The Moon Over This House

NATIVE SUN SUMMER

Dishing with Karen

Snow Giant Peach on ice cream
Spoon leaf fall moon glow

Jim Bodeen

24 September 2018

Found Poem in Mandela's Letters

FROM THE LETTER TO LT. BADENHORST, CO,

ROBBEN ISLAND PRISON,

FROM NELSON MANDELA, 4 APRIL 1971

INFORMING HIM OF TWO MISSING FOOLSCAP NOTEBOOKS

FROM HIS CELL, HOLDING COPIES OF HIS CORRESPONDENCE,

AND,

            When you're pressed for information,

            you know you've got to play it dumb.

                        Leonard Cohen, Waiting for the Miracle

My silver Parker T Ball pen has also disappeared

I ask you to investigate the matter and have this article replaced

Give me the information and the date when they will be returned to me

Jim Bodeen

10-24 September 2018

EPIPHANY

AFTER ALL THIS TIME, THIS

She was going out

as I was going in

you were walking

with me, with

your own questions

It was the same door

all of us going

in the same direction

She would understand

others too, others

not so much

Jim Bodeen

19 September 2018

DON'T WEAR THEIR T-SHIRTS

IDLER'S PRACTICE:

Earlier in my life I used to be Sheriff of Three Corners,

walking from the curb garden into the street

holding my wooden rake, forcing traffic

to slow down as drivers tried cutting through

the stop light on Tieton. Now my practice

is to hold the hose, ignoring the underground

sprinkler system while remaining in the yard.

This is not a treatise on the weird,

although I've been told there's a t-shirt

riffing on the Beatitudes, Blessed

are the Weird, which triggered things like

up the down staircase,

book that came looking for me at 13,

had I left them, even then, the writers?

not dreaming as much as knowing

Jesus lived daily with the same shit.

And what about John? John

in the water up to his waist,

saying, Not me, not me, settle down!

Time traveling through music

and beyond the left hand, that first

Christian congregation, criminals

with square hand-forged nails hammered

through tissue and bone, one

with the man in the middle abandoned

and ensuring that the pews would fill

and empty, over and over again

searching for the easier way,

they're pretty fucking weird too,

two thousand years of them,

Easy, easy, let's try it through here!

Mundane. Solipsistic. Take a year,

take 1968, [Not fair! Not fair!]

Just the chance that coming of age

here, makes normal participation

in American democracy impossible.

Beyond that walking in the unread,

and passed over texts, gum-grease,

protolapsis uh de cutinary linin',

who could Zora send that one to

beside bilingual Langston

laughing into fragmented normality

momentary home, Don't pass me by,

Just one plea, No more, No more,

and how many ever asked to see

the badge, those tin pins, copper-

wired by the Dada jeweler, weird!

Weird! Weird! Hose you. You.

Jim Bodeen

10 September 2018

What we don't see coming

DREAMED WATER WORD STAYS

            for Lee Bassett

All morning playing with mulch,

composting North Park

while looking for misplaced books,

working on poems--eating sausage

leftover from breakfast dinner

three nights ago. Douse

in green Tabasco, what I found

when I couldn't find deliverance

for the damned, confounding

Karl Barth hounds me defending

Bultmann again. Bultmann

defend, confess, send and receive,

as riddles increase the graces.

Here in the notebook, the lost books

bring forth Mountain Home,

Hinton's first anthology of Chinese poets,

and because I'd just read his translations

of Su Tung-p'o in his big book following

a study of Burton Watson's of the same,

I am released of my search for Barth.

Hinton says some things differently

here, than in the big anthology

with the white cover, and says a couple

of things, twisted a smidgeon, so fine,

and this, on water: consciousness,

wandering like water, how East Side Su's poems

all enact in daily life. And this, in being clear,

water has an inner nature

enduring all transformations. Perhaps,

he says, (What do you think, Gary?)

the greatest rivers and mountains poet,

but here it is again, what he says

in both places about Su's poems

taking shape like water

from all it encounters. His poems

weave together the empirical world

and wandering thought.

