TELL IT AGAIN, GRANDPA

HAND THEM THE CAMERA.
LET THEM ASK THE QUESTIONS.
 

Ski with the kids.

No one knows what will happen.
All of the known structures fell
in that one dream of calving

icebergs, decades ago.
Traveling evanescence tumbling.
It’s like anything else
this real, it will be denied

in practical terms. Practical
ones, practicing what will reason.
Why, why, why, why.
Listen to Paul Simon sing.

Forty days gets oohs and ahs
from the Bible itself.
We stop for water and bathroom breaks at 40.
What we’re counting is numbers

on the backs of chairlifts.
They give Jesus credit for 40.
He’s been out there 2000 years.
These kids count to 50,

and stop for hot chocolate.
Call it play if you like.
Children playing with real lives.
Given worlds made by adults.

Jim Bodeen
27 March 2013

GRANDFATHER ON THE MOUNTAIN WITH CHILDREN

He knows he's always on probation.

Jim Bodeen
25 March 2013
 
RENUNCIATION?

Where the world gets made.

Jim Bodeen
25 March 2013


THIS TIME, SWEETLY

After the great No,
which is a gate
to the wonder of renunciation,
everything you believed
falls away. 

Ski with the kids.

Jim Bodeen
24 March 2013

TELL IT AGAIN, GRANDPA

Big Horn Sheep lick salt
on Highway 12 stopping the car
on our way down the mountain.
Dheezus, my granddaughter,

sleeps in the back seat.
She had a good day on skis.
Tell me again, Grandpa,
the time when Uncle Tim

couldn't hold his pee
on the way up the mountain.
Tell me, Grandpa,
how you gave him

the empty pop bottle
and he filled it up
and the pee kept coming.
I pull the car to the shoulder

of the road. It's hailing.
The sheep are one more surprise.
Dheez made every turn I asked her
to make. I told the story

of my son peeing into the pop bottle
every time Dheez asked me to tell it.
Tim was 5, just like you Dheezus.
He said the pee got real warm

when it wouldn't stop
and it came out the top of the bottle.
He said, Dad, the bottle's full
and the pee just keeps coming.

The sheep step off the highway
looking at me from trees. My camera
is a telephone. Call it up
on days all bottles are empty.

Jim Bodeen
March 23, 2013