Grandchildren Talking at High Camp

OVERHEARD CONVERSATION

DURING LUNCH AT HIGH CAMP

MY GRANDDAUGHTER EMBRACES

THE WORD WEIRD WITH HER COUSIN

Our parents do everything they can

to make us respectable people, she says,

and they haven't made one single bit of progress.

Jim Bodeen

28 March 2017

"That's the way that go!" August Wilson

THE WAY THAT WORKS

You don’t have to work too hard

with poems that come from me,

I’m kind of like those basketball

players coming out of high school,

the one-and-done ones,

on their way to the pros.

Poems though, aren’t

on their way to anywhere else

and I’m good with that.

Good with my poems too.

They are what they are,

arriving daily. I don’t

always get them written

and that, well that takes

my breath away, yeah,

knowing they came through me

as they disappeared.

Jim Bodeen

22 March 2017

BLUEBERRIES AND DESIRE--EL DESEO Y ANORANZA

AFTER ALL YOU'VE DONE

So many people to thank.

So many whys for gratefulness.

Even with snow melt and flooding.

I've been without blueberries

on my cereal for two weeks.

There's no place to hang up my phone,

but that's not really doing without.

It's Lent. I'm going to try

for the whole 40 days

without blueberries.

Don't worry.

Jim Bodeen

14 March 2017

SETTING OUT TO ACCOMPANY MIGRANT MINORS

DISCOVERING INSTEAD, HOW MIGRANT MINORS

ACCOMPANY OTHERS DURING THE LENTEN JOURNEY

"Do not deprive the alien or the fatherless of justice...

"No le niegues sus derechos al extranjero...

            Deuteronomio/Deuteronomy 24: 17

Having been uncertain of fathers

most all my life, a father came to be

what I wanted most to know.

That's how I started out, walking.

I found myself with others,

mostly women and children.

Not having anything to say,

I listened. Escuchaba, ¿Sabe?

Mostly, they told me what happened.

Mostly, it all sounded true.

What really hit home,

they sounded like what I felt.

This longing..la gran añoranza--el deseo.

Es para El Señor, no? To know a father's love?

Jim Bodeen

14 March 2017

PUT THE BRACELET IN THE URN WITH THE ASHES

"SHALL NO MORE BE DONE?"

            --Laertes, Hamlet

This bracelet, made of Old Man's Beard,

by a child, put it in the urn

with my ashes, living word.

This is my life with children.

This is the full response to adults.

My necktie on Facebook.

I'm the empty chair at sit-down dinners.

Absent during the film discussion--

Dinner with André?

What did they discuss on MSNBC?

Hardball with Chris Matthews.

Each resistor resists for children.

Trees are nominated in all categories.

Lichen Ceremonies ask

who you listen to.

Jim Bodeen

12 March 2017

WINDY MAN ON THE KEYBOARD

Talking with Karen earlier

at kitchen table while writing

post cards to the President

for the Ides of March--Boo!

scared you there, Mr. President,

ah, it's just me in Yakima--

My wife says, No, no, no.

I'm not sending any post cards

to him. I want to get back

into this country when I travel.

Jim Bodeen

14 March 2017

NEEDLES IN A TATTOOED TIME

 COLLABORATORS IN SILVER,

Karen, these lines are threads

running through your quilt,

dropped off at the post office,

and delivered in the mail.

These lines track threads

that make the story suitable

for what comes. These threads

bind us in genealogical mystery,

Biblical. Names written

on fabric with needles

in a tattooed time. Your name

in all of the poems.

Silver can be mined.

Devoted love aims at exhaustion.

Love, Jim

10 March 2017

ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THOMAS A. DORSEY

        --post card to Kevin Miller

These songs, Downward Road, Creep Along Moses,

didn't come to me through car radio,

but the counsel in the North Dakota living room

before television. Not these songs exactly,

Tennessee Ernie Ford and Sons of the Pioneers.

My friend's Mom dies at 97, and I turn to Mavis Staples.

I'm trying to cross the Red Sea myself,

As is my habit, I'm walking the other way.

Still trying to have one more word with Pharaoh.

Precious Lord enters me before memory.

Tommy Dorsey was a trombone player.

I'm halfway through my life before I know.

When I hear who he was, what he lost,

who could I turn to but his song?

