TRAVELS WITH MARTIN LUTHER

HOW MARTIN LUTHER GOT TO NORTH DAKOTA

is beyond me, and not my call.

Ones followed him, calling themselves

Lutheran, and they begat me.

I spent the morning pulling Chinese Lettuce,

a weed whose name I learned only yesterday.

I'm out west now, old, still tagged

with my beginnings, and a Catholic

imagination (as much as one can be had)

(not being there in the cradle)

for having spent much of my life

around Monks, Benedictine, Trappist,

and Chan Buddhist. That's a mouthful

for someone with prairie roots

(wild roses everywhere still hunker against wind)

and I suppose still being here

you might wonder where this is going.

It's going towards the absolutely other,

what can't be discussed in any sense

and puts me out like it or not

with no insurance, flood, fire, tornado

and plain health if such a thing exists.

I guess I've said too much already.

Jim Bodeen

23 May 2017

MEDITATION IN THE PEW

Be known to us, O Lord,

that we may be your risen

body in the world.

            Lutheran Offertory Prayer

Martin Luther did some

name changing himself.

When he went into hiding in 1521,

he was called Junker Jörg. After

posting his 95 Theses, he called himself

Martinus Eleutherius, Martin the Free.

Cloaca, the Latin word for sewer

is how Luther referred to the world.

In his native German, Luther

called the world a piece of shit.

Jim Bodeen

28 May--31 May 2017

MEMORIAL DAY MORNING

MEMORIAL DAYMORNING

IN THE GARDEN, SITTING BETWEEN

BLOOD GOOD MAPLE AND JACQUEMONTE BIRCH

Watching the Women's College World Series

on ESPN, I hear a coach (whose name I don't get),

say, The team that relaxes first will win,

and send this to my brother, who coaches

women's fast-pitch at the Community College,

and he messages back, That's right.

Memorial Day Weekend in a heat wave.

Ken Burns previews his documentary

on Vietnam, saying, In many ways,

it's our Second Civil War. Karen and I

have tickets to the Seattle opening.

Yesterday my granddaughter asks me

what I've been reading. Children's books,

re-discovering children's literature

isn't only for kids. A biography on

Maurice Sendak. The picture book

is my battle ground, where I hope

to win my wars. The mask that gives

something to hide behind makes it

unnecessary to hide. Max is in his

wolfsuit. Standing on two books

his tail rolls out lazily on the floor.

His stuffed dog hangs from a string

on a clothes hanger to tied bedsheets.

Max fixes it to the wall with a hammer,

making mischief. He's not happy.

I sit in shade of elegant trees, mature

specimens, surrounding the perimeter

of this secular monastery, protected.

A white plastic fence seals this

domestic lot in contemplation. Bonsai

trees in Chinese pots, sentinels,

instruct me to go slower yet, to sit.

Leaf tissue sends signals

traveling at a speed of one-third inch

per minute as they determine

which predators are beneficial,

which ones dangerous. I am slower

than the tree. Do they sense

toxins in humans approaching them

the way the child in mother's womb

anticipates lack of oxygen

as mom inhales smoke

from her cigarette? Dreaming

healthy trees is my work,

I haven't the skill, or will,

to manipulate branches with wire.

A small plane from the nearby airport

drones overhead. Here is Afghanistan

and requests for more munitions.

Jim Bodeen

29 May 2017

MEMORIAL DAY, 2017

            --for Phil and Ron

Where to start? Whitman's Wound-Dresser

sent by a friend? (...Whoever you are,/ follow

without noise and be strong of heart)--unable

to read until after sunset, finding again those doors,

elder poet not missing a single cot,

not one do I miss, firm with each. Start here?

Not where I came in with the day,

threading through scripture, through poems

from sacred fire ring, each stone

brought by special ones, here and gone.

Get to Joseph? Get to the pastor? Jail ministry?

