MEASUREMENTS IN TURDS

 PERHAPS THAT'S A PORTRAIT OF ANYONE LOOKING

       --for Marty

reflected in the calipers. Calipers,

you call them? What you used in high school

geometry, or was it science?

          Four rectangular compartments,

carefully constructed. Three with measuring devices

all of the sort used by school children.

     In the odd one, under glass, a stick

laid out in cotton, it appears to be a coffin.

A coffin! A torn piece of paper on the right side.

Is it a zero, or a capital P with a missing seraph?

One can’t tell. The maps on the back side,

beautiful, and easy to see, but only one
hanging the gallery show

or taking art down from a wall would see them.

Crazy Horse never recognized South Dakota.

There is no pattern to the maps
but beauty that I can see.

              I wasn’t looking elsewhere

myself, only to photograph the piece

when I discovered the undersides of the shelves.

Dictionary pages have been put down with an overlay

of gauze rendering definitions unreadable.

This is where the birds are located. On the underside

of two of the shelves. One under a layer of gauze,

one over the gauze.

The beehive in the top quadrant, empty.

Jim Bodeen

8-14 July 2014

AMERICAN RIVER STONE

Maybe when I get home

I’ll ask myself

why I carried this stone

all this way, sore back

and all. I’ll bring

my response from the river

We’ll sit and talk

Jim Bodeen

14 July 2014

BONSAI  SPRUCE BRANCH SETTING

Elegant in quiet wires

Hands obedient to breath

Sun bends needles bright

Jim Bodeen

12 July 2014

·          

SLOWING DOWN THE DAY

Slow this day down. Slow it down.

Like you did yesterday.

Then read, or write (a bit),

towards that slowing

       ·    

Small trees shadow

against a white fence

in July morning sun

the natural practice

I’ll tell you this:

the sound’s off

and the music’s on

I’ll tell you this:

the notebook’s more interesting

than any poem

This is not the notebook.

Work the patina

rubbing the stone.

Jim Bodeen
9 July 2014

PICKING UP MEASUREMENTS IN TURDS 

AT THE ART GALLERY WITH MY GRANDDAUGHTER

     for Marty 

Oh, I say, my friend is writing titles

for his assemblages. Yes, we made him,

the curator says. My grand daughter says,

Look Grandpa, They hung all these cds

from the ceiling and twisted them up.

The curator comes around the corner

and asks, Do you know what these are?

My granddaughter looks at her, unsure

of what to say now. They’re cds,

like you listen to music on, the curator

says. Isn’t that cool? As we look

at art left to be picked up

my granddaughter exclaims, Grandpa,

there’s a beehive in Marty’s art.

I’m going to get the lady. Look,

she says, there’s a beehive in there.

The curator looks until she finds it.

There is. I missed it the first time

around. He put it too high.

He should move it down so people could see.

Jim Bodeen

8 July 2014