Walking with the Man Walking

RUNNING INTO TWO BOYS ON DIRT BIKES

ON THE EDGE OF MY HOME TOWN

WHO ASK ME WHAT I’M DOING

I was a boy here.

I was younger than you.

Younger than you and your friend.

I didn’t have a dirt bike.

I had a bike though, and a BB gun.

I lived in this town when I was ten.

I’m 70 now.

We picked Juneberries in Tasker’s Coulee

where we had family picnics.

I remember asking Mom:

Are there Juneberries in Tasker’s Coulee, Mama?

Grandma’s house was a safe house.

I’d go there when I was mad.

I’d go there other times, too.

Do you have a place to go?

These shrubs around the park,

they’re kept up,

but they’re old and gnarly.

They were here when Narveson boys

lived across the street from the park

and we used to cut our way

into and out of the park

with jack knives, breaking branches

and getting jabbed and stuck.

I was a boy here.

We lived across the street

from Bethlehem Lutheran Church

where I was baptized,

and after we moved away,

they rebuilt it.

All of my memories were in the old church.

Jesus was a man with a beard

walking on green flannel board

mounted on a tripod.

Even then he was a walker

and he walked around the world

following the Sunday School

teacher’s hand.

There are no memories of the pastors,

but it became clear what they said

about taking the name of God in vain.

It was the worst thing,

and we learned about words in God’s house.

Everything about Jesus made sense to me.

Jesus loves little children.

And what he said,

You are the light of the world.

If Jesus loved us,

God knew our every thought.

I was all right with that story.

It made sense that God knew.

Because everything wasn’t right

on our side of the street,

in our house, I bet what I believed

believing this to be true.

Dad was sick with this disease in the blood.

He couldn’t take the cold. North Dakota winters

froze the blood where sickness lay.

Alcohol would make it go away

until it made it all worse.

He would cry out, God damn it.

He would scream, Jesus Christ.

He would cry to our Mom, too.

Lucille, God damn it, I can’t take it.

She would heat water on the stove

and they’d sit in the kitchen.

Mom would put Dad’s feet

in water, and dad would swear to God

and Mom would cry and say,

Wayne, I don’t know what else to do.

Everything Dad said went

against what the preacher said.

I didn’t believe Dad was wrong.

I don’t think he ever took God’s name in vain.

I knew the pastor wouldn’t believe it,

but I believe Dad was talking to God.

Praying the best he knew how.

I had to keep that inside.

Who would believe a 7-year old boy?

Sometimes I couldn’t believe it myself.

That was between me and God

and it was always between me and God.

I never quit believing in that one.

That’s where I found God’s calling too.

God was never afraid of how Dad talked.

He knew Dad’s way to prayer.

How a man calls out to God

must be one of God’s wonders.

Do you know about Willow Grove?

You walk the Great Northern tracks to get there.

Cross the first gravel road.

Stay on the tracks. Trees to the east.

Those stones. Indian graves.

I’d smoke Indian Tobacco.

Sometimes we’d light small fires

and send smoke signals.

We were Lakota. My friends and I.

We were Mandan.

We sent smoke signals to God.

God sent smoke right back at us.

Jim Bodeen

17 October 2015

Bowbells, North Dakota

City Park

WALKING WITH THE MAN WALKING,

the navigator shows

the walker what he can’t see

walking the way

Jim Bodeen

23 October 2015

THE NAVIGATOR

            for Karen

She shows the driver

what he cannot see

Sometimes she drives

Jim Bodeen

23 October 2015