TRAVELING ON SKIS
The paper says everyone
has a right to go home.
Another shooting,
a clear wind, here I am,
crossing heaven on skis--
I was here yesterday
skiing with the children
and have returned
alone in a snow storm
while 100 women dressed
in the colors of the world
have their moment
standing against the ones
colorless in grey suits
tightened in neckties. Speaking
of the colorless ones,
Killing Commendatore,
what life sometimes does to art,
Wataru Menshiki in the novel.
To cross a river--
Menshiki--avoidance of color,
Murakami breaks it down
over and over
and it gets better
with each telling,
colorless ones come up
again and again before
weather's whiteout
brings mountain silence,
daily beginnings, it's no
small thing, this ski-walking
is wine, thirsty saunter
throwing oneself
into the mix of the poem.
(For my return
I have collected river
stones from west coast rivers
suiseki--miniature landscape stones,
carefully building cairns
mostly unnoticed
along fenced borders
resisting what neighboring houses
encourage, to bring me
to my door, mountain home
to mountain home.)
Living
like I do, mountain-altered
on skis, do I know myself?
Do the questions I ask,
or don't, ask something else as well?
If I lean this way, something
will happen and I'll be there,
slowing my skis into walking silence,
closer to hoarfrost on fir needles,
breathing at some point becoming
conscious, a choice.
These wilderness trees
became my family hiking interior trails
when I was young. Skis make
winter visits possible now in my 70s,
and this back country camp
has a table for me and my books.
Seated here, this far from the 116th Congress,
I stir my coffee, unwrap my sandwich
reading poems from my friends in the city.
Some of the arriving news is crucial
to the trees. Those-of-the-long-view
have already delivered what they know.
Jim Bodeen
4 January 2019
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