                                    I will finish

this, staying with it, in a minute,

but what is foremost on my mind here

is this poem from my old friend Lee,

After you're gone, we have you here,

Lee Bassett, masked as a bibliophile

in Seattle, a monk, the abbot?

from Bright Insight Monastery

traveler of Tokaido Road with Ed Cain,

painter and heaven walker,

and though I've known Lee

for decades, I didn't know this,

his Tokaido Road, until, wandering

off road myself, I saw the prints

in the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh

while running down photos of One Shot

Teenie Harris, and his images of black service men

and their families, that's Joe Louis!

this when I was walking Hill District

looking for clues to August Wilson,

clues I found by the way! Oh!

Snow Tracks! This, of course,

I find in his poem. Lee Bassett

is a rivers and mountains poet,

and not only that, Bassett and Su,

both sitting poets! sometimes

to the detriment of their own health!

Sometime I have to stop them.

Who is talking here, which one.

I thought I was looking for Burton Watson's

line here, but I was wrong again--

this one in Hinton:

and tomorrow morning, long after we've set out again for the day,

he'll still be here among the white clouds of this poem on the wall

Watson and Bassett and Hinton and East Side Su

I didn't see any of this coming

Here's my old wife back from the store, ah Vieja,

Su never needs the last word, Hinton says,

I smile remembering us young

how long it takes to know a poem!

Wild thoughts, wild thoughts,

no, wild nights, wild nights,

because each gesture in the poem is wild

Don't rattle the kids trying for clever

turn the ruin to compost and wonder

holding us closer than any flower

Jim Bodeen

10-11 September 2018

ON PERFORMING IN A SPECIFIED WAY

SUMMER FARE

The Paul Friday 5B

variety first developed

in 1996, in Michigan

by Paul Friday. Famous

for his Flaming Furies--

peaches numbered in order

of when they ripen

in relationship to each other.

Number 5 signifies this one

was 5th to ripen of 27 kinds.

In Colorado it can be the first--

49 days before standard Elbertas,

118 days after full blossom.

Elbertas are used as the standard

for measuring ripeness of all peaches.

The rich, red color of Paul Friday 5B

signals to its value. A semi-cling peach

not a free stone. We're in Yakima,

one song away from Johnson Orchards.

The longer a peach remains

on the tree the sweeter the taste.

Topaz is worth the risk of frost

coveted for its aromatic smell.

It's the middle of September

and I've brought home four peaches

from Johnson's. Snow Giant.

White-fleshed, Snow-white,

weighing in at a pound each,

easily bruised, sweet whether firm or soft,

often thrown into trash

until the mid-80s, sweet

with low-acid. I read through

all the recipes past down,

all the ones linked on-line,

contemplative,

                        and knowledgeable

of sugar content in watermelon

from eastern Oregon, blueberries

on Cheerios. Moving through the day

with cucumbers, small zucchini

in olive oil with Beefsteak tomatoes,

and Walla Walla Sweets,

I savor succulent valley produce,

even as peach juice runs down

my chin, early afternoons. This

is all preparation, getting ready

for evening ritual repeating itself

through August, into late September,

one we have to be home for

completing each summer day,
one recipe pleasure-visceral deep,

fresh peaches over ice cream.