Ones who left town and didn't leave. That joy--

start with the friend? Remember Joseph's

brothers throwing him in the pit, selling him

to traveling merchants? That story, mine, baby!

Hold on! That's my old pastor talking. He'll never

let me keep it, I say, hearing his voice--Joseph

story, enacted here on the cross. No

to Joseph is no to Jesus on Golgotha. I love

this man, and tell him so, hearing his musings,

compromised muse alliterated with the M

in his last name. Dear Ron, musing, I love it so,

this way. How to respond? one asks.

Favored one, racheted up. But something

else, one has to wait for. The familiar

in the confrontation. Voice of the pastor.

Voice of man become friend. Friends voices.

...bloody door slammers...reaches through.

One feels the foot, or mashed fingers.

One hears the bullet as door hits frame.

Door slamming become end of all listening,

end of language. How does one say,

This is beautiful, but Whitman removed the hinges.

I hear him, though, seeing him

with us in the small church, his slow cadence,

developing steps, building the sentence,

Christ-muse at his back or (beside),

urging language forward. Multi-cultural Joseph.

His door swinging both ways.

The impossibility of a slamming door.

The coat always many-colored for me,

nobody left behind. Slamming Joseph

and his brothers right into Jesus,

helping/making/showing something

that can't be done on one's own, showing

self connive with evil. Unable to forgive.

That re-sounds. One hears. We hear. I hear.

And the door slam turns on us, becoming

what else! The door slam turns,--

Bultmannian now, apocalyptic end.

To say anything resembling what is safe

or re-reassuring about faith, any deal-making

with the comfortable. Thanks all,

Memorial Day morning, this head wave

beauty coming at us, a scream to wake me.

Love from here, this being part of how

day carries, old man who was young

on the hospital ward in war. Joseph in the pit

is Christ at Golgotha, my No! part

of the day shout, listening too,

Whitman opening doors of time,

on, on...open hospital doors! ...tear not

the bandage away...hard the breathing rattles.

(Come sweet death! be persuaded...in mercy.)

Cancel the I, validate witness, testimony.

Christ-embraced. Suffering re-sounding abundance.

Jim Bodeen

29-30 May 2017

THE CHILDREN'S SUITE

THE CHILDREN'S SUITE

Fanny did all that work

after she missed with the prince

and later, her husband said,

Good enough, Fanny, Good enough.

What makes a dream a dream?

Doesn't the empirical world

make us also dizzy!

Sitting up, saying to myself,

You're not sleeping!

You're not looking around!

Saying to that longing other

I won't go on until we connect.

How were you rewarded for your silence?

2. Puzzle pieces of cups and saucers rattle

in my hands,

amid all the questions of sadness

influencing how we think of ourselves.

Whose voice matters more?

Tell me what you're working through

Schools are more segregated

than they were when we were growing up

Tell me about you

There we were in a truck

full of green things

The missing piece

is my favorite because

this is the book

my first child fell in love with

We were moving directly

into the path of trouble--

wind itself was picking up signals

from last syllables

coming from our mouths.

Jim Bodeen

24-26 May 2017

LA MARCHA PARA INMIGRANTES EN YAKIMA

NOTES ON THE IMMIGRATION MARCH IN YAKIMA

MAY DAY, 2017

Marcha para los inmigrantes en Yakima, Primer de mayo, 2017. Immigration March in Yakima, May Day, 2017 con mensaje de Mathew Tomaskin, del tribu Yakama. Yakama Mathew Tomaskin's speech before the march is here in its entirety. Movie by Jim Bodeen

NOTAS ANTES DE LA MARCHA

NOTAS DESPÚES DE LA MARCHA       

NOTAS EN MI CUADERNO

NOTAS CANTANDO EN MI CUARTO

NOTAS CAMINANDO CON MI PERRO

NOTAS SOBRE MI CARTA AL SEÑOR,

Notes, too, to the surrounding music

Notes to the Bishop.

I don't know too many, but I know a few.

Notes on my questions before the march.

