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