LEYENDO MARCOS / READING MARK / OTRA VEZ /

READING THE GOSPEL OF MARK

            --for Byron, Jim, Eliseo, Dean,

Time-release medicine

come through the Baptist's belt.

Cinturón de cuero. Life in the mountains.

Re-treat, renewal, another way

to the way. Jesus thought so.

Wild water, wild water crossing.

Getting out of town.

What's heard on the street,

getting here. Wild horses

couldn't keep me away.

Honey-dipped locusts,

camel-skin and dreadlocks,

straight to word and wilderness

coming out of the water.

What you've done

with your 40 days.

What I really want to ask you

is how you've come back from the wilds

after 40 days. Tell me about

your first 40 days of marriage.

Shaking off anesthesia after surgery

when you got the really bad news,

the news that took you out.

Where've you been?

That man in the woods,

the mountain guy, they took his head,

beheaded him. Didn't he baptize you,

something like that? Was that him?

Somebody's girl friend said,

Bring him to me on a plate?

Jesus never got over it, uh-uh.

Never did. Those temper tantrums,

family calling him out, You're crazy,

surly responses, taunting. Dead fig tree!

Ever hear Christians on that one?

Makes me cringe. Until I remember John.

Jesus never forgot him. The rest of us.

We're slow. We don't know

the all of it, but we know what he carried

on that walk towards power. Jesus

crossed that river walking into the land

of promise carrying John.

I'm still tangled up. Still reading

Mark. Coming right up to my own

40 days. Blue from cold mornings,

dark nights. My miner's light

reading in the tent, in the mothership.

Carrying my mother's story.

Went to war with it learning how

I might bring it to justice walking out.

I get how the back story tilts things,

turns responses to others

in the moment. Things come out.

Changes things. One storyteller--

Richard Swanson if you want names--says Jesus

became a leper after he touched the leper.

What do you think about that?

Jesus, now. Now. He didn't forget John

not for a minute. Uh-uh.

Think about that the next time

you ride into Seattle

in your Jackass SUV.

Este cinturón. El cinturón.

Cinturón de cuero.

Cinturón de Juan.

Compa de Jésus.

Tengo otro amigo. Eliseo.

Mexicano. Profeta. Profe.

Campesino. Campesino

en su camino. En sus palabras.

En su ser. Eliseo.

Hablaste, escribiste de Marcos.

Una  cosa rodear a otra

Asegúrate de que la cincha está bien ajustada

y de que la silla de montar no se bambolea.

Yo sé, Yo sé.

El orador debió ceñirse el tema sin divagar.

Eliseo in the mountains, too.

Where I meet him. Everybody laughing.

Because of his language.

Eliseo Pérez Álvarez:

Cuentas a las comunidades marginada de donde venimos.

Mercancia canibalesco contra pobres.

Marcos enfoca su mirada en la vida cotidiana del Nazareno,

en sus obras liberadoras y en la muert de cruz

de su estilo de vida a favor de las personas

intocable, destituidas y anónimas.

Jésus el artesano pobre, hijo natural, con acento pueblerino,

adulto, sin esposa e hijos, en una sociedad campesina,

exiliado en Egipto, sin hogar propio, descendiente

de una familia disfuncionales, ...necesitaba escuchar:

"Tú eres mi Hijo amado, en Ti tengo complacencia."

Jesus with John in his head.

Carrying the Baptist, walking.

The belt, el cinturón que el maestro me dió, was not a free gift.

The belt came through John, softened in the Baptist's water.

The belt came through the craftman's hands.

Se lleva la sabiduria de campesinos.

The belt is full of medicine.

Help me, friends, to buckle up.

Jim Bodeen

19 October-- 1 November 2018

Released into the Wild

FRANCIS AND THE DOG

Que paz en tierra

My hair set my shirt on fire

Assisi Heights grass land

100 wild dogs

Warmer rooms of homelessness

Man with fish bone hat

Feather light leaf song

Delayed departure promise

Keep your feet worm, bud

Jim Bodeen

25-26 October 2018

A Letter in the Mail

A POEM FOR KAREN FROM THE BUTTERSCOTCH CHAIR

            Sailboat in the moonlight

                        Billie Holiday

That's how these lines arrive, Karen,

by slow mail with the dragon stamp.