Running water for everyone the mayor says,

and the woman walking with me laughs,

Show me the faucets.

                                     First question:

Who wrote the song, Precious Lord?

Hint, hint, it wasn't Elvis. And this one,

Can more people sing Las Casas de Cartón

than can sing, Love Me Do?

More notes on the dangers of the poetic line.

Matt Tomaskin said,

We didn't cross that line,

that line crossed us.

Scan that river.

The priest says, No tengan miedo, no tengan miedo.

la iglesia los acompaña. And I have that one on film.

You can take it to the bank. We're here, he says,

para apollar los inmigrantes.

                                                My own notes

from the church bulletin on Sunday, quote the pastor saying,

"Welcome the stranger. The Bible is clear on this." Bien chido, pastora.

My response, also in notes, ask,

If you don't welcome the stranger

how can you sit next to your wife?

El pueblo esta presente. And that's true, too.

el pueblo unido

jamas sera vencido

Empirical facts on that one, still aren't in.

The pastor talked about Jesus being a refugee as a child.

I was sitting in the pew next to a young man

who, like Jesus, had also been a refugee,

crossing, as North American Christians like to say,

as an illegal. I think pastor was talking about Baby Jesus, too.

I happen to know that my young friend,

on one of the four times he crossed, it was night,

he was in diapers, and the helicopter swooped down

with its lights on and got him and his mom.

Like I said to him after church,

if you want to know if Jesus was afraid

add those chopper blades and the big lights coming out of the sky.

No tengan miedo, no tengan miedo.

This is the line that crossed us,

the line we sing about in our song.

Escuelas internados.

These notes from the earth.

Notas desde la tierra.

Somos/as desde la tierra.

Notas en movimiento.

Notes on the move.

I don't think there are shortcuts for any of us.

Those men in ties on tv calling for us go back get back in line.

There's a line makes me laugh. No lloremos. No lloremos.

No hay atajos. No hay.

These notes from the long song walking.

Some of these be mine.

We are so many. We bring so much. We are so, so beautiful.

We're bringing the tortillas?

We're bringing the love.

Jim Bodeen

1 May 2007--16 de mayo 2017

Cheerio

CHEERIO

Maple Syrup

frozen blueberries

honey-sweetened oats

Jim Bodeen

14 May 2017

When We Came Back

AND HOW WE LIVED OUR LIVES

He was student body president

at the university, and became the voice

I followed as he trailed Cacciato

in and out of the war. When the war

opened for me twenty years later

I looked again and wrote my poems,

this time wondering if.

                                    Would we

ever cross stories?

The small college I returned to

after I came home in 1968,

was bringing him to town

for The Big Read. He had been

infantry, 11B in Quang Tri Province

in 69 and 70, had encountered

the ghosts of my time. His unit

had re-entered My Lai

before it had come out,

uncovered itself, the government
pinning guilt

on Lieutenant Calley
what was everywhere.

Qui Nhon, Binh Dinh Province,

bordering Quang Tri from the south

where two evac hospitals,

67th Evac and 85th Evac took casualties

round the clock, from January through July

when bombing stopped,

is where I was--at the 85th.

I write in Jubilee time

across 50 years, remembering

what got written on forms

for every casualty

who made it to us,

the narrative of what happened.

The narrative repeated hundreds

and hundreds of times each month,

repeating itself in numbers

that cannot be named,

named or numbered.

The revelation

in chapter and verse.

Still trying to bring it down to size.

Still trying to see it was that big.

My time. What he wrote about.  

When I was, well, earlier                                                 

DRESSED IN ORANGE BASEBALL CAP WITH BLACK LETTERS

READING HENDRIX IN ALL CAPS, BLACK BLAZER,

SLACKS, SHORT, JUST ABOUT SAME HEIGHT AS ME,

AND A SKINNY GREEN TIE WITH RED SPLOTS,

O'BRIEN HAS BEGUN WHEN I WALK IN TO TAKE MY SEAT

Vivid immediate bang, first words,

how the misfit became the misfit.

