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
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