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