STONE-CALLED

      ·     

D      Days of making leaves
l             Looking into Bashō's pines

   Shading each other

Jim Bodeen
18 July 2014

      ·     

NEW ROCK IN THE GARDEN

—for Tim

This rock from the Naches River

has been calling for two years.

I run into it wherever I camp.

I sat on it first in water, and later

when the river went down. I turned it, 

edges softened by water and rock

and 50,000 years, maybe a million,

character ridged and deepened

by modesty and its way of sitting up

in water moving around it. Last year,

before winter, I thought

I’d let it go. Why did an old man

need another rock, after a lifetime

of wilderness witness? A kind of patriarch,

this stone, I could see family members,

mostly smaller survivors,

within a half mile of river walks.

That rock’s in the garden now,

an altar capable again,

of standing alone or complementing

others, which might be trees

afterall. Afterfall? When the river

went down in high summer,

I rolled it, carefully around

and between rocks that might scrape

and disfigure part of its skin-shine

adding to its beauty. I found myself

driving to it, inching it along

river bank, ever closer to my Sisyphusian

task which would stop me. And I left it,

my body broken again. I left it

in shrubs, propped but hidden,

14-feet from, and two body lengths

down, from the road. Not a good place

to leave heavenly light blown

from exploding stars. My son

at this time found himself walking home

over mountains where I would pick him up

coming to me on foot hiking the side of the road.

I couldn’t get it, and need your help

I said, after dispensing pleasantries.

More practical than I, with experiences

making transportation available

to those burdened as I am, limited

in external lifting, he knows how hard

those like me can make things.

He makes his life accordingly.

He lives on a mountain

and calls it a mountain.

He calls me his father, knowing

I could see this stone

crossing drainage and mountain range,

its thousand mile slide and tumble,

but couldn’t get it up the road. Knowing

I had no word for what to be done—

leverage foreign as tool or medicine.

I had asked to be useless.

Make me useless, Lord, in all things.

And so I was. My son did lift the stone

from its hidden place to the road,

and onto the truck bed. I can

take it from here, I said, grateful,

asking only, Do you like it? I do,

he said, both of us knowing

star power and invisibility.

Jim Bodeen

16 July 2014