Did you expect the rabbit

coming from the hat? That one's

for the philatelist grandchild

hopefully, some day, one willing

to fight for it. When you return

from your quilting workshop

I want to see what you've done.

You and Colleen. It's just before noon

in the butterscotch chair, Friday,

and I've gotten rid of leftovers

in the fridge--you've noticed by now,

but make certain you've seen

it's also stocked--green grapes,

strawberry smoothies, sliced ham

for crackers at lunch, and cooked

turkey breast for dinner. Four tiny

(and lean) round steaks you can fry

later in the week. And Tillamook

Old Fashioned Ice Cream.

We had little carrots,

I've counted them, be certain

to eat four every day.

I'm missing you already.

I ladled a cup of chile

before dumping the rest

and took out the garbage. I'm packing,

but I had to work on the poem

for the gift belt made for me

by the maestro from El Salvador.

I've lately discovered it's after

the fashion of John the Baptist's,

and is a girdle for justice.

Es muy peligro, también.

I should have known!

Karen, I love you longer

than our half-century road.

I'm taking some Yakima apples

on the plane for the Minnesotans

to help warm them to Kirsten's book.

Like the belt, it's beautiful, too,

beautiful, and dangerous.

She'll be great inside the pages

and in white water. I'll message you

from Rochester, remembering

James Wright's blessing.

These lines, too urgent, too full

of love for anything but the U.S.P.S.

In ten days, we'll catch up,

get our ballots filled out together

and seriously steady ourselves

for the anniversary celebrating

50 years of marriage. This,
a song offering of a trembling man.

            Further,

Jim

19 October 2018

Time Walking

WALKING UNIONTOWN, PA.

Founded July 4, 1776

            for Byron Barrera

Past the Coal Town Saloon

with its main entrance in back

I walk under the awning

below the paintings in two windows,

woman in pony tail

with bare arms on the window sill,

blond cat beside white curtains

and flower pot in the other.

I cross to the bronze sculpture

of George "Flicker" Marshall

in whose honor the Marshall Plan

is named, making economic recovery

in Europe possible after WWII.

I stop at New Beginnings,

Mental Health Counseling for veterans,

and after returning from the day,

am told the story of the soldier's

dedication to restore lives

of wounded vets suffering moral injuries.

I walk through City Hall

and County Courthouse,

clearing security, granted permission

to photograph. I've been walking

all morning, I'm bushed,

walking backward after a full day

recording early American history

on foot. Marquis de Lafayette

himself, carved from wood

drying and cracking 250 years later.

Marquis de Lafayette.

We studied him in grade school

in a small town in rural North Dakota.

There he is. I still remember that.

Here he is carved out of wood,

he's still drying out, cracking.

I don't remember a thing he did.

Look for the shoe repair

on your way into town

there it is. I found that shoe repair.

Something happened in that shop

that changed my life.

It involved a hand-made belt

that I'm wearing this morning.

The belt is full of medicine.

It tells a story of time and justice.

The belt strengthens one's resolve.

The belt turns on history,

it's time-release

and gets to what's important

about independence.

Jim Bodeen

10-19 October 2018

Itinerancy Dog

*

Soft mouth on forearm

Dog-pull-confident

Wind river cross bridge

Jim Bodeen

18 October 2018

UNDER THE COVER OF NIGHT

READING PSALM 137

WITH MINER'S LAMP ON

UNDER BED COVERS

So that Karen might sleep

Hearing Bob Marley sing us through the night

Hearing C. S. Lewis cautioning us over decades, reflecting

Reading now Richard Swanson ask

what the crushing weight of exile

felt like, I re-trieve my son's Bible

from first communion, signed by pastor,

broken spine, un-read, left behind,

By the waters of Babylon,

there we sat down

reaching out again for the Santa Biblia

bi-lingual and diverse

this time

hearing

Colgábamos nuestras arpas

We hung our harps

Let's see who stays around

for the blessing in Verse 9

Dichoso el que agarre a tus pequeños...

Jim Bodeen

17 October 2018

He Came Through Here

WHAT THE PASTOR SAID

HIS CONGREGATION

WOULD SAY ABOUT HIM

AFTER 40 YEARS

            for Pastor Ron Marshall

He visits the sick.

He visited me.

Jim Bodeen

11 October 2018

REPARACIÓN DE ZAPATOS

SIGN ON THE ROOF,

WALKING UNIONTOWN, PA

            --for B. B.

