SKIING WITH CHILDREN DESTROYS ABSTRACT EVIL

WHEN THE MOUNTAIN DOES THE CHOOSING

STEEPS ON SOLSTICE

1. We skied steeps on solstice,

grand children, 11 and 9. Four of them,

cousins, and a handful of others, night travelers

from other stories--big ones--

who found our fire, the campfire.

Traveling in the Mothership's zendo love

enables an entry through darkness

into mountain time. This time

comes through North Dakota white-out,

highway blizzard wheat fields.

Enter the faerie world through a crack in the rock.

We drive into Cascade Mountain

blizzard of changing weather. Central Washingon

on any map--And Our Faces, My Heart,

Brief as Photos. Poetry gives our time the prayers

the gods have taken away.

We don't outlive the mountain.

The television in our hearts

carries us into weather,

watching Oprah interview Michelle

as she's preparing to leave the White House,

my wife and I talk about her dress

and where it comes from. Everything I say

seems ridiculous to Karen. Oprah shows

photos of Michelle over the past eight years

and we feel like we're looking through

a family photo album: Michelle in the classroom,

working out, When did you feel the most tested?

Oprah asks. We as black women better be able to do it,

Michelle says. Sasha and Melia.

School trips. We're the happy side of the White House.

Because of the weight that the President has...

And we're dealing with people losing their houses.

We need to be substantive, but there also needs to be a little levity.

We were the joy masters.

House of the People Open the doors really wide.

Dancing. In the garden. Alma Thomas' art work.

First black woman's art. Resurrection, from 1966,

hanging in the family dining room.

Girl Scouts and their tents on White House lawn.

Eating from our china.

You know we've changed their lives forever.

Being a grown-up. This would be really hard if I was 20.

Just being straight up grown up helps.

I've been in the world. ...coming up against some stuff.

Oh you think that, I'll show you.

Fist bump between Barack and I

referred to as a terrorist fist jab,

crony of color.

She smiled only when she felt like smiling.

Blue black dress, buttoned at collar

pale green stripes across arms

goblets filled with flowers

and flowers at the flowing hem.

Let me live my life out loud

don't dial it back, don't dilute it

Melia was 7 and Sasha was 10

Two little girls trying to figure it out.

2. All of this, and grand children skiing,

me keeping calendar, them keeping score,

Sammie and Josh get the powder and clouds

Kate and Dheezus get powder and a storm.

And we start all over brown bag lunch at High Camp

a  paper cup with honey through a straw

and back on skis, out to Couloir,

narrow gulley on the mountain--

they want trails through trees,

...be careful of tree wells

I can't get you out of there,

too dangerous, and the next day

four sisters from the liminal world

for two days, telling stories, listening,

trying to catch up. They're not from

Minnesota any more, mama.

Occupation and immersion

from both sides.

On the second day, solo with the youngest,

the one who set these days in motion

dharma girl with a camera, strong in leg

aggressive, wanting the black diamond

down steeps over and through moguls.

We do that getting strong before lunch.

Flying through the Northern Sky

she urges her skis to match

the energy she carries, driving parallel

down fall lines until she reaches

unpredictability. And then lunch

with the home-made tamales

from Maria in our backpacks.

We clean lenses from cameras,

come one, we're going into Storypath/Cuentocamino

where light changes faster than we can see,

every moment different, every moment blind

and exhausting, a chance at it on the other

side of the boundary line. No chance

of avalanche but the return

dangerous for what you might bring back,

nobody will believe you in pure image

reality dissolving in both worlds.

Who can you tell, liminal one?

3. GRANDPA'S MOUNTAIN SCHOOL

This hike in snow

this time, these days on skis

wouldn't be real

without the children.

The mountain time

is all fraud without kids.

Without them it's all pretense.

The steep slowdown began

with Mom, beginning to leave us when grandkids

started arriving. Talking with God

in those early days. I'll try this:

Under two and over 80.

Walk with these ones,

I won't stop until you stop me.

The mountain school brings

its own rules. Heavenly curriculum.

from dream practice.

School, from Latin, Scole.

Leisure. You take the high road,

I'm low road wired this way early.

