembered?

Perhaps his voice in mid-syllable psalm

of praise and flame-frozen, waits in stone

to be heard, containing something

I don't yet know how to listen for.

Maybe that voice sang this morning

at Vigils, blending with others,

indistinguishable, an angel. It's odd.

His feet, bare. Weathered,

they have not been touched by flames.

Jim Bodeen

30 March 2008--4 April 2011

Christ in the Desert Monastery/Yakima

THE KIVA YOU CAME FROM

THE KIVA YOU CAME FROM

Follow the Chaco Stick
on the trail leading into the sun.
Mapped, and you have water,
and can see your tent

under that rock that will keep you
from getting lost. Whatever functions
big Kivas held, the people inside them
had nothing to do with you. Walking

this path you will find more than Kiva.
Walking this way you will see
yourself circling kivas not built by force,
kiva before stars on dark nights

in darkness, too small to be anyone's
flash of lightning. Kiva away from it all.
Kiva too far out to be visited by power.
Kiva whose firm purpose

is descent. Kiva too wild to be seen
or known. Kiva under stars
away from fear, even as it fills with fear's creation.
Kiva where people wrap themselves

around each other in bleached grass.
Kiva of no choice and natural.
Kiva you're looking for. Kiva found
around you, surrounding and peopled.

Jim Bodeen
3 April 2011

UP AND DOWN QUATRAINS FOR A NEW SEASON

ALL DAY CHACO STICK

--for Ken Capp

Look at the staff, wound
with tight-woven white rope

for hands. New rope,
no sweat from walking

an ancient path. The staff,
shaved and smoothed

for pilgrimage
beginning day after Easter,

complete in itself,
innocent and pure.

Desire of any journey,
worthy of patched robe

worn by St. Francis.
Rope binds the pilgrim

to his path, too, not
any map, as my friend says,

practical as his mention
of truck stop with hot showers.

Jim Bodeen
February 26, 2008--April 2, 2011


UP AND DOWN QUATRAINS FOR A NEW SEASON

--for Kevin

Never predictable, spring.
Not ready for mountains
without snow, I pick up
The Collected Poems of Allen Ginsberg,

and the first poem makes me weak
in the knees with its language.
Wordsworth and Coleridge walk the alps
looking for peak experience, lost,

finally asking a local for the summit
they've already walked by. The Gobi Room
is a desert of light and sound. Mother
recognizes my voice but doesn't know my face.

Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness.
I spend 58 on skis, but who's counting. Warm
in the mothership with Karen
and a lift ticket that never expires,

throw me from Heaven. No.
Christ, I'm not ready. Throw me
one of the Upanishads--the one looking
for the spirit behind eye and ear.

There was nothing false about mountain light
and it was dark before dinner time.
Sit with me. Sit here in the heart space.
Must one mention baseball?

My friend sends a note saying,
Throw out the first pitch, Buddy.
His baseball poem is the Poem of the Month
in Spitball, and he writes about the game

in the closing penitentiary. He killed seven
guys, watch your back/ at the plate.
My mother wore me out with baseball
when she took out a home loan

to buy season tickets. What do you think?
Do you think a man must come down
from the mountain? Penitentiaries
set the mind on April's scripture.

Jim Bodeen
1 April 2011

Gift of the Eschaton Reading in the Desert