ALL LEATHER REPAIR

JACKET REPAIR, SADDLE REPAIR

SHOE REPAIR

White circle of light

Open in red letters

phone number on sign mounted on roof.

In plaid shirt, maestro

works on a hat from inside his shop

looks up at me watching him remove

the worn leather band.

Neither of us talking, asking to be helped.

He returns to the leather band,

measures with a piece of leather

gauging its width. After cutting

to size, leather's too thick.

He attaches the leather

to a bladed gauge, pulls it

through, leather breaking once--

hide's not uniform--

gets it the second time,

circumambulates the hat with fingers,

rings around a far star.

This hat, a man's, originally

for dressing up, faded now,

wool, dirt-filled, inside-brim

sweat-soaked, this hat works outside,

hat that a man loves and works in,

brought here, for restoration,

original brown color

uncovered with the removal

of the original band.

Watching him work,

el maestro in his shop, taller,

for the better part of an hour,

I step back when a middle-aged woman

steps into the shop to see

if her sandals are ready.

But the button on the strap doesn't match perfectly

with the button she lost.

That can't be replaced

the craftsman explains, That button

doesn't exist anymore.

The strap is fine but I can't

wear them out, she says.

I guess I could wear them in the garden.

I'm looking at a full spool

of luminescent blue thread

set on the machine on the customer

side of the counter, trying to imagine

its journey from this shop and where

it might go when it leaves the store,

this thread created for beauty's practicality.

Maestro resumes work at his table

of tools, a mallet of wound leather,

a hand-made tool. He looks at me,

twice his age, picking up

a work in progress, a man's belt,

full two inches wide, leather-stitched

in two parallel columns

of luminescent blue thread.

Light radiating from the leather.

Cinturón, cincha.

El maestro debío ceñirse el tema sin divagar.

It doesn't happen very often.

Sometimes the button they're looking for

have been disappeared, like people,

lost in dreams, or worse. Tu sabes.

Hoping he'll tell me more about

the hat, he begins measuring holes

to match the belt's buckle,

and I see by his eyes

he's measuring this belt for me.

Asegúrate de que la cincha está bien ajustada

y de que las silla de montar no se bambolea.

You don't want the saddle to wobble

I'll be wearing a new belt when I leave,

I hope my wallet has a couple of twenty's.

Try it on, Maestro says, Here.

Honoring what is not deserved

isn't for the weak. How to respond

to what we're not ready for.

Carry gratitude as one can.

No merezco nada. Gracias se fue.

Asking what might be fair

makes one payaso, a fool.

The craftsman's eyes, justice-steady,

find mine before he speaks,

Not everything is about money.

Jim Bodeen

April-October, 2018

Trying on the Shield

DEFENDING OURSELVES RUNNING IN IMAGES,

OURSELVES FLUID IN UNSEEN MIRRORS,

CRUSHING NARRATIVE WALKING OUT FROM

A LANDSCAPE WITH NO REAL NOUNS INTO LYRIC BEAUTY

            with and for K. B.

Building protections

with real nouns,

my friend Marty,

jeweler and shield maker

cut-carving soft shields

from onion skin tightening

around wood-frame

when breathed upon

The end of numbers

has something to do with sage-practice

Last thing we need

is a man in the road

From just-issued

Forever stamp from Postal Service

a woman dressed in white

inside a gold hoop, levitating

over a shadow marking

her place of departure

In apple picking September

barista brew, Sol y Sombra,

steeped in Lorca, not the arrival

any anticipated

and my friend Raúl wrapped

in brown-skin, his poems

spilling smoke from Mexican

cigarettes, incense of campesinos,

remembering dead ancestors

finishing their work among marigolds

Plain-style the only way

for one born in North Dakota

daily confrontation with immense

landscape antelope-interrupted

and bird sky brilliance

I knew from the beginning

I couldn't do this. No longer

taking my walk for granted

sometimes I measure time

by how long it's been since

someone mentioned Jack Gilbert

over coffee--Sorrow and slaughter

will not keep us

from Sunday morning joy

This morning I left my grandchildren

in a wooden pew facing my wife

ringing bells, ring the ones that can ring,

to be with you around a table

full of poems 

read to me

Jim Bodeen

30 September 2018

THIS NARROW ROAD OF DELIVERANCE

THE PRACTICE OF UNRULINESS

Here come the ones who want me

to say what I mean. This is the letter

Emily talked so much about.

