News from the New Moon

AFTER THE MOVIE, AFTER SKIING,

WAY AFTER THE SHERIFF DRIVES OFF,

WAITING AT NORTHTOWN, CLOSER TO THE POEM,

NEWS FROM THE NEW MOON

Just out of Naches

on to Highway 12 West,

it starts snowing hard

and the camera

is in the passenger seat

but I can’t stop

because there are skiers

behind me and the road,

the road, is already slick.

It is March!

I have my skis too

but 12 is always

an invitation to stop

and I have received

the invitation.

The lane for slow traffic

arrives like a gift from God

and I pull over

and have me two minutes

alone with that snow

before the sheriff pulls up

lights flashing,

incredulous, calling me out

in that righteous voice

about this being a traffic lane

not the shoulder of  the highway.

Can’t you see? Are you blind?

I walk back to the car

and find another place

where I take this walk

where trees are covered up

by falling snow.

This is the Naches River

just up from where it runs

into the Yakima.

I got all kinds of things

in my head besides skiing

Morning begins with the blues,

Van Morrison and John Lee Hooker

singing, Live to Suffer.

John Lee (always arriving in a woman’s voice),

called out by Van, Go see a doctor.

John Lee whispering back,

Milk, cream, alcohol.

John Lee singing, I can almost smell those TB sheets.

All of this at the kitchen table

with movie clips of a March snow storm

and misplaced photos of a pine tree in morning light.

My wife wants me to pick up bird seed

for finches at the Coop. Driving

down the avenue, a young man with a backpack

crosses the rail road tracks.

Coffee from Northtown

at a small black table for two,

me and the notebook, William Chittick’s

telling the story of Shams before he meets Rumi,

from his newly translated in my lifetime,

Autobiography of Shams-I Tabrizi:

Me and Rumi. He begins

before Shams meets Rumi—Mawlana,

that translates, Our Master,

where Shams says,

I came into this world to look around.

It is days after Brussels suicide bombers,

during the time of Islamic State fighters.

The terror network has killed

more than 160 people

in two of the continent’s capitals

in the past four months.

Republicans in America are going apeshit.

I try to tell Karen about Robert Bly

and Coleman Barks and William Chittick,

about Camille Kabir Helminski and the weeping others

gathered at the tomb of Hafiz.

Jim Bodeen
24 March 2016