REST STOP FOR THE LONG HAUL

WAS THE DAY LONG?

AT A STOP ON THE WAY,

WONDERING,

HOW DOES THE MORNING MEDITATION

YIELD TO THE SILENCE OF THE EVENING?

            for the poet Kathleene West rejoining her twin sister

You, my poet friend,  Kathleene (with an e) West died July 7, 2013.

I knew you first from your poems and then in your person.

When we were young and later.

Best in letters and poems where there could be no pretense.

But this is my favorite from four decades past.

I was a young poet and a giddy father of twin daughters.

You wrote that poem that broke my heart,

To My Twin Sister Who Died At Birth.

"I’m a father of twins," I said.

"Oh, Jim, I made that poem up", you said.

It is August and April at the same time, Kathleene.

Today you’ve been with your sister for nine months.

I’ve been looking for you all day in four different notebooks.

With your poems, twin survivors.

Jim Bodeen

August, 2013--4 April 2014

POEM WRITTEN IN MY TELEPHONE AT HIGH CAMP

Ski to office with Katleene’s plains

poems. Taking her test,

the test inside her poem,

Answering with two thumbs.

Not doing very well at all.

Have I cut the cane?

In-deed. Cortaba maize

por mano. This is to determine

if I’m a tourist of the Revolution.

Have I skipped the temple of Poetry

in favor of the museum of war.

One tough poem.

One loving poet.

My office at High Camp sits at 6,000 feet.

I just finished a left-over Luna

nutrition bar for women.

Minutes earlier in snow storm

handing Satsuma orange

to the ski patroller coming from snow hut

I yell, Sculpted snow!

And he thanks me for the orange

with the word, Sustrugi, he learned

the Russian word from Bulgarians.

Jim Bodeen

12 December 2012