...the stink of a half-truth...

   

figure out the context

what he's trying to do, where he's going--

that'll tell you who he is

what I'm trying to do

where I'm going

who I am

What's that in the air

cottonwood

Just into his 70s arms wrapped

around Hemingway's ice berg

Explanation doesn't explain dyslexics don't become killers

Outside that hotel room, that cat in the rain

that woman, the man on the bed

Where the father comes into the story

Drinking at the VFW, drinking at the grain elevator,

Smart things to say so he'd stop drinking

Mother looking out the window

and the young wife and the cat in the rain

The craft of it, bad and mediocre telling

leave no room for the reader

Yesterday, for example,

Walking into this room

I gave my father the book and he told me

it was too much like real life

The other one had his Hemingway

Ice bergs and vanishing fathers

I gave up writing sentences

I committed myself to the sentence

What had once been fun for me hardened.

Where I tried to be me let up

Now once in a while

I walked out

just walked

this is how

it once was

it once was

how is this

this once was

this was once

This meditation in green

this sideways awful

What wants to be kept

and doesn't belong

For me it all mirrored

young black girls boarding

the city bus

with their

God bless

BONSAI SENSEI LECTURES FOR EIGHT HOURS ON WATERING TREES

After I returned from Japan, these trees

Sensei said, Wire it like this, so that the branches will follow

He looked at it and said, It's all wrong, it's all wrong, this is the worst,

and just like that I was no longer a soldier

Ultimate health

resisting everything

we're going to do to it

it needs to be healthy

Dr. Earth

with its good bacteria

equal numbers

Work around the poet

once a month

with little hills of food

The three things

trees need

water retention

oxygen

lava, pumice, akadama

Moving soil cuts roots

Every pot needs top soil

to stabilize

Jim Bodeen

25 April--12 May 2017

EARLY RAIN

MUCH LATER

Still morning

Trees so tall, reminders

in these moments

beyond their breathing

Jim Bodeen

11 May 2017

Walking the Yard

WALKING THE YARD

Before I do anything (after waking)

Before I do anything

each day

I walk the yard

Returning to the house

I sit for coffee

and write in the notebook

walking the yard

Jim Bodeen

14 April-9 May 2017

Jubilee Teacher, That One

THAT TEACHER

What's his name I

don't know his name

but when I came back

from the war

in 1968

I took his class

in the evening

a drama class

at the community college

that one

I'd been out of the country

two years

he called me into the hall

before class started

Come on, he said

I'm going to show you

how to walk

into the room

Jim Bodeen

6 May 2017

Fingers in the Topsoil

MAKING TOPSOIL FOR NEWLY PLANTED BONSAI TREES

Wet long-fibered natural moss

place strategically around trunk

of tree, holds moisture, establishes

the system for what comes next

Its relationship with pumice

and lava rock instant  Wet

fibers of the Sphagnum

lay around the tree

like tiny branches not

unlike a skeleton sweat lodge

Now the screened mosses

will fall from your fingers

into pockets beside the soil mix

This part fingers from moss

to soil cushions, sensuous, spongy

Jim Bodeen

28 April 2017

                                                                                           

BENEATH SPARKLING STAR RIVER

Clouds in western sky

drop rain as I settle, begin

freeing the Shimpaku Juniper

from black plastic root trainer,

preparing to cut roots young

before placing it in the shallow

unglazed clay pot. Securing

the tree on lava rock

with wire and chop sticks

followed with a mix of pumice,

red lava and akadama from Japan

is the horticulturist's art.

A thin layer of top soil,

1/8 inch deep, ground

from dense matted moss

on Chinook Pass, one cell thick,

and sphagnum collected from bogs

for water management.

Millions of naked spoors.

Rain drips from my hat

unexpectedly in this desert valley

in this outdoor sanctuary,

this studio refuge

where I sit between

Columnar Hornbeam

and Ed Wood Half-Moon Maple.