Jim Bodeen

August-September, 2018

                       

Poems from the Butterscotch Chair

BEFORE THE MAKE-UP OF DAY

Empty dish washer, scrub pan

in sink and make Pike Place Coffee

for Karen. September sun comes through

window from tall grass. I've walked

the yard reading poems of Su Tung-p'o

remembering his 800 letters, his 10,000 pores,

and his translators, a millennium gone,

returning to my own wandering thought,

sitting in the butterscotch chair,

a memorial service at 11 for the husband

of a former Bible student,

I was her Sunday School teacher

decades ago, firefighters in love,

another day of Aretha's songs

rare and unreleased, released in me

part of our cultural breath, oxygen-loaded

breath prayers singing us a little more

into being, carrying her

from before we were born

how we got through

Jim Bodeen

3-14 September 2018

September Watermelon

A DAY THAT FALLS

flat from first hope-breath

breathes and turns towards

watermelon sliced cold

into shards, sweet running

with spilling wet juice

and yet with flavor flown

first September days

sun-softened not quite

the same sugar as last week

turning into garden

with my shovel digging clay

We drive into orchard garden

through trees Karen stops so I

grab an apple fallen

within a minute cracking open

in my mouth eating pulled pork

sandwich on stale bun mustard

loaded sates me good

Karen driving me to new schools

where grandkids start September

ripe whole goodness graced

making garden cleanup easy

television offerings added on

to all before this, RBG,

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

and I come to bed early

reading easy poems

with never the last word

of Su Tung-p'o, still reading

when Karen comes to bed

reading a biography of Laura Ingalls

How did they stand it Karen asks,

They didn't they ran screaming into fields

both of us remembering what

the Justice said

Just get your feet off our necks

Jim Bodeen

3-11 September 2018

The Project of the Hose

HOLDING THE HOSE [2]

Su Tung-po traveling at night

looks at the stars

each one where it belongs

little ones like children

running through famine leaves

a few years shy of 1000 years asking

What does Heaven do anyway

Burton Watson, closer to us

sighs in wonder, translating

and because my friend

forgot his birthday

I'm reading these poems

instead of sitting with him

drinking High Mountain Green

this garden hose in my hand

does a fine job watering these trees

it keeps me close to what is love

Su Tung-p'o walks that evening road

clearly remembering the night's sky moon

Jim Bodeen

3 September 2018

Sound Beauty

SURROUNDED

Difficult to work

September sun stuns seedlings

dreamed water word stay

Jim Bodeen

11 September 2018

Out from the Porch

CHIMES, 0616 HOURS

Walking September yard
Picking my slow way through books
A chair for Karen

Jim Bodeen
8 September 2018

Walking into the Smoke

TO THIRD BURROUGHS WITH MY BROTHER

FOUR YEARS AFTER HIS WIFE'S CROSSING

"...So pour out the whole cup, offering to a river and its moon"

            Su Tung-P'o

Two days from the exact day, four years ago,

this tundra walk on the great mountain, Tahoma,

still hidden from maps, high enough to put us

in telephone range with our wives at lunch below. Changed

now, we leave Yakima under crescent moon

in the eastern sky. Third Burroughs still listed

on the map, with no access trail. My brother,

me, erasing time, with time, still, a prompt.

Sunrise. East side. East Slope Su. My recluse

search kept on,  David Hinton translating

the Sung poet, arduous exile

tried for treason, wandering like water

with his inner pattern, weaving together,

never sounding like the last word,

every gesture in a poem is wilderness,

these last two lines leaving me perpetually

breathless in the poem, walking alone,

walking with my brother. This day,

my brother, turning to me, asking:

            "Where is Dad?"

"Oh, Chuck. No."

He's been talking to the others,

the believers, literal one. "'The smoke,'

Dad said, his last words. Where is he?"

No, Chuck. No. He's not.

There's no such place. Listen,

Dad visits me. Once in a while,

in dreams. He's ok. He's so quiet.

Sometimes I don't even notice he's there.

Don't see him. He's off to the side,

kind of like he was as our Dad,

in a lawn chair. Legs crossed.

Smoking. That half-smile.

Oh, brother! Come up from

the dream-world, Father.

Show thyself!

                        Our father,

dead forty years, when this surfaces

tundra-hiking, to the Burroughs,

I didn't know, stopping, shouts

from the three Philippine women

tagging with us to the rocks above,

calling for us to take their photos--

OK, now you're part of  us, I say

after the photographs. Dramatic talk,

conversation as adventure, we're

in the middle of what's wild, my brother

and I, you've walked into this, no stopping,

Chuck, my brother, our Father is not in Hell.