Jim Bodeen

EVERY LETTER MAKES A NEW SOUND

an acrobat of ash

            Graham Foust

From the poem in the mag

I've promised myself

slower progress

a re-dedication to all

I have loved so poorly

It's time to see a few movies

take that course

on clowning

this necessary angel

hovering sleeplike

Go meet that friend

for coffee see what he looks like

Jim Bodeen

8 March 2017

THE GOSPEL SOUND

What returns me to myself,

always some song-like shout,

Hey, Good Lookin. The car

salesman, showing me

how to play the music

finds Van  

and I ask him--

Do you know?

He shakes his head. No.

I like the man, too.

Sitting in car world bawling.

How did Ray find me

55 years ago, I was 15.

Jim Bodeen

10 March 2017

TOUCHING THE EARTH

On skis, held to the mountain

by  metal edge steel-sharpened,

penetrating here and now

snow, one more than one

full wonder. Cheek-flushed

dry lips, wind-aided,

Sun in and out, silver-yellow.

Cloud-disc

sky-running dizzy.

Jim Bodeen

10 March 2017

Old Man's Beard and the Imagination with Sammie

Day One of Winter Camp with 9-year old Sammie and Grandpa
downhill skiing, and snowshoeing at White Pass, Cascade Mountains, Washington State.

This is one-on-one country. Skis are part of it. Snowshoes, too, but this is exploration of landscape and the imagination. Childhood spirituality and relationship.

Old Man's Beard

OLD MAN'S BEARD BRACELET

Granted Ski Patrol permission

Sammie says she wants to take a run

through Sniper, which means

through trees, deep snow,

and out of bounds, merging

with a trail back to groomed slopes.

She pulls up under a cluster

of fir trees rich with Old Man's Beard.

As she stretches to reach

hanging pale grayish-green lichens

growing like leafless tassels

anchored on bark, I reach

for the camera. Bad things happen

when you bring out the camera,

Sammie says, and the camera's

running when the snow boarder

comes from nowhere

interrupting our solitude

and is taken out by a broken limb.

I told you, Grandpa. Bad things happen.

"What'd I hit?"

This broken limb. Head and neck.

Declining assistance,

he says he's ok, but he's not too sure either.

Sammie hands me handfuls

of the treasured fungus

for my parka pocket,

Usnea, the scientist's name,

our story for starting fires

if we get stranded in woods

and we ski out of Sniper

having seen what it can do.

Back at camp, in the mothership,

Sammie puts catsup and mustard

in snow, while cooking

on the portable grill. The mothership

warm. When she comes in

she says, Grandpa, close your eyes.

When I've been cleared to look

she's placed a woven fungus bracelet

over my wrist, restoring me

to a more natural state of wonder.

Jim Bodeen

10 March 2017

Storypath/Cuentocamino: Storypath/Cuentocamino: Solidarity in a Child's Po...

Storypath/Cuentocamino: Storypath/Cuentocamino: Solidarity in a Child's Po...: Storypath/Cuentocamino: Solidarity in a Child's Pocket : SOLIDARITY SURPRISES IN A CHILD'S POCKET Shared intimacies, on a post c...storypath/cuentocamino

Storypath/Cuentocamino: Solidarity in a Child's Pocket

Storypath/Cuentocamino: Solidarity in a Child's Pocket: SOLIDARITY SURPRISES IN A CHILD'S POCKET Shared intimacies, on a post card, Governor. What for...https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/

Solidarity in a Child's Pocket

SOLIDARITY SURPRISES IN A CHILD'S POCKET

Shared intimacies, on a post card, Governor.

What form will subversive resistance take next?

This note in verse should get yawns from Trolls,

permitting, perhaps encouraging praise

to land on your desk without patronizing.

The image on the card comes from High Camp,

White Pass, six thousand feet elevation.

Gold fish crackers in a baggie.

Brown bag lunch with grandchildren.

Toy spider from parka pocket. Notebook

message written in a hurry

during bathroom break stuns.

Grandpa's resistance to white nationalists

matches the Governor's, adding mischief.

Jim Bodeen

27 February 2017

OUTRAGE SLIPS INTO THE MAILROOM

AT THE NEW YORK TIMES

     

         --to Paul Krugman

My friend the shield maker sends me

your link early enough that I might get

this card in the box before the truck comes.

Welcome to the post card poems,

featuring bird stamps sorting mail

with feathered mayham. Two poems

imaged on the flip side gives room for new signs.

Sleeping through decades, civilians

might not be awake for your opening question:

Are you angry about white nationalist takeover?

This morning George Bush defends the press!

Two shields hang from my wall. Made of tissue

and balsa wood, embedded 5-ringed rattler's tail.

Add one more question: Do you miss your Constitution?

Jim Bodeen

27 February 2017