LETTER TO JIM & ERICA FROM YAKIMA MARGINS
I. Your Romero shirt's in rags? I'll send you mine
after one more wear. I feel like I've been bawling
all over town. J flew to El Salvador Sunday
to see her father. Remember talking to him
on the patio that afternoon after the Habitat
build? What's your favorite word, building
Monsignor's portrait on that shirt? Mine's
del Pueblo, in
narrow white letters
between the eyes. I'm going to re-claim
a word, hoping it arrives from the heart.
Sad. Joyful, too.
How funny La Raza
can be in tough times. One of the young
Mexicanos on Facebook says, Does
Taco Time have to go too? And we have
a new Beatitude: Blessed are the Dreamers,
from a pastor in Yakima, niece of Ken Kesey.
Sometimes I get great notions too.
What shall they inherit? She leaves that to us.
Another question: What do White people get?
James Baldwin, talking about the price of the ticket:
As long as you see yourself as white,
you force me to be black. I remember that day
we parted in El Salvador, you handing me
the Wendell Berry poem, last words,
Practice resurrection. I'm trying.
We peeled back some skin on that build.
Me, in Jon Sobrino's words: Where's God?
And his response: Don't know, but not in the Empire.
I think he means God doesn't sit his ass
on gold toilet seats. I believe Sobrino
gets his faith from Dreamers. I've re-read
his letters to Ellacuria in Heaven.
Getting toilet seats for all shouldn't be that tough.
I'll get you a letter. Karen sends her love.
We miss you and Erica so much.
II. You just celebrated your 11th?
In a tent? Tent traditions.
You and Erica plus those two dogs
won't leave any room for Cane Ridge.
Kentucky, 1801, by the Muddy River.
I don't know if that's right side
of revival or not. On our 11th
I got Karen Nordic candle holders,
wrote a six line poem
of love's legacy. Ashes fill
our mouths out West, nine States on fire,
9.
We're
still trying,
wrapping our arms
around a half century of America:
From Nagasaki to Washington Ave.
The neighbor behind me flies [incorrectly]
a Nationalist flag made in China. At Cane Ridge
20,000 gathered outside Lexington
hungry for communion,
Christianity at a low ebb, people
falling, groaning, praying. 1801.
I imagine your dogs howling.
No Cane Ridge in Yakima.
Keep dreaming. Your tent waves
to us from the East Coast.
III. Ashes in our eyes today.
Ashes from burned-up trees.
How should we carry them now?
Where shall they be dispersed?
And who will lead us in ceremony?
Is there no more to be done?
Is this all?
Shall no more be done?
IV. Just before 7.
Working on a poem. Revising.
Becoming more 4-legged in the poem
becoming more one with trekking poles,
descending, shortening, full-weight bearing,
elbows becoming knees,
baskets a kind of hoof.
Studying goats in pictures.
Ridding the self of thought.
Riding the goat down over stone.
Toward alternative witness.
The common goal lived in common.
V. I think often of the hour
Erica and I spent in the basement coffee house
on Front Street drinking tea. How an hour like that
changes the world. Our time, Jim,
wilder in its free-wheeling--
Jesus loves you so
fucking much!
arriving with such perfect pitch.
VI. Last week Bruce and I
drove to Quincy to see an old pastor,
the one with the jail ministry, 86,
who finds Jesus most authentically
in Flannery O'Connor [What Americans
want is Christ without consequences.]
O'Connor dead at 39 as was MLK.
The three of us met at the Idle Hour
(let that one ring in your ears),
and talked about men and meaning.
We are at best, rusty tools in the hands of the master,
our friend says. He thanks us for visiting him.
That was Jesus riding with you to visit me
in my darkness. Bringing him forward.
Recalling my visit from a decade ago, he says,
You asked me then where it says that in the Bible.
It's Matthew 5:16: Let your light so shine before men
that they may see your good works and glorify your Father...
From here he walks us to freedom.
John 14: 6.
No one comes to the Father except through me.
Warning or promise? Has it ever been
anything but a bomb? Hell and fury
the likes of which we've never seen.
Did he know this is why we came?
This is the gracious promise he says.
"No human being
will ever find her self,
no human being will ever find himself, alone,
in the presence of God. I'll be there at their side.
That's right. That's what Jesus said."
VII. On the 26th of March, this year,
I began keeping this notebook.
(I'm transcribing from it now, from last night.)
These notebooks. Three of them now,
beginning two months into the Trump Presidency.
Not a detailed notebook of Trump,
but a notebook, a commonplace book,
during his time. They do not make it
a notebook of Trump. This the third,
as I've mentioned. Should I continue,
I asked myself on finishing the first two.
Haven't I made my point? Checking
on this date tonight, 26 March 2017.
I come out to the Rattler Room
where I write to check on this fact.
I'm surprised to discover
this was only two months
into his Presidency.
I thought I began it much later
into his term. It all seems so long ago.
Only five months here.
VIII. I return to you both here, in closing,
sending our love. Greet your parents.
This a day of preparation for us, a day of leaving.
Steve was here early for tea. Francisco called,
drove his bike up. He leaves Saturday for the UW.
He pledged Delta Upsilon, clear and open.
Making men of character. Jazmin
is in El Salvador visiting her Dad.
She'll be back in time to start school with Francisco.
Karen and I leave in the mothership tomorrow.
Wish you were here to bless it with sage.
Art quilt collage workshop at Emandal Farm
north of San Francisco. I'm off grid that week
with Thoreau's journals. Then the city.
We found a beach that runs buses into the museums.
Love you guys so much. Jim
2-7 September 2017
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