Two Emilies, right, my God,

I loved them both. Aunt M?

Her too. Billy Budd, lost bud,

take me to where articulation

stops for the stutterer's truth. When

mail arrives I run to the box.

Last week I sent my wife a letter.

She brings it to me, asking,

What do I do with it?

As my friend leaves, this morning,

I say, Pick a stone from the garden.

Help me, he says, and I choose

a white cave-laden one from the Klamath,

given permission and direction

from the Yoruk couple where

Karen bought me the knit wool

cap with sturgeon pattern--

Hehlkeek 'We-Roy'

Yoruk call Klamath,

my recall unable to retrieve

the word for my friend gone. Non-

aligned, itinerant. Edge, release.

Notion setting out, eclipsed.

Time inside a shut door.

Talk about letters! God,

Almighty, hearing all,

you know. What a day!

Cave-whispering, extreme

and narrow in order for my

well-being. Up-ended

intimacy! With all this time,

Hardly enough for Mandela

not heard in life time letters,

to be unprotected. That

be it. Mandela writes,

I have been anxious to write,

but you wouldn't have been able

to reply, maybe too, his letters

were never sent out, or this,

From the way it is censored,

it is clear that you wanted

to keep me ignorant...

of essentially domestic affairs,

and to his daughter, I never forget

you were three months old

when I had to leave home.

Rilke wrote 14000 letters.

We must learn to die slowly,

...that is all of life...a death

where chance plays no part.

Heart transformed in preparation,

heart transformed in the practice.

1968 informs me this morning,

dear ones, as we talk. We, the lucky

ones, and here I am returning to chance.

at the Dodge dealer reading while

they change the oil in my truck--

and here, found in my notebook,

waiting, dark kernel from Zora Hurston,

Those who love us never leave us

alone in our grief. 1968, the most

harrowing years for Mandela

at Robben Island, political prison

from mid-1960s, desolate outcropping,

deep symbol of apartheid. So like you,

bestowing this unruly gift,

me the undeserving one before you.

I open the drawer where stamps

wait words tipping from the moon.

Jim Bodeen

Late September--8 October 2018

THE PRACTICE OF LETTERS begins with slow-stepping moves towards the ineffable. Mandela's letters over 27 years arrest one's way. Mandela's letters give you a chance. You revisit warrior chiefs who mentored you. Perhaps you believed you were in charge of the words. That your letters arrived. Maybe you didn't write letters. When you read the Psalms of King David, what comes up? Dear Ones, your letter begins. Now you swim in the waters of the unconscious.

THIS DAY FATHER/DAD, I call on you in behalf of my brother, your son, asking our Father/God, an intercession. Your son troubled by smoke and fire, believing troublesome words carried over time by family members, touching him in grieving loneliness. Untransformed. If you can reach him, I believe you complete your own unfinished work. Quiet father of us, I dreamed last night, missing you in the dream.

*

Blinded by the luminescent blue thread

I couldn't see the Cinturón de cuero

I wore the belt proud, in innocence

Ciego por lo luminescente hilu azul

No podía ver the leather belt

Llevaba el cinturón como inocente

La medicina oscurecido

*

It is an honor to walk with the suffering peoples of this world. This is the privilege of accompaniment. Blake teaches us the limitations of innocence, and then, through walking with the limitations of our knowing, we pass through our cynicism to a kind of ascended innocence, no longer completely blind. The caravan is on its way.

*

Hang anniversary photos. Get the ladder out. Grill tuna steak on hot coals for two minutes. All that you have been given, seared inside. Here. History. Story. Frederick Douglass himself: Not logic but Jubilee. That kind of grace. It is on the wires. Acorn squash! Oh, with honey and butter.

*

The horn sounds. Clipper underway. Two women raise their arms and shout, I'm so excited. Remembering my grand daughter's question, Why do we have to be human? I find three others. Here's one: What is truly human? I find this haiku: See things mountains hide/ Light where cold and heat are one/ One is cause of other. Like this, I walk into the street.

*

Mortal boat in sacred river

tied up on shore, one oar missing,

the other bow-crossed

with poems copied from manuscripts

of the old master Meng Hao-Jan

and carried all the way to my friend

who lives just off the Interstate

North of Seattle. These poems

written on this left-behind oar

can be read by any who pass

by these waters stopping for lunch.

