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