This road wants to enter the Faerie world

of Scottish folklore. My friend

and his wife send back music from Scotland.

To take the kids out of school,

that simple. Ski buddies for an old man.

Written with objectives with language

to sail through school boards. Teaching,

always subversive. See:

Mythology, Mountains, Literature,

History of the British Isles. Vocabulary:

Glen, Landscape, Scotland.

Mortality, Immortality, Faeries,

Celts, Piper. (Don't isolate Underworld.)

Pre-test: Listen to what the narrator says about the song,

The Bonny Banks of Loch Lomand.

Who wrote the song? Why did he write the song?

What is the high road? What is the low road?

What is the spirit world? How do you get there?

Other questions to ask (depending on your students),

How is time different in the Faerie world?

How much Faerie Time did the man spend in the Faerie world?

How much Mortal Time did he spend with the Faeries?

How had his village changed when he came back?

Can you stop listening to a song as soon as it's over?

How? How not?

Which version of the song do you prefer?

You get the idea. And practical things. On the night before the field trip:

1. pack your clothes. Check for socks, underwear, gloves, lift ticket, helmet and goggles, parka, ski pants and boots. Grandpa has your skis.

2. Pack your lunch. Include sandwich, fruit, cookies, and something for your ski partners.

3. Unit in Scotland and Travel: With your parents, look up the country of Scotland on the map. After you have found Scotland. Locate England and Ireland. Then look up the Cascade Mountains in Washington State. What do you think the differences are between stories in Scotland and stories in Washington State? What do you think might be similar between Mountain Life in the Cascades and country life in Scotland.

4. Go to each member of your family and thank them for one thing that makes them special to you. Ask them for one reason that they are happy that you are going skiing today with Grandpa and your cousins.

5. Read a chapter in your library book before you say your prayers

4. It's above zero with wind.

Before we leave

I check his clothes.

Give him my down quilt

from REI, a good move

We make it to High Camp

Snow's good but all powder

blown off exposed slopes.

One run down Northern Sky

and we're done. Zero degrees

plus wind. Let's go photograph

ice in the river. The other school,

not so good. Nouns? Verbs?

Ski into those trees. Where's the action?

Pee behind that big fir? That's right.

Pee is the action. Dog pee or yours?

Yes, your urine is a noun.

I'm going to pull the truck over here.

Take the camera. Focus on the ice.

Find something in the ice

no one has ever seen before.

Bring back a dozen images.

5. COLD, AND COLDER

Temps below zero in town

for a week. Not good.

Temperature's at home read

on the minus side of zero,

but snow and cloud cover

has me thinking temps might be

warming up. Josh and I

haven't had a solo day

in two years. His twin-tipped

Rascals having to brake

that long for the youngest.

New snow in mountains

signals warmer temps?

We decide on this thought.

Park the Mothership

at Deep Forest Camp

using Little Buddy propane heater

as we dress. Our skis

carry us to the Triple

and over Big White

and we ski to High Camp

for hot chocolate.

Wind has blown any fresh snow

from our best attempt

It's too cold in wind.

Let's explore ice in the river

and see if we can find some images

with the camera.

Skiing with children destroys

abstract evil. I carry two backpacking

shovels in the mothership

for cave-digging. They come

apart. Grandchildren enjoy

caves as much as skis, almost

deciding to eat and sleep inside

before thinking about wet gloves.

Solstice light shows up

for more than two weeks

if one can escape consumerism

and one doesn't have to take

but two steps out of bounds.

I have been in the mountains.

My son lives there. Go early

stay late. Work with available

shadows. The mountain itself

clouded, or six inches of an alpine

fir protruding from ten feet of snow

on just this side of the sun.

The Mothership is zendo

dream shack, part practice,

part koan, an exercise

with insulation, a cave

for children. Spending

the night takes one to the stars

outside of time, stay warm.

Get closer to the ice crystals.

6. SKIING WITH REXROTH

Our campfire is a single light

amongst a hundred peaks and waterfalls.

            --The Wheel Revolves

All morning looking for Rexroth on skis

in his Collected Poems from Hamill,

finding so much else,

the first rip in his mountain tent,

rain coming in, and his take

on Americans looking for passion

by taking in a movie matinee.

