I owe you a letter, James Jones:

MEDITATION ON RE-READING

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, JAMES JONES,

AFTER 52 YEARS, 49 YEARS AFTER MUSTERING OUT

Fuckleberry. How could you not love

a young man given that name? Fuckleberry,

and his friends who named him. Damned,

James, what to say? Yesterday, 60 pages to go,

on Highway 12 with Karen, driving to White Pass

for garden rocks with stops on the Tieton River,

trying to tell it straight up and soft.

How the book came into my hands. I was 20,

EM in Panama. Damned from here to there.

With Kipling's Barrack Room Ballads

in my duffle bag. Going like this:

Robert E Lee Prewitt, boxer to bugle--

Arlington, enlisted, to remain one

at a cost: to Treatment, Break him,

to the whorehouse, American loneliness,

scraping dead skin to blood cells--

The Re-enlistment Blues, collaboration

before the bust. Busting justice, busting

what gets protected, busting what's phony

in pride, busting all the way to the Stockade,

Stockade itself, a halfway house for trustees,

a test to get to Barracks II and Jack Malloy.

Dropping down the anchor rung by rung.

Anchor to Chancre. Honest Injun.

To citizenship. This far. Citizen.

To John the Baptist and Jesus.

And further. To Fuckleberry's,

I'll do it. Sure. I'm game.

Fuckleberry's Blues. America's

Game and Gone. 'Muricun.

Enlisted man blues. That song

written out. Sitting around. Scraps of paper.

The 10 cent notebook. Let it go

and come back to it. Soljur

carrying the confederate name

written out for the first time, GI.

And Top. I tell Karen in the car

about loving and hating, this Catullus,

tearing up his commission,

Fuck this shit. Prewitt's final

moment in the sand trap, Top returning

to the squad car, reaching between seats

for a dead man's only treasure,

a single poem in a cheap notebook,

The Re-enlistment Blues.

Catch 22 written here first.

Drink your Castor Oil.

This is some kind of Army.

Books to read in a GI's shirt pocket.

Jim Bodeen

1967 Panama--2017 Yakima

Falls, Butterflies, Children and Politics

COMET FALLS HIKE, MOUNT RAINIER

My brother only slows

for Salmon Berries, ripe and orange,

mid week, mid August, he knows

this mountain where we bring

what we've lost, feet on the ground,

paradise with switchbacks

and elevation gain, only

a couple of miles off road,

and after a record snowfall

we arrive in time

harvesting water and light.

So much light inside the light.

Milton talked about this

and we remember, this light

interpenetrating light.

He was talking about angels

and how they make love

without elbows and knees.

Water over us and on us,

my brother surrounded,

light-soaked, takes one step

towards the vision

receiving him. He wobbles

once, unbalanced,

trekking poles

holding him to stone.

Jim Bodeen

15-18 August 2017

COMET FALLS PHOTOGRAPHER

Her tripod set between trees

after the last switchback

looking into the falls

in her early 20s.

My brother and I

stop for a last look

from where we stepped

behind the fallen world.

I'd love to take your picture

she says. I have uncles

with your same names.

In the last year

I lost 95 pounds.

I'm still learning how to see.

Jim Bodeen

18 August 2017

BRINGING GRAND DAUGHTERS

TO PARADISE ON MT. RAINIER

Roots and their surfacing network

make steps for children

and hiding places for chipmunks.

They know trail mix

in their packs can't be shared.

They walk the trail

the week caterpillars arrive

in wild flowers. It becomes

their trail mission to keep each one

from being stepped on.

Walking with pastoral ears, prophetic voices,

they hear rumors.

How many senators again?

They're ten.

What's real and what's fake

is sharp, nothing blurred,

Their selfless acts of witness

bring butterflies into our politics.

Jim Bodeen

August, 2017

THE LONGEST DAY

SATURDAY IS THE LONGEST DAY

Thoreau, lost in Mt. Katahdin fog

caresses us all in the wildest moment

of his life--and this is recorded,

news lovers. The dream

I wake from prompts me, Don't laugh.

Jesus man meets me at the Railroad Station

that sells five dollar coffees. He promises

passing rain showers, Don't miss the chance

to be re-freshed. This is the Gospel Hour.

From the back yard garden I hear

train whistles, feel the stress of bonsai

trees during the record heat wave.

Jim Bodeen

12 August 2017

STEPPING ON STONES

THE SCHOOL IN THE STEPPING STONES

Block by block through the Imperial City.

Tagged by medics when they were brought in,

the words for where, "...Near Hue,"

during a firefight. We were south,

in Qui Nhon, the evac hospital

that took GIs hit during this particular

Year of the Monkey. January 31, 1968.

I'm skiing in Japan on R&R

a resort called Zao, near

where Basho walked on his way

North. Ignorant of Basho,

ignorant of Hue, but those mortars

hitting the airfield on my return

remain with me still. Basho

where I walk, black pine, rock,

running water, book.

Ink in every book. I stood

on the citadel eight years ago,

returning, trying to imagine

revolution with modern weapons.

Impossible task. One who stood

with us in the rain, fell,

broke her ankle.

Tourist evac'd from the Sacred City.

My job in Qui Nhon.

Trying to imagine.

Moral injury is language

we use today, listening now

to casualties from all sides.

Jim Bodeen

9 August 2017

Lines for Eternity, Lines for SGT Major Pendergrass

LINES FOR THE GINGER MAN, LINES FOR ETERNITY:

REMEMBERING SERGEANT MAJOR THOMAS PENDERGRASS

He flew to Seattle to be with me on my birthday.

50 years ago tomorrow. Career soldier.

The Ginger Man, Hemingway. James Jones.

Father, too. Like Writer-Dad.

Pendergrass by the Hemingway statue in Pamplona

in the black & white photo in my hand.

But before that. SFC Pendergrass,

already in Panama, when I arrived.

I was 20. And how lost?

Heaven help the ginger man.

He gave me that book.

The Ginger Man: I'm sick of people.

The less I have to do with them

for the rest of my life the better.

I don't care if I die. Had I found

that book? Pendergrass put it in my hand.

And then brought James Jones'

From Here to Eternity. Just months

before, in basic training, I was locked

into my uniform by Army chaplains,

saying, We believe in this war.

P-Grass, drinking 15 cent beers with me

in the Em Club while I learned

my way in the government hospital.

I hadn't only lost as a pacifist.

I'd lost Karen by being a fool.

I found myself in Robert E. Lee Pruitt, Jr.

Pendergrass cancelled his own writing

to listen to mine. I memorized Stevens

and Eliot, reciting; I found the difference

between triage and evacuation. Only way

to Karen went through Viet Nam.

We could drive. With orders, in a VW

through Central America--crossing

into Mexico from Guatemala on a Sunday.

Border closed until we paid la mordita.

Seeing Oaxaca from the South.

Where are we? The career soldier

would get us to Texas, where we

would both go home. But this soldier-

writer GI, would fly to Seattle,

50 years ago today, to be with me,

with Karen, with family on my birthday,

my 22d, born the day Fat Boy

dropped the bomb on Nagasaki,

making me sicker now than it did then.

Mom and Dad were at that dinner.

But it was the soldier who flew

with me to California to ride the 747

to war.  Heaven help the Ginger Man.

Get out and push like the rest.

The war would come to us at Tet

at different places. Evacuation

would become sustaining marrow.

Evolving, organic. Hand carried,

hand delivered, by a soldier carrying books.

Jim Bodeen

8 August 2017

POEMS TO BURN

MOULDERING HEADBAND

FOR THE AUGUST MOON

Sing crumbling song

Soothe the throat

with some butterscotch

Jim Bodeen

THE MAN ON THE CORNER

WHO FLIES THE TRUMP FLAG

INCORRECTLY BELOW THE STARS AND STRIPES?

He's a hire.

Jim, you don't know that!

I do.

It was revealed.

I trust the source.

Jim Bodeen

THIS WAKING

He couldn't shake it

He couldn't make it be known

This hot parched burning

Jim Bodeen

AFTER A BICYCLE RIDE

EARLY SUNDAY MORNING

            "I'm so sorry you have a neighbor

    who flies the Trump flag." A friend

It's easier to drive by

the flag

than it is to enter

the sanctuary

and sit in the pew

Jim Bodeen

DREAMING THE SYLLABLE COUNT

I was there but I wasn't

I wasn't there but I was

The body is the bread of heaven

The place where God speaks

Jim Bodeen

August 3-8, 2017