LIVES OF THE POETS

LIVES OF THE POETS

Tom, folding his flag over his mattress,

coming into winter shelter at the Church,

says he lost his gloves today, Somebody

needed them more than I did,

he says. Opening the night shelter

is the first time I've been out all day,

holed up in my room with my friend's

sermons on the anguished heart--

Atonement--through the eyes

of Kierkegaard. I'm in a lousy mood

all day, to use a word common

to my father, (one that hasn't crossed

my lips for decades), and I hear

his voice and my mother's pain

in the same moment. "...Get men

to judge to get them out of their masks,"

the brave pastor quotes his mentor.

How inventive, my own hidden inwardness

and rascality--how vulnerable--I am

creation in cover-up. Geronimo

has returned to claim his bed

by the door. Each night two men

permitted showers. Who's

going to rub my feet tonight?

is the lone, sweet call from

the corner in the fellowship hall

as the men, exhausted from a day

of surviving, put sheets over plastic

mattresses after spraying them with 409.

I am the most restless traveler. God

of my North Dakota childhood sees

my every thought, the only one who knows.

Jim Bodeen

5 December 2016