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
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment