Chuck Bodeen talks baseball with family

Chuck Bodeen's life centers around baseball and family. As player and coach it spans 50 years.
Chuck is currently head coach of the Women's Fastball Team at Yakima Valley Community College. Here he talks with his nephew Josh, about baseball and family traditions. They are later joined by some of his grandkids.

Raindrops the Size of Marbles

WHAT HE SAID

The news was not good.

The news they were waiting

for would not be good.

The options would be bad.

Bashō had been walking

for a long time now.

Nothing celebrated.

If you can’t see

the moon or the flower

in everything

you’re just walking

in your own shit.

Jim Bodeen

August 2014

LOCAL INFORMATION

You won’t find the hike

on any map, it’s not there.

No, but it used to be.

The first two legs,

yes, but not the one

overlooking the glacier.

The moon walk.

Yes. Years ago

it was listed

in the hike book,

then it was gone.

Understood was this,

tundra walk discovered,

overused, taken off map,

unmaintained trail even now.

But it’s there, stunning,

7,800 elevation

between peak and glacier

with Forest Service

blessing, if not acknowledged.

Jim Bodeen

30 August 2014

WHITE RIVER

He stepped through the wood fence

barricade erected by the Forest Service

after the storm came through

a decade ago. He entered

the erosion field where the White

did its damage in subsequent

winter storms, uprooting trees

criss-crossed in the acre-wide

and changing riverbed below the Mountain,

the thunder of big rocks

tumbling in fast moving

glacial water coming

from Emmons Glacier,

maybe a short mile above

where he sat now, back against

trunk of a dead fir, Old Man’s Beard

hanging like prayer flags.

He came here to this eroding bank

every September since things changed

more than twenty years ago.

He had prepared for this change

all his life, he saw. If it wasn’t

quite visible, it is what he believed,

back against this whitened trunk

holding him and the book of poems.

Jim Bodeen

28 August 2014

RAINDROPS THE SIZE OF MARBLES

There was a storm,

a summer thunderstorm,

he was making root beer floats

in the kitchen

children surrounded

Adults had all disappeared

While children were swimming

adults circled on lawn chairs

talking about dreams

where had they gone he wondered

wanting straws for the hidden

vanilla at the bottom of the glasses

This was not his kitchen

not having spoons dislocated him.

Straws would draw this wonder from below

Jim Bodeen

26 August 2014

SEQUOIADENDRON GIGANTEUM II

SEQUOIADENDRON GIGANTEUM II

With a tiny scissors

I take cuttings from the two-year old

Sequoiadendron Giganteum,

dipping them in rooting compound

before planting in prepared bed.

Wild ones between earth and sky,

evolutionary ancestors, if you live

another four thousand years,

possibility you carry in your genetic code,

we all might survive. Wild ones,

Bashō loved the Bashō tree

for its uselessness,

wind and rain against leaves

large enough to cover a harp,

big trunk untouched by the ax.

Earlier, Hui Tzu received this

from Chuang Tzu: You have a useless tree

and don’t know how to use it, plant it

in the middle of nowhere, something useless

will never be disturbed. Bonsaied

in my back yard. Seedling Sequoias

thickening their trunks in their second year

revealing eternity. In pre-history,

a forest of conifers. The Western World

didn’t know about giant redwoods

until mid 19^th Century. Sequoia

for Sequoah, son of Cherokee Chief’s daughter.

Dendron, Greek for tree. Now thought to be

a genus of its own. Wild ones

young climbers call you today,

walking hands and knees through creek bed

to find you. They find in your canopies,

hidden bonsai growing as epiphytes

high in your crowns. Discovering you

they become canopy trekkers,

traveling from tree to tree.

They bring hammocks with them

making animal love, sky walking

sky lovers. Entering the tree

my fingers larger than your limbs,

my in-breath is where consciousness

is born. The ex-hale is commitment

and salutation. This year’s trunk

growth, green, measured in inches,

will wooden before winter. Next year

or the year after, I’ll begin the search

for the pot to honor your journey.

Japanese bonsai artists secure

pines against earthquakes. Bashō

300 years ago saw pines

from the previous millennium.

Forests for futures none of us will see.

What makes you useless makes you valuable.

I hold a quart-sized spray bottle

misting ancient branches imitating the ocean.

Jim Bodeen

August 2012-August 2014

How the trees came

SEQUOIADENDRON GIGANTEUM

Wild one

Between earth and sky

Evolutionary ancestor

Jim Bodeen

25 August 2014

MODELS IN LIFE AND POETRY

A friend’s message

leaves me not knowing

how to respond.

Out for a walk

Nobuyuki Yuasa’s

Bashō in my back pocket

I pull it out,

reading until I forget

about the whole thing.

