WALKING THE WONDERLAND

LET THE GREAT MOUNTAIN SPIN

Rumi in a found pocket

in those trail pants

with more pockets

than you have use for

and what happened there

reaching for him

when breath wasn’t right

or when it was

and this became the way

around the mountain

and the mountain itself

dry and in drought,

and then a quirky

four day rain

joy like remission

water running on the trail

in dry stream beds

and the music of water

everywhere surrounding

He had no idea

what would come

it came or it didn’t

he couldn’t control

or stop it

even if there was anything

let it come, if it came

if you can

get it down while walking

his mother walked

past her own dying

and his father

he walked off the job

from work right

into the hospital

and never came out

now this mountain

spoke and sang

and riffed for him

listening too

and he’d pull out

Rumi when he’d feel

him on his leg

from his pocket

and without stopping

rhythm breath

at trail speed opening

at random what he read

as much a surprise

as that tripping root

anchoring his feet

truth was

he loved those poems

coming forth Rumi

Stay low, stay low,

Wordsworth walking Coleridge

over the alps

that one local laughing

Jim Bodeen

11 September 2015

RESPONSE TO A LETTER

One thing to be taken seriously,

but from that arose the nasty question of belief.

No script on this walk. What comes out

comes out in breath and syllable,

jeopardy of beauty. Photography

has as much to do with impermanence

as it does with death. Sorrow

on the other hand, embedded

in joy, wires itself

to the myelin sheath,

becoming a deeper part of us.

My friend catalogues suffering

objectively, like a grocery list,

as is the poet’s responsibility.

Jesus is a man of the road.

Contingency is how we meet Christ

says the poet in crisis. Basho

on his long walk throws food

scraps to the abandoned child.

The act of compassion we can do

nothing about. Nevertheless—

Nevertheless, this walk,

our way. Basho’s courage.

Putting it in the poem,

carrying, suffering. The poet

rides the Celestial Bus.

The ones who take him

at his word will not believe.

Jim Bodeen

10 September 2015

WALKING THE WONDERLAND

500-year old Doug Fir across stream,
morning light on red bark,
a red way in red light.
Sitting on branches
of dappled pages of the poem,
deepened in shade. Last
of the shadow time before ascent
of the trail. The unfinished poem of Rumi's,
but Kabir can read me
out of the sorrows of the ascent.

Open the mountain, let the mountain
open you. Clockwise
circumambulation tradition.
Porous boundaries
between spiritual and mundane.
Trekking poles as water witchers.
Did not ignore the storm.
Shambhala Rumi,
"Drink before you fall to pieces...."
As the mountain goes, so go we.

Jim Bodeen
20 August--8 September 2015

Part I: Walking the Wonderland Trail on Mt. Rainier during 10 days in August, 2015, carrying two notebooks, two cameras, the Shambhala pocket edition of Rumi, serves as breath and guide. Open the Mountain, let the mountain open you, serves as seed thought, inspiring and sustaining the walk.

Part II: Mt. Rainier's 96-mile trail around the Mountain, is 100 years old this year, 2015. Part II of this 10-day walk, guided by Rumi's poems, involves a surprise encounter with a line from Ray Carver's poem, "...new path to the waterfall," with a brown trout in the story of a walker on the way around the mountain.

Part IIII: Mt. Rainier's Wonderland Trail turns towards home in the walker's back yard, emerging from a late summer storm at Mystic Lake, before walking Sky Scraper Pass, White River, Summerland, Panhandle Gap, Ohanapecosh Park, and Indian Bar, listening to Gary Snyder's admonition: Bring back a good story.