Stone as Palimpsest

A SUITE OF STONES



I. TO THE ROCKS OUTSIDE MY FENCE

To get to here, to us, where we are.

Turn off Washington onto that street

with the name I refuse to say

for its preciousness in a modest development,

and driving slow, respecting children

and their parents, you'll see the flag

on your left and the flag underneath the flag,

another unnamed one, turn left before this one

and the stones will be on your left

in front of the white fence.

Follow the stones.

These stones, picked up, dug up, placed here,

by me. Mostly ordinary stones, long buried,

placed here, random and not random, by me.

The occasional cairn. The river run run out,

the creek bed, what dried out, and what ran

and still runs in water imagined and real.

Some stones from famous rivers, too.

All of the stones, themselves, silent,

but showing a direction, a way.

These stones are us, on the corner.

Keep following the stones.

The specimen trees surrounding the stones

will tell you without telling you,

even while making their own statement,

this is a stone garden.

II. AFTER GATHERING RIVER STONES FOR THREE DAYS

Nobody told me about Ghost Town Turnoff

where I can see the Garnet Range.

After all these river stops. When granite magma

entered limestone, the two reacted to form

a new kind of rock. The key to gold mineralization

lies in granite magma rising molten from earth's crust

forming the slippery base for block to slide on,

cooling, crystalization separated quartz and gold

into veins. My pastor friend remembers the Finn,

Arne Siirila saying poets are nerve endings of society.

When Grandpa Charlie was dying in Dakota,

he said, Don't let them burn me. Dear God,

don't let them cauterize my nerves. We cried

each other into comas, and left for Black Elk's grave

located in St. Agnes' Catholic Cemetery in Manderson

at Pine Ridge. Pretty soon, for the dreamers,

oblivious of the star dust in their palms,

gold is in the pan. You figure that one.

III. THE CHINESE TRANSLATOR DAVID HINTON
SECULARIZES HEAVEN TO MEAN 'NATURAL PROCESS'

Looking back through the notebook

the world does seem to fit onto a single page

You have to keep the live vein

You have to get food up there somehow

You need to give the tree a chance

Nebari, front, trunk, direction, movement,

first branch, apex

The project of forgetting commences

Mothership Zendo

Turn the quilt, go with the thread

Indian summer

Finish start and go

Baseball boats float white water

Sky openings

Leg out on black mat

Take care of it

IV. SURPRISE OF THE STONES IN THE STAMP COLLECTOR'S

BOOK, IMPRISONED APART: THE WORLD WAR II

CORRESPONDENCE OF AN ISSEI COUPLE

--for Louis Fiset, and the "Stone Pickers"

            Dear Hanaye, Yesterday I mailed you

                two stone handicrafts I made. I made these

                myself. So won't you hold them in safekeeping?

                Compare these with the previous ones

                and see how much care I have taken...It took

                lots of work in matching the color and shape of

                each one. The ashtray is a small one for individual

                use. The flower vase is the one with the empty

                Alka Seltzer bottle. I'm completing them

                one after the other every day...Day before last

                I made a cookie jar. Sayonara, Iwao

                                October 30, 1943

Driving off Lolo Pass, Mothership loaded

with treasure from the Lochsa River,

stone  rich and tired from river walking,

the distant reality is the Fort Missoula Detention Station

and I didn't remember Louis Fiset's Imprisoned Apart,

World War II Correspondence of an Issei couple,

and he and Joan are coming the morning

I'm due home. Suiseki stones

is what I've been looking for, miniature

Japanese landscape stones, what I have

been searching for in the Lochsa and Clearwater rivers.

Establishing conversation on the patio

after their arrival, Louis tells me a story

of correspondence during the time of the camps,

focusing on narratives envelopes tell,

stamps and cancelation, along with their value.

Together, they witness censorship of love.

This is how Fiset enters the story,

and at one point holds in his hands,

the custodian of an unopened love letter

between the couple

separated by ocean waters and war.

Years later the woman finds Fiset

and he delivers the letter.

We hand rub stones as Fiset talks.

The stones work too, and we are dimly

conscious of how, and the ways they remain

present to us during the weekend.

Fiset sends me his book with the letters.

The stones we rubbed for the patina

come from Missoula, the same riverbeds.

The letters to Japan narrate their importance.

Stone fever sweeps through camp as detainees

find many-colored rocks of varied shape

during spring snow melt,

polishing them on concrete floors

and government issue blankets.

Practical gifts of stone ashtrays, yes,

but not all. In one photo, suiseki stones

displayed alone, cairn in itself.

From Louis Fiset's research:

Training center during WWI. Headquarters for CCC.

North Bank of the Bitterroot River.

The fort sat on the dry bed of Lake Missoula,

a mammoth Ice Age glacial lake.

Prehistoric ice-damned body, at times a 1000 feet deep.

Filled and drained three dozen times during last Ice Age.

Geologic footprints etched on landscape.

In the Bitterroot Range to the west, 9,996-foot

granite batholith Lolo Mountain.

This ancient practice, un-named, Suiseki.

Stones we hold in our hands.

Familiar patina. Where it comes from.

Brothers and sisters of polished stones from the camp.

Fort Missoula, 1877, a recent yesterday, built

to protect settlers from the Flathead Indians.

Stones so much older than the trees

and yesterday's genocide.

Holding them under the faucet,

running water, rubbing them one last time

before placing them in the sun,

Louis and I walk through the stone garden.

I ask him again to tell me about the stamp,

and the cancelation on the envelope.

And the look on her face that day,

when she re-claimed her letter,

and it hadn't been opened,

are there words for the look on her face?

V. END OF SEPTEMBER

Before the time of stretching

but after the morning of the dreaming

after Fall Equinox

and lawn mowers

with their Briggs and Stratton engines

and days back from the California rivers,

the first day of new music from Van,

...too late for sorrow...

I sit until I'm firm

with rivers and mountains poets.

Hsieh Ling-yun,

'a single dusk and dawn up here

shows you the way through empty and full'

on Thatch-Hut Mountain.

Even light-heartedness, David Hinton says

'Whenever I see people who ply city markets,

I realize recluse sorrows don't go very deep.'

Su Tung-p'o writes these lines

six hundred years after Hsieh.

When I sit like this the stone in my hand

reveals Beckons-Away Monastery.

VI. TEN FOUR UNDERSTANDS

BUT WHAT DOES TEN FOUR LOOK LIKE

AS LEAVES TURN AND FALL

Painting by Shih T'ao

a poem about ruins

Eyes of October Suns

Living in mountains

with a garden of trees in town

Leave summer shade want

October dreaming

Patio stone patina

Inkwash baseball breath

Trumpet vine angels

Forget again, breathe, forget,

Finch thistle food

Lost finger koan

Stone rubs against stone

Off trail Sherpa laugh

Forget full practice

Deli dog recovery

It's all up for grabs

VII. PATINA

That loss is part

of the path light

Scratch that

into the surface

of the poem

as you burnish

wonder

with the hand rubbing

STONED PALIMPSEST

He throws the line

back into the water.

He recasts but cannot

completely erase. The note

book surfaces, imperfect

version of memory

all the way back

to the stone--its river

petroglyphs and etchings

partially disappeared

but for the memory

in thumb rubbings.

Jim Bodeen
30 July--31 October 2016