Reading notes at the back end

Yuasa says count vowels

to count syllables—

Japanese breath counts

fall naturally

into breathing groups

five or seven syllables.

Jim Bodeen

22 August 2014

40 YEARS AGO THIS DAY

And yet we all in the end live, do we not, in a phantom dwelling?—but enough of that, I’m off to bed.

  —The Hut of the Phantom Dwelling, Bashō/ Burton Watson                    

My wife gave birth to twin daughters,

and I, helpless and overcome with joy,

passed out copies of a poem in the street,

distributing them too,

to doctors and nurses

in the hospital. The poem,

by Williams Carlos Williams,

is titled “The Gift” and it reads

as wondrous this day as it did

40 years ago. Among the lines,

“hard gold to love a mother’s milk” and,

“…all men by their nature give praise,

it is all that they can do.

Three years ago this day,

my wife and I moved into a new home

one level, smaller than the home

where we lived for 39 + years,

the only house our children knew

during childhood years.

We slept in the new house for the first time

on our daughters’ birthday.

On this day, this morning,

I sent that poem out again,

first to my wife and our daughters,

beginning my 70^th year.

·          

The house is in a development near the airport.

First homes for young people,

last homes for the elderly.

The house was non-descript,

without shade,

the one standing when the others sold,

but it had what he was looking for.

He liked the modest entry into the houses.

One turn off the four-line

shuttling people in and out of town.

A row of duplexes and rental houses

accessing the development.

He had long noted humble entrances

into the nation’s sacred places.

He saw outside sanctuaries

where others saw nothing.

The poor and rundown before national treasures.

He believed he could build a garden of trees.

He saw sanctuary at the end of the road.

A monastery that belonged to literature.

This is how the trees came to him.

Landscapers in developments

wanted three things:

put in underground sprinklers

and roll out grass over clay and rock.

Plant one non descript shrub

in the middle of every lawn.  

He had them transport his rocks

by tractor. They would take out the lawn

and put in a forest floor.

A mountain landscape

would emerge in miniature.

·          

He tried to tell the woman at the nursery

about groves of trees at the end of railroad tracks

in his childhood. It’s a small place

he told her. I may even have to plant

outside the fence to make a ring.

A grove of trees in the middle of nothing.

A hideout for a boy. A place for an old man.

I want you to help me plant a grove of trees.

How could he explain a North Dakota childhood

to a tree goddess in an upscale nursery?

He broke through her impatience

with a single utterance. Zen.

She led him to the beautiful trees.

He picked out four:

Yoshino Cherry, Canadian Chokecherry,

China Snow and Serviceberry.

These trees planted oval-oval shaped

would make North Park.

This is the beginning of how the trees

came to him, how they surrounded him

and took him in, the ancestors.

This is how the pine trees, beloved by Bashō,

entered his life. It was all gift,

as the physician poet had prophesied.

It is all that they can do.

Surrounded, neither priest

nor ordinary man, as Bashō wrote walking,

he would give praise from here.

Jim Bodeen

21 August 2014

Welcome Bench at Dodge

MID-WEEK, AUGUST

Sadie wags her tail

hearing Teresa’s coming.

Belly rub and treats.

Maybe she doesn’t think

about her toenails

getting clipped.

Our vet for 20 years

thinks the tumor unsightly

but benign, wants

Sadie on steroids

through allergy season.

Weight’s good. Then

bath on front lawn

with three kinds

of cortisone shampoos.

I break some duck jerky.

It’s watermelon time.

One for Sadie, one for me.

Jim Bodeen

20 August 2014

FOR HIS SON ON THE MOUNTAIN

He leaves a hand-written poem

pinned to bathroom mirror

with toothpaste

Jim Bodeen

17 August 2014

NOT MUCH MORE TO SAY

…being neither priest nor ordinary man.

     “A Visit to the Kashima Shrine,” Bashō

Tactical  breath walk

Land on the odd syllable

Pine tree, rock, akadama

Jim Bodeen

16 August 2014

THE DEVESTITURE OF BASHŌ

In his first walk

he saw his dilemma,

meeting local and priest.

He was neither.

Neither was he Samurai.

Collecting nothing,

later he would have it all.

Now he would be neither,

nothing. For poetry

he would do this.

Jim Bodeen

15 August 2014

UNDER THE PORCH LIGHT

Hand rubbing stones from Spokane River,

working on the stone’s patina on front porch at dusk.

All day walking garden after early morning

coffee, talking poems. Mid-August

and crickets. All of Bashō’s

cicadas join in the singing.

