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