No burning place like that, exists, Jesus,

God, Jesus-God wouldn't permit it,

now I've said it. Three angel-women

immigrants walk with my brother, listening.

We are Catholic in Philippines. Catholic,

Muslim, Buddhist, yes. Surrounding him

this moonwalk gives way to testimony.

My brother telling his story, his loss,

our hike here four years ago, holding

to shreds of possibility before the crossing.

Third Burroughs, we show them, above glacier,

below Tahoma, cutting a sandwich,

peanut butter and peach jam into pieces

for us all, and we have little fishes

dried in salt and vinegar. A young man,

Joshua, from Israel sits with us on stones,

and a young couple from New Zealand

down from British Columbia. To be outside

together, among the young. Snyder, Chatwin,

Kerouac. Who are the poets from Philippines?

The caregiver who takes care of the old man

and the M.S. patient, wraps two slices of salami

around a chunk of mango and hands it to me.

Everything on the table now. We're inside

heavenly dreams now, John Lennon.

The way my brother says, My Lord,

evokes Aretha, singing for the crossing-all-of-us.

Jesse praying, If you leave here today

and don't register to vote, you're disrespecting

Aretha. My sweet Lord. Su Tung-p'o,

East Slope himself: Clever wise ones ruin'd me--

 I have old friends in those mountains,

and they keep calling me home.

Jim Bodeen

1-6 September, 2018

BURTON WATSON AND HIS TEXT IN THE GARDEN

AFTER A WEEK READING BURTON WATSON'S

TRANSLATIONS OF SU TUNG-P'O

Who'll sit and wait with me

The night air chill

What does Heaven do anyway

Careful--don't get too wrapped up in dreams of high office

Wanderings of a lifetime--what do they resemble

The old monk is dead now

Do you recall that day

Peering closer...trying to write the words on my stomach

Missing a word or two, getting eight or nine

I try to date the stones

What will the creator make out of me next

Each time I look at him I'm lost

The lamp's burned out/look at the slanting dipper

The priest grabs their money heads for...