Jim Bodeen

26 April 2017

SCRATCHING THE SURFACE STONE

Have I sat for hours

Insight come and bees buzz gone

Incessantly still

Jim Bodeen

3-6 May 2017

DOG WITNESS AND DISTRACTIONS

I BELIEVE THAT I COULD GO ON

LIKE THIS FOREVER, THAT THIS

IS DIRECT RESPONSE, EACH LINE

EACH STANZA CORRECTLY WEIGHTED

TO THE DISTRACTION BEFORE ME

My father died and I could never

do enough before or after to make

Mom happy. So the horrible things

happened, and surprise of surprises,

I’m greeting the mountain

that happened my way. The answer

to the man’s question

is dealt with directly

in every poem I’ve ever written.

I write poems every day.

I don’t remember many

of the poems, and most of the time

I don’t think one is any

better or worse than others.

Nobody has had better friends

or more teachers, ways to use

language and look at river stones.

I had to bring my mother’s voice

under control, and wait for years

and years before I could hear

my father speak. He didn’t talk

but he showed up off to one side.

My wife didn’t leave me

and I learned across half

a century that praise

is neither here nor there—

try telling that when

worship committee wonders

what wine works fast

in the blood. Downstream,

downstream. The gardener

who captures my compost

air exhaling can be to the body

that wants to move, how

maintaining the breathing

mirrors day and night.

How much more than enough

money helped, how each allocated

month of the GI Bill

contributed as much as the war,

how the failed Windsor knot

along with my complete lack

of funny slid under ambition.

I could have been more or less

one word inserted into the title.

Before turning in, changing

the tone, the manager moves

addressing the outcome.

Why did I become the cook

I am? What law of discernment

showed me that walking away

is another fall into word. To-

wards. Where else to back?

Abyss itself. Insisting this too

is life without a net,

cataloging ghosts

who died at 39. When did

that start?  That one man

said empathy defined treasure

the woman who called it disease.

The walk. The run. The steam.

Nakedness and transparency in trees.

The arthritis and the pruners.

Listening and listening.

Jim Bodeen

2 May 2017

Welcome Back

WELCOME BACK

When calls began arriving,

men angry and women traumatized,

I found myself first engaged,

then immersed. Sometime later

I knew I had been here before.

Belief within me, the letter

triggers the poem going beyond.

Called out by God or natural forces,

undetected and undetonated

bombs hidden in my brain

exploding. When I recovered,

cleared by modern medicine,

[And the Machi in Chile reading urine],

I was left with no filters.

Some of the blindness mine.

30 years ago. 50 years ago.

The Again and again of it.

That became the journey,

walking into Safeway,

overheard comments in pews.

Arrival of the autocratic state

slides in with a sigh of relief

in the community. You can

hear people say,

from this election: Now

can we have some rest?

Can we just move on? First as question,

repeating itself as imperative,

Just move on, already!

People leaving fingerprints everywhere.

Would I still drink from the common cup?

I remember Christians returning

to the tiny cups in droves

during the height of the Aids epidemic.

Did I have anything in common

with the faithful? I know how you vote.

You've been fingerprinted by your coffee group.

Your doctor files your medical records.

Everyone in the choir knows who's giving blow jobs.

Where did you put your Constitution?

Living the unfiltered life returns.

I recognize it in the young, going active,

for the first time in their lives.

Robert Moses walking through Africa after SNCC.

Start the poetry now. Crazy Horse dressed

in clothes made in China.

            Anyway,

What a word, that. Anyway

you can. Make that way.

Make a way any way you can,

Way Maker.

Jim Bodeen

25 February 2017

Little trees hunker down, 

make oxygen from toxins. 

Breathing naturally, 

their tiny bursts erupt 

already enlightened, 

resisting. Guerillas 

whose root system 

is the youngest part 

of their being.

Jim Bodeen
May Day, 2017