Alerted to the recurring dream

by a Facebook entry from Sam,

recalling his winter solstice birthday.

Dragon and Unicorn accompany Rexroth.

He carries Li Po skiing in the mountains.

Both of us, he says, like waterfalls,

and he turns his skis towards black and white water,

maneuvering swiftly over avalanche crystals,

through thickets of dwarf maples

buried in snow. The long poem

a hymn of love countering

anti-Semitism of the time.

Fully present in time, flawed and funny

in the prophetic. Anarchic and mystical.

Opposites of the other.

Lots of cabins, and year-round swimming

in rivers. Nature and contemplation.

Gathering mushrooms in his sixties,

listening for the temple bell,

thinking about his poems,

should have learned more,

should have been funnier.

One of the ones

shitting in golf holes at midnight.

The priceless letter to Williams.

And relentless on organizational men

as well as their wives.

Sympathetic to the young:

"Our substance

is whatever we feed our angel"

cross, sea, stone, flower, angel.

The poem and the poem revised.

The life and the life remembered.

The body and the dark juice of the beloved.

Walking roads, walking forests.

Day and night in both.

As long as you're living for purpose

you're not free. He calls for religious empiricism

describing all experience.

Funny and rude. Antidote

to Eliot and Pound--Rexroth responds

with a quest after the bomb.

Hymn of love, personal against

the impersonal before him,

with all of his faults superbly

placed on the page,

empirical in mystic display:

Picture of a nation gone

stark raving mad.

Keen on the young American male.

Each one knows that very soon the State

is going to take him out and

murder him very nastily.

He is inclined to withdraw from

the activities prescribed for him

in the advertising pages.

Real religion--not believed, but practiced.

Here, in the west, river swimming daily,

tramping in snow, skiing, making love,

a contemplative eliminating the appetite.

7. READING W.S. MERWIN'S GARDEN TIME

WITH GRANDMA AND GRANDKIDS

ON THE WAY TO SCHOOL

Temperature in the car

reads -6 degrees outside

but it's tropical in the car

surrounded by generations

ancestors we lost track of

addressing memory

music entering the right ear

where I'm placed in the trees

of being, the boy who is me

years and decades ago

walking the gravel road

just outside of city limits

in the North Dakota town

BB gun in hand

just past Shit Creek

and that yellow Meadowlark

on the fence post singing

This morning Karen driving

sun coming up on snow-covered

hills the purple sky behind us

me with the Merwin poems

in the passenger seat

accompanying all this

I read one line aloud

turning to the children

but happiness has a shape made of air

Karen saying, Explain that one,

wondrous invitation,

it was never owned by anyone

it comes when it will in its own time

Me trying to hang on to just this

for now it doesn't matter

without in fact getting it

or not surrounded as I am

6 January 2017

8. REMEMBERING OUR SHIELDS

IN DEFENDING SMALL GARDENS

I will teach you, my townspeople,

Williams wrote, talking funeral.

So many ways to grieve in the poem.

Many ways to carry us

through this day. These stars.

So many. What the writers imagine,

listening to him, the President-elect.

Humiliation and unbelief. Our children

watching us in our worst moments,

have never seen anything like this.

Friends talk like GI's

inventing rage with language,

failing, flailing. We listen

to the Buddhists: Vengeance

is a lazy form of grief.

We listen to the Christ-woman,

Partiality, and its one-time

use in the New Testament.

And the Buddhist again,

Relief happens only

when the whole truth

comes out. My own

kinship with the Bodhisattva.

Karen and I talk about

the jeweler, our friend,

and his shields. We carry

them from our studio rooms

to the living room,

hang them again. I'll wear

the quirkiest and queerest pins, too,

all shields, and I'll not leave

the house without them.

Because of Crazy Horse

we know the subversive

as true way, the power in our shields.                  

9. FRAGMENT

On the mountain with children

skiing, dry winter camping

in the mothership. Intense

wonder weather.

Epiphanies of snowflakes, children.

Nothing prepares one

for the return home

six weeks after the election,

thin metal edges sharpened
still holding us to the mountain.

Jim Bodeen

from Winter Solstice, 2016--18 January 2017