HEARTLAND

WALKING OUT THE DOOR

“As I’ve said before, I write in the voice of a child…”

     Kurt Vonnegut, The Last Interviews

returning to the family reunion, our host says, 
“By the way, you’re not a veteran are you?

it's National PTSD Day, all who served

receive a copy of our Armistice Anthology,

and so it goes. In and out of the doors,

going through, it’s the doing that matters,

anecdote beneath the concept, gesture

prompting response. The asterisk on the cover,

Vonnegut Code. The laughter released spontaneously

by Kilgore Trout’s question: What is the purpose

of life? Caught without a pen, he couldn’t say:

“To be/ the eyes/ and ears/ and conscience/

of the Creator of the Universe/ you fool.

To be the poet asking,

You know what I mean by blue?”

And so it goes walking through doors.

I wouldn’t have gotten to

Breakfast of Champions without the question

from the guide at the door.

Persimmon pudding bless us all.

Jim Bodeen

6 July 2014

HIS WIFE HAD BROUGHT HIM HERE

She had given him this world.

Her mother belonged here,

had married a man from the West Coast,

a fisherman who told her sea stories

and tales of Alaska. This took place

after the Great War.

She gave birth and then she died.

The daughter grew up in Seattle

and that’s where he met her.

The people from here always wondered

what happened to her, that little girl

who was taken from them

when the mother died. Decades

later, the grown up child

returned for a reunion

with her new family.

An aura of light surrounded her.

She was charmed, nevertheless, unaware

of the emanation coming from her.

She thought it was she who had returned,

but everyone talking to her believed

they were talking to her mother.

Jim Bodeen

4 July 2014

WALKING OUT THE DOOR

FOR SOME REASON HE REMEMBERED

THE SOUND OF THE WOODEN SCREEN DOOR

SLAMMING SHUT

They were walking the cemetery.

The man said, I know more people

here than I do in town,

but I think I’m in the wrong row.

Mom and Dad are in the next row over.

Jim Bodeen

4 July 2014

NIGHT FLYING

He had been reading Basho all spring

bouncing between translations.

Flying at night across the country

he woke in the altered state of sleeplessness

sometimes found in the dreambody.

He had come from the heartland himself,

knew its cruelties and kindnesses.

His town had disappeared completely

taken back by the grasses

who maintained a quiet and fierce

solidarity with the buffalo.

His wife showed him the genetic code.

He remembered his feet bound

in tennis shoes walking railroad tracks.

Jim Bodeen

4 July 2014