HIGH CAMP SNOW CONDITIONS ON SATURDAY

     

HIGH CAMP SNOW MEDITATIONS

SNOW FRAGMENT

Since my return

it is all I can do

to water trees

can’t bear to look

at them

We took snow

for granted

during

those years

of

our

Winter Sleep

Jim Bodeen

6 January 2019

IN THE EARLY MORNING POEMS OF ROBERT BLY

Deer everywhere, in the dense bush

of the beloved, and then,

catching my breath,

becoming a nuisance to neighbors

Further away, in North Dakota,

my father plugs in an electrical cord

from the house to the 51 Plymouth

so it will start in the morning

Even then, my frozen breath

was telling me about the poem

REXROTH IS ON SKIS

It is late afternoon in the high Sierras

I know this is true because I read it in his poems

It is late afternoon here, too,

in the Goat Rocks Wilderness of the