ROCK AT MY BACK, SUN ON MY FACE
Sun dries stone from yesterday's rain.
A river of steam rises from White River's
tumbled rock. It's September
and just before I stand
preparing to leave, I pick up
Li Po's Fall Cave poem,
his tears carrying him in his orphaned boat.
This place, the same as his place.
My tears are my tears.
I've been in this place long enough,
but looking again, find myself
unable to move.
Jim Bodeen
7 September 2013
AFTER LI PO
White River's a stone garden,
Sun dries stone from yesterday's rain.
A river of steam rises from White River's
tumbled rock. It's September
and just before I stand
preparing to leave, I pick up
Li Po's Fall Cave poem,
his tears carrying him in his orphaned boat.
This place, the same as his place.
My tears are my tears.
I've been in this place long enough,
but looking again, find myself
unable to move.
Jim Bodeen
7 September 2013
AFTER LI PO
White River's a stone garden,
a tumbling avalanche bed
for storm-tossed trees.
Don't come here!
It's too wild!
Take your lover to Ohanapecosh.
Even the ancestral forest is framed.
Stay out of White River!
Jim Bodeen
7 September 2013
for storm-tossed trees.
Don't come here!
It's too wild!
Take your lover to Ohanapecosh.
Even the ancestral forest is framed.
Stay out of White River!
Jim Bodeen
7 September 2013
THE MAN WHO NEGLECTED HIS ROOTS
The man on the overlook
asks where I’ve been
and I point to the ridge line
emerging above Emmons Glacier.
It’s a bonsai forest.
They won’t stay that way,
he says, short,
with those twisted trunks.
I dug up two of them
40 years ago, watered them
covered with gunny sack.
You’re not supposed to take them;
I planted them by my front door.
Now they’re taller than my house.
My drain’s all twisted with roots.
Sensei says if a tree presents itself
the proper response is to take it,
but if it’s bonsai, cut the roots.
And put it in a pot.
Jim Bodeen
23 September 2013
THE WIND PICKS UP
Turn my back to sun,
shirt off, I sit on rock,
boots among three small trees
Wind picks up
I resist putting on my shirt
and still reading Li Po's last poems
from Mr. Seaton at 70
fall in again with solitaries
Li Po's lonely walk
with Tien Tien Mountain
my boots are as tall as trees
where they rest
Jim Bodeen
8 September 2013
AMONG TINY TREES
Lunch on the ridge
Sandwich built
with salad onion,
lettuce, sweet red pepper--
mayonaise and mustard
Three cooked beets
fresh from Valley
left over from
last night's dinner
sprinkled with sea salt
Jim Bodeen
8 September 2013
MORAINE TRAIL
Parallel to White River
Headwaters from snout of glacier
I stop for tea,
open the notebook,
think of Snyder & Jack,
closer again
nearly forty years,
my brothers coming up
in two days
Notebook safely stowed
in my pack, I unfold
a letter from a friend
carried in my wallet
to write on
Jim Bodeen
8 September 2013
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