FROM 50 YEARS AGO BETWEEN KAREN AND I,
I COME ACROSS THE LETTER TO KAREN, WRITTEN
THE DAY AFTER MARTIN LUTHER KING'S ASSASSINATION
Opening these letters I didn't know what I'd find.
This one, beginning 6 Apr 68, from a stenographer's
notebook, page torn from ring wire, inserted
upside down into typewriter, Hi love. Anything
here? I'm wondering, the date not triggering
the war mirroring ours, in America. I write
from the 85th Evacuation Hospital,
Qui Nhon, South China Sea: After Tet,
when we had our turn in Hell. Language
of the times, to Karen: ...terrible
about
Martin Luther King.
Last night I sat in
with four colored guys
and on the radio
we listened to the
eulogies and sorrow
expressed concerning
the assassination.
These guys were hurt
pretty hard and they
are not going to take
it lying down. They
are young and
millitant and deserve
the rights that we
have. They are going
to riot all over this
summer. I don't know
how bad that it will
be. I want you
to be very careful. We
can do more
for civil rights by
just being ourselves
to all of the people
that we meet.
That's what the letter says. No changes
in spelling or punctuation. That's it.
Who I was at 22. In June, Bobby Kennedy
will be shot as we prepare to rotate home.
What's still to come
walking into November, 1967.
Not as many folks around as I ask
my question: Where
were you in 1968?
Believe me, politicians emptying
the treasure chest for the powerful
know their numbers. So many touchstones.
I cite twocca every chance I get: Gary Snyder
in Mountains and Rivers Forever, this:
Then the white man
will be gone.
His follow-up. White man is not
a racial designation, but a name
for a certain set of mind--when
we all become born-again natives
of Turtle Island. James Baldwin
before and after: No
label, no slogan,
no skin color...The
Price of the Ticket.
As long as you think
you're white,
I'm going to be forced
to think I'm black.
It is the unalterable
truth. All men are brothers.
A painting of Coltrane hangs in my room,
inspired by A Love Supreme, painted
by the artist Rex DeLoney, given to me
when he went home to Little Rock.
A love supreme. Acknowledge it,
bright paint. When my friend dies,
what I send his son. When I'm alone,
what I listen to at night. Returning, then,
some of us didn't go back to that country.
Jim Bodeen
15 November 2017
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