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


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