Jim Bodeen

15 August 2014

BASHŌ DESCRIBES HIS CLOTHES,

BEING NEITHER PRIEST NOR ORDINARY MAN,

FROM THIS DAY FORTH: WANDERER

Setting out on the first leg,

Record of a Well-Exposed Skeleton,

wind blowing through his heart,

determined to fall,

to become the title of his story,

Bashō describes his dress—

in prose, and early: No metal

on his belt, sack on shoulder,

clean shaven, string of beads—

like priest, but not one,

covered in worldly dust. Prevented

from entering inner temple. Bashō

descends to the stream. Knowing,

and remembering, the poet Saigō

writing for the woman

washing potatoes. Bashō

finds the way. Walking

to Kashina Shrine, his second

leg, two years later, confronted

again, he makes judgment: priest

clad black as crow, bundled

in multiple stoles, portable shrine

on his back, as if he had free pass

to world beyond the gateless gate.

Dizzied by the priest,

dressed also in black robe, Bashō,

neither priest nor ordinary man.

What is he? Who am I—wavering

between bird and mouse? He opens

Records of a Well-Worn Satchel,

with well-worn drapery wind-swept

and swept away, Fall necessary

to be one with nature, first lesson,

third journey. And one more:

Divestiture of security, serving

neither court nor scholarship

with its encumbering ignorance.

Preparing self for the task,

for the Deep Road to the Far North.

Deepest devotion from how one walks.

Jim Bodeen

15 August 2014

MEASURING THE DISTANCE

The Mothership is in the shop

and needs more than an oil change:

it needs brakes. I sit outside

on the smoker’s bench

that says, Welcome, not smoking,

reading Sam Hamill’s Habitation,

so new it’s still stiff from the printer’s,

not yet in a single bookstore.

What I’ve learned from these poems,

40 years in their making,

is how to carry a vision

and make a life from walking. Front wheels

on the truck aren’t wheeling,

front brake calipers seizing

and old rotors cracked. What this means

is money if we’re going to run

northern California rivers this September.

Looking for miniature landscape stones

is a suiseki journey. Making literature,

Hamill’s first word, standing

in a crowd of disbelievers, a call

from God through the exile’s mouth.

Those old Chandler-Price presses

mixing smells of ink and oil, bolted

into floors of the old fort

had my attention. All of it

a flood on the Welcome bench,

Requiem, Hamill’s homage to Rexroth,

Rilke echoing in Hamill’s ear

as he writes. And after love, after the cry of love,

is stoppered in the throat…It’s Hamill’s

Bashō though, stirring my heart,

these words on the Journey to the Interior:

Into the geography of soul

that makes the journey itself a home.

The morning passes into high summer heat

on the bench with Habitation and a notebook.

I studied the man, how he wrote, what he read,

for 20 years, a distant apprenticeship.

How I go to work each day is the same.

How I work with the poem is how I work

with little trees. Bonsai and poem

mirrors the already and the not yet.

What to leave in, what to take out, the same ache.

And in the river, Yes, again. Magic Mind

healing the rock as it surfaces in my hand.

I carry home what sensei leaves behind.

The signature of my work like this, raw,

in the notebook resting on table in Mothership.

Storypath/Cuentocamino—a dozen years

following a bilingual word half made-up,

charged and given to me, as long

as I had discipline and courage to obey.

A life-time with three charged words:

Luchador, Abrecaminos, Storypath/Cuentocamino,

nearly half a century listening to others.

Five years with the mothership.

Crazy Cloud and Mother Quilt rolling together.

Notebook, cameras, IPhone and sewing machine.

All given for what gives itself up in word.

Nearly anonymous. Anonymity

for the poem and for what calls itself God,

bound to call and calling, free and not-free.

Jim Bodeen

15-17 August 2014

WHAT GETS UNDERLINED IN THE NOTEBOOK

EXPLAINING THE GIFT OF CONSCIOUSNESS

TO MY GRANDDAUGHTER WHILE HIKING

SKOOKUM FLATS TRAIL ALONGSIDE WHITE RIVER

You see,

you see it.

You see, you see.
Not every one gets to.

You see the world in this piece of tree fungus.

You see. It's, it's...

It’s a butterfly.

That’s what I’m saying.

Jim Bodeen

12 August 2014

LIGHT DRIZZLE, CODE TALK, FOR TIM, 

ON THE MOUNTAIN

Break from days of 100-degree heat

on the mountain, drizzle cooling us,

slowing the fire in the old forest

causing us to change hike plans

walking alongside White River.

This is a dream school

and you’re our guide, Tim.

No five classes a day, here.

Some years one or two meetings.

Time turns short.

Thanks for the hike.

Skookum Flats, no second choice.

Time with your nieces off trail, bushwacking

White River and old growth forest.

Time with Mom & Dad.

Time taking my hand crossing

water on a log with vertigo.

You are Samurai.

Your nephews and nieces testify to your virtue.

So does your father.

