CIRCLING MYSTERIES
Cousins planning the night clock
for morning ride, last days of the tens,
requiem for childhood, pump those tires
with air Grandpa, find the right pump
we have to leave when it's still cool,
all the bread in bread drawer
backpacked, we must feed the geese
Sun-smoked Randall Park
Dheezus and Sammie!
on bikes through pear orchards
and ponds, Garden Poems
by Everyman's Pocket Library
and the Emperor of Water Clocks
lifting the air in my tires. Oh, yusef,
John Hollander say it, This
was all there was to
keep,
and there was nothing
to lose,
Hang on to the morning, Grandpa--
yusef counting times, all the time,
between one divine spirit
and the next detour, he wants
to fly home through doubt
talking about rise and fall
knowing the two Hopkins'
which makes him the soloist
in my notes of breathing angels
I'm on a picnic bench
green paint flaking to pine boards,
about 50-50 I'd guess, my eye
rests on the exposed knot
shaped a bit like a cyclone,
asking, How could that
ever have been a branch of tree
It's mid-August, West Coast
on fire, including White Pass,
Miriam Fire uncontained along
Crest Trail, one drainage
from Shoe Lake, where our
young family hiked before
a storm, and Goat Rocks
out of McCall Basin, that old man,
that one time before us, the Goat Rocks!
Grandpa! the girls cry, We're going
out on the trail with bread,
the ducks following us listen
to the quacks and you know
where we are
Rock
Me, Mercy,
yusef titles a poem for Newtown,
Mercy:
Cannonball Adderley alone
with that word, three times, coupled
with the spoken, adversity,
This morning I leave my wife
sleeping alone with two older grandkids
end of summer, sleeping in living room
on cots, the Mexican man coming down
the walk, grey workpants, huaraches,
long-sleeved turquoise dress shirt,
where he's been in orchards, a limp,
a hitch, a bad giddy-up, girls returning
breaking out food, a package of Oreos,
a banana, two nectarines, Dheezus asking,
Do you want to walk or bike,
these girls counting steps, cousins, 10 and 11,
at the end of this slipping time
bringing so much joy,
so much of the so much more,
Their mothers, my twin daughters,
teaching children in two languages,
Matthew Arnold writing
from Kensington Gardens, any line
would fit on this page, Mercy
arriving like three cannonballs
Jim Bodeen
15-16 August 2018
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