When your poem came it brought back those times again

We grow old but who goes on grumbling about the gods

My home is where the river first bubbles from a fountain

Mountain monks pressed me to stay

Write a poem quick before it gets away

Don't ask who is foolish or wise

This hermit has a special way with hills

The flower is the embarrassed one, topping an old man's head

I only hear a bell beyond the mist

Lately I've developed a taste for the quiet life

Wise men fill the court, why do things get worse

Is it Shao's music make me forget how things should taste

Stilling the mind, no medicine is better than this

I hear no voices but the scuff of shoes

Strike your own evening drum morning bell

Doesn't Lord Heaven see this old farmer weeping

At Twilight Fine Rain Was Still Falling

Cold thoughts--where can I talk them out

The children are silly but you're much worse

What you get's not worth the trouble

Throat parched, thinking only of tea

I wanted to write a verse to your last year's song

The governor's gone mad

An hour of delight among these cliffs

Make sure the mind never clings

Come to think of it, why rush to town

The bell on the pagoda top talks to itself

I may be dropping by at odd hours

Years now I've stolen posts I never should have had

Funny--I never could keep my mouth shut

But here's a stranger, alone, heaven against him

What's ten years when a thousand pass like hail on the wind

Leaning on my stick I listen to river sounds

I long for my loved one in a corner of the sky

I get another cool day in this floating life

The hundred rivers day and night flow on

I like the ringing sound my stick makes when it strikes

10,000 things

100 rivers

84,000 verses

300 tiers of green hills

800 letters

1000 folded hills

7,000 miles, 18 rapids

10,000 pores

I myself am in the mountain

What spot did you observe it from to get this air of unconcern

An exile is like a monk: where is home

Who works these wonders

He himself became bamboo

Little boat with a single oar

Poetry is certainly lost on him

Roads go there, they're not for me

I envy crows that know the way back home

I move my bed dodging leaks on the roof

No time to give even my head a good scratching

Living water needs living fire to boil

Black Muzzle, south sea dog

Such is the light of my mind        

What form gratitude, becoming grateful,

lifted text carried into the garden

with my spade, raising dull rocks

buried in clay from time before beings

like ours wrote poems

Does the text become itself

becoming something else, Burton Watson,

the heavy clay remains heavy clay

the stones a mound, cairns towards somewhere,

the lifting, a liberation, after the long wait,

endless longing and silences

Jim Bodeen

28 August--5 September 2018

HOLDING THE HOSE

HOLDING THE HOSE

An act of resistance.

Maybe my best practice.

Programming sprinklers

underground sets the timer

to your empire mind

Jim Bodeen

3 September 2018

IN PRAISE OF FRAGMENTS

WHAT I LEARNED FROM SILENCE

AFTER THE CONVERSATION

Where nothingness takes me from here

follows the cairns right back to liturgy

and words. Grape Nuts and blueberries

in Greek Yogurt tips my hand,

doesn't it. I live behind a walled

garden of trees. An idler,

I open a book of desert poems

and read, We are so much more

than what we are. Mmm.

My friend arrives. High Mountain

Green Tea talk and listen. Hmm.

The listening. Through

to silence where God, active

agent, legislates. I'll be rested, then,

listening, a kind of dizziness,

this levitation. This lightness.

God speaking through silence.

Fragments on the page. Fumbling for them.

Sacred reading. Thrill of a new word,

florilegia, flowers from which the diligent,

O desert father, flowering!

can draw out sweetness. What can't be said

in words, but sung, when you can't be full-joy quiet.

Vanessa Zoltan's flower garden of quotations

delivers a new text. If you treat something

as sacred, it becomes sacred. Safe, generative rigor.

What gets one better at loving.

                                                  For more

than a week now,

I've been reading a single paragraph of a book review

for a book I haven't read. Here is the sentence

I've been carrying from the pastor writing the review:

The forgiven one is made clean without the opportunity

to argue her case, which is an act of true grace.

Timothy Brown is the pastor's name,

and the book, by Benjamin J. Dueholm,

Sacred Signposts: Words, Water, and Other Acts of Resistance.

Resistance here, is meant to denote the secular world.

Collected fragments walked through the day,

you're suggesting they're sacred? Practice

of the daily notebook, no more than that.

That sacred. That's Zoltan. Daily practice

of poets, many others. Zoltan, Jewish

child of Auschwitz parents, athiest pastor,

claims fragments as new text.

                                                For instance--?

                                                This morning--?

What happens among Christians can still astonish...

...the modern world after Christendom is receiving

            its own frightening diagnosis...

...a kind of healing it can neither imagine nor grant...

...resist this world and point to another one

...they are brutally worldly and literal

...words which confront...

...water...

...ludicrous pardon...

...prayer, praise, and worship, which steal time and labor

            away from the world

...an unlikely itinerary...

...not an explanation but the thing that resists explanation...

...deciding what matters...

Who's that?

Who's that?

This is me.

That's Benjamin J. Dueholm, Sacred Signposts.

That's a new text?

Thesis of the despised notebook.

I'm listening to Tommy Espinoza eulogize Senator John McCain.

John, I'm a Democrat! So?

Returning from my bike ride, emptying fragments

loaded before I left, I pull into the house

of the truck driver, Greg, Greg says,

I got to get me a bike.

Larry Fitzgerald, wide receiver for Arizona Cardinals,

says of John McCain: He ran for President.

I run out of bounds.

The thing I have against the poem

is that when I read the notebook,

it's got more blood running through it

than most poems.

                                    My friend and I,

we were talking about practice.

Jim Bodeen

29-30 August 2018