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.

*