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