A DAY WITHOUT IMMIGRANTS
IN MY TOWN [YAKIMA, WA]
When I got to work nobody was there,
the Packing House manager says,
in coffee line at Starbucks. 300 workers,
none of them showed. I turn to my wife
receiving a message from our daughter,
kindergarten Spanish teacher.
8 students in class. Resistance goes
public again. School Supt opens email
when he gets to work. All undocumented,
residents, citizens, all world immigrants:
Do not attend work. Do not shop online,
Do not attend work. Do not shop online.
Do not attend class. Do not buy gas--
Do not send children to school
At the two high schools:
One down 770 students.
The other down 600 students.
The elementary school: down 267.
That's like everybody, the manager says.
My community.
A day without me.
Jim Bodeen
16 February 2017
THE 15-FOOT, 2000 POUND WEIGHT-BEARING CHAIN
--for Joe Sanders
Big dog that I pretend to be,
One-ton Dodge off-road
4-wheel--and taking it deep in,
dodging what I don't know
under hood. When
word arrived--
hyphenated and divine--
Storypath-Cuentocamino,
excavation took place.
Chile, Peru, Mexico and Spain
cleared the way, ensuring traction,
empowering English
through dialect and Spanish,
through dialect and Spanish,
giving me a way to work
from the other place.
Tasks in attention.
Notebook and camera.
Two years at the threshold.
A dozen years later,
eyes practicing wonder skills,
gravity settles mothership
in snow. I didn't have
the great chain to free
all that spun, but that laughing
friend knew, and knows
links necessary
for a truck to match a vision.
Jim Bodeen
15 February 2017
THE FORMER STUDENT
SENDS A POST CARD FROM PARIS
The Chicana from Yakima marries
a man from China in Hawaii.
After visiting both families,
they set off for a year of travel,
circumambulating the world.
Paris, however, is too great of a pull,
and they settle. News from this country
isn't good, and the Yakima woman
who was my student talks with her
French tutor. Trump is
narcissistic,
but he's much smaller
than Napoleon,
and doesn't share Napoleon's
stature.
Jim Bodeen
6 January 2017
FOR MY SKIING GRANDDAUGHTER
WHO KEEPS A JOURNAL AND READS
Looking at your photo this morning,
the two of us on skis, somewhere between
High Camp and Snow Devil, my mind
recalls your reading of Dr. King
on his birthday. You are one who lights
up the room opening books. Reading poems
before breakfast, I found these lines,
There's no idea that
can lock the lightning up,
but she who's seen the
light can't live without it,
by a poet named Montale. I hear you interpreting
Harry Potter, sounding like a professor
at the university. You ski like that too--
a ballerina on skis, graceful with words.
Grandpa Jim
8 February 2017
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