The Silk Mountain

ALL THIS TRYING TO DO

New songs and old photographs

from a library book

as she creates the extinct

mammoth from silk, placing

her soft touch

on a mountain of cloth

where she has created from cotton

this volcanic climb.

This the day after

the Empire’s Day.

Wind and rain from the coast

sweeps the man from the mountain

the mountain and the man chose

crossing in each other’s dream way.

There were grandchildren,

and because of this throw of chance,

children, public gaming, and the book

before him, you might have guessed

it was the book during commercial break.
All cut from cloth.

All work and game play.

The worker’s joke: We pretend,

they pretend. We to work.

Them to pay, pretending.

Then, el Salvador.

He writes the lines listening,

song from gone and returned, these months,

now not gone, here, old poems,

ancestors, psalms, the one in Ireland,

coughing, him having heard, been hearing-changed

from the concert. Dazed, dizzy, King-maladjusted,

offering these images, ultimate subtlety,

conscious-induced, and leaving.

Such still descending spell.

Jim Bodeen
5 February-14 February, 2018