As among flowers the cherry is queen,

so among men, the Samurai is Lord.

So sing the children

singing of you.

This is Bushido.

Soul from mountain culture

crystallizing the Japan

we walk into here,

Wilderness Family National Treasure Park.

Jim Bodeen

15 August 2014

POEM FOR MY JEWELER MARTY LOVINS

COMPOSED AT CRYSTAL MOUNTAIN

I’m going to buy a shirt

to build a wall

for my birthday pin.

The clip set at the top

so it will wear properly.

Finally I understand how to hang it.

So much better

than becoming a Windsor Knight,

I mean knot

on a silk tie.

These little pins

saving me all these years

time after time

from enemies

and dangerous situations.

Cosmology of angels

on a neutral background.

Jim Bodeen

15 August 2014

THE HEART-SHAPED STONE FULL OF CRYSTALS

—for Dheezus

What I pick from the river

is only the heart,

but my granddaughter sees

two rivulets of crystals

and treasure: Break it open,

Grandpa, we’ll be rich.

We’re rich now.

No we’re not.
You don't even know what rich is.

Break it open, Grandpa.

Do you want to take it

to Heaven with you when you die?

I’ll leave it with you.

You’ll see.

You may want to break it open then.

But you’ll see.

It’s your heart.

Jim Bodeen

14 August 2014

BROTHER AND SISTER LOOK AT CITY STREET ART

I’ve never seen a hot dog so big.

Look at that jelly bean.

Jim Bodeen

10 August 2014

WHAT GETS UNDERLINED IN SEAMUS HEANEY’S 1995 NOBEL LECTURE

I was the eldest child

we were in the doze of hibernation

that voice we could hear

none of the news entered me as terror

Pre-reflective, pre-literate, pre-historical

My listening became more deliberate

Still not the news that interested me

I credit poetry for making this space-walk possible

Poetry can make an order as true

to the impact of external reality

I credit poetry, in other words, both for being itself

and for being a help

Rejoiced most when the poem seemed most direct

an upfront representation of the world

or stood its ground against

A rapture and an ache

a different kind of accuracy

poetry’s ability and responsibility

devoted to things as they are

fortified by a refusal to grant the poet

any more licence than any other citizen

having to conduct oneself as a poet

the stability of truth

the destabilizing nature of its own operations

challenged yet steadfast in my non-combatant status

a way of crediting poetry

What Yeats tried to do: to hold in a single thought

reality and justice

The violence from below

retaliatory violence from above

that Tacitus was right: peace is the desolation left behind

bowed to the desk like some monk

finally and happily I straightened up

Make space for the marvelous as well as the murderous

True to life if subversive of common sense

a world for the respect of every tradition

agile give-and-take

“An Ireland the poets have imagined”

Poetry flourishing, rather than proving itself

the poet’s lap of honour

It knows that the massacre will happen again on the roadside

Poetry can be equal to and true at the same time

the “temple inside our hearing.”

But the thing uttered by the speaker is still not quite

     the story of what is going on

rapture came from music rather than prayer

its tone of supplication, its pivots of strength in the words

     in the sheer in-placeness

form is both the ship and its anchor

What necessary poetry always does

touch the base of our sympathetic nature

The thing which always is

The power to persuade that vulnerable part

It’s rightness in spite of the evidence

We are hunters and gatherers of values

Our solitudes and distresses are creditable

Jim Bodeen

11 August 2014

KAREN FINDS THE STONE OF THE DAY

Full of caves

and calligraphy

fitting the palm

of her hand

Jim Bodeen

5 August 2014

HOW THE STONES BECAME THE WAY WITH THE TREES

Coming to me in time,

across time, exploding,

and then the long wait,

a million, two million years,

waiting for a hand

descending into water

in the moment of recognition.

The first Ah,

my 50 years with Karen.

Palm lines read back in time.

The hand that took my hand

reaches into the river.

The stone evolving and devolving,

arrested. Submerged

beauty surfacing.

Blessed community blessing.

Grateful for all tipping hats.

A community of visionaries.

I carry your names

into the garden where each stone

is a star with your word.

A year of studying Japanese pines.

Oh, Pine Islands, Ah!,

in Sam Hamill’s Bashō,

and reading Bashō,

causes one to lower the eyes.

August 9, 1945,

my birthdate, also a call to remember.

All of this, all of you, part of the blessing.

Jim Bodeen

10 August 2014

HE HAS KNOWN HER 50 YEARS

His feet carry him
further into the river
Language tags along

Jim Bodeen
9 August 2014

LOVE POEM FOR KAREN

Every day

when I go out

in the yard

with spade

and child’s rake

Karen got me

to pick up

dog poop

I say to myself

I’m going to go

right into the house

and thank her.

Jim Bodeen

31 July 2014