HUMILITY BEFORE THE GATES OF BEAUTY

WALKING COWICHE CANYON LATE OCTOBER

15 minutes, 2 songs from home.

Soundtrack from Vietnam the film--

                        after 50 years 

            by Ken Burns/Lynn Novick

Ray Charles remembering America

            how they sang it

                        as kids in school

You are my sunshine   sunshine now

            cool

                        soulshine

Second song a bridge

            Simon & Garfunkel

that water

                        still in trouble

*

Kick off shoes             in socks

            Boots in back              reading

Gary Snyder's poem

            from mid-August

Sourdough Mountain Lookout

            Snyder forgetting

                        what he's read

now in his late 80s

            20 years

after he wrote that poem

                        maybe more

unbound         

            poet     unbound poem

his friends in cities

            his poem resonating

                        pulling on boots

            Each next song

            a buddy

            reaching out

*

Folded,            blank sheet

            in pocket         handy

light pack

            with notebook

and Alexie's mother's

                        passing

            book,

                        gifted/grifted

            me

by Inklings book store owner

            Stopping

                        at first bench

notebook        

                        Sherman

talking             listening

            you don't have to say

I haven't been able

            to open that book

                        more than a month

                        now--

saying

            I had other things

            to read--

                        which is true

Everything good         between us      good

           

I became

                        an inkling

                        when

                        I came home from war

*

ENTRANCES TO HOLY PLACES

MOST OFTEN HUMBLE--OFTEN NASTY

REFLECTING NEGLECT, AND--WELL--

CULTURAL BLINDNESS AND AMNESIA,

EVEN WITH SONGBIRDS, WATER RUNNING MUSIC

Bleached grasses against sun-warmed stone

changes things in a hurry. Time short,

October-pressed, late fall light

guarantees color and shadow

something to savor in every image

slow the camera down

            and--

            Look!

When I say, North Dakota,

it's not a good or bad thing,

it's everything--so much gold

in water and fallen leaves.

Stop and sit by Ron Riehl's basalt

stone. Helen's memorial

midpoint in this canyon hike.

Ten years gone. Ron's dress shirts,

satin, silk. elegant, six of them

from Helen, given to me

for the rare occasion

of vestments--impeccably

cared for, starched formal

and Shakespearean,

like formal titles

set above the poem

a carved typeface, the seraph

itself an artist's signature.

Nature conservancy in a shirt,

remembers this, and more

as trail accesses water

where my dogs drank, cooled

themselves, those two black labs,

Lacy Dreamwalker, Sister Sadie Sadie.

This trail turns around.

Sitting on fallen basalt,

apple, and Mexican cookies,

las canastas, with a drop

of strawberry jam in center.

Walking back the afternoon sun

causes aspen leaves to fall

in front of feet on trail.

Jim Bodeen

26 October 2017