*

KAREN NOTICING

always surprises

her eye

able

to see

individual

stitches

paths

thread

follows

needle

She

takes

me

oh!

wait

to the gate

of no gate

knots

how

they’re tied

one way

on one side

only

on the fence

Japanese Gardens!

I failed

knot

tying

and for that reason alone

never

became

a scout

following

instead

Karen

he surprising ways

Jim Bodeen

12 December 2018

*

Children get up early, cook noodles for lunch at High Camp. Winter snow dreaming. Five years from Sandy Hook. That winter, too, found us in mountains. Those cries reached us because of another fall. What shall we do? we asked ourselves. Cloth-Goddess Mother Quilt makes a child’s vest from Chief Joseph Blanket. Twice that now, these children, our children, snow-bound.

*

Before I knew the meanings of songs I fell into a basket of words. Lights of full wombs, Three rose windows on sunrise, the late waking in snow fields. All of the dancing heart in cadence. Big Rock Candy Mountain as child-song, child-play, there was only the singing and the words calling out to me at Christmas. Beyond the record player it was cold and dangerous. My lips cracked and bled in dry wind. Play in the music, the voice said, Play in the music.

*

Opening Leaves of Grass, looking for what chance brings, Song of the Banner at Daybreak finds me receptive. I copy the first line for two granddaughters, O a new song, a free song, and turn the page. Poet, pennant, father, child, having a good talk. The poet says, But I am that which comes and sings. The child says to the father, It is alive, full of people. The banner says, Speak to the child, Bard.

*

Through and out the back. When children are themselves, talking like adults, I want to be in earshot. These voices of young people reading to me, that too. All the way from Oakland. There there. We drive over the pass in snow, watching out for trucks. So much space to pray before the sound of each bell ringing.

*

Those Parker Pens, Again and Again

CRUSHING THE MEMORY

A way out, if not the way back.

Alone in the school library at 15,

opening Mark Schorer's biography

of Sinclair Lewis, Main Street

promises, what do they mean?

North Dakota backs

away from Minnesota still.

That day, on the library

table, someone leaves a pen,

Parker T-Ball Jotter ball point.

Picking it up and putting it

in my left hand, I never

put it down. Two years

later, Grandma Myra

and I drive the red

roadster to Alabama

to see my parents. We stop

in Sauk Center, me and Grandma,

take pictures of main street,

buy post cards. My eyes

out of focus, I can't steady

my hands. I never got to Paris,

looking instead down gopher

holes, rabbits on night prairie

highway, tracking movement

with the Parker T-Ball Jotter

across the page. First cool

feel that never let me go.

That adoption, more real

to me than Baptism,

carries me, Jotter pens

in black, blue and red,

clicked into river rhythm

in Levi pockets.

Three of them, always.

Giving them to others,

stone cairns on lonesome trails,

after written words change

more than any day's transactions.

This is a letter to Jim Hanlen

in Alaska, notebook entries, written

explorations of  letters

Nelson Mandela wrote

to the Commanding Officer

of Robbens Island prison,

asking that his silver

Parker T-Ball Jotter ball point

stolen from his cell, be returned

to him, along with the date

he can expect to see it.

The year of the letter was 1971,

47 years ago. Mandela

permitted to write and send

six letters a year.

The letters are censored,

and sometimes, sent.

What pens did those censors use, 

friend? Mandela's cell,

7 feet by 9 feet, locked-in

27-and-a- half years, censors

seizing words at whim until tiring,

Keep letters to a page-and-a-half.

Over-sized pieces of paper,

word wearying. Here we are

locked up, doing free time,

not hammering boulders

into pebbles or words, living small,

as dream instructs, flawed

lovers and writers, asked

for smiles by family for family

pictures, given multiple channels

to watch the same birds, straight-

faced, confident in only Jotter pens,

shellbound, separated

ink clarified. Peach branches,

Jim, peach branches scratching

full belly of the moon. Like

painters escaping subject

matter, content, flung-stroked

stoked. What says the magician

writing home to his mother?

Jim Bodeen

25 September-4 October 2018

I Hope You're Doing Well

HAVEN'T SEEN YOU IN A WHILE

Now that email writes

your own responses

for you friend,

what's up with

your free time?

Jim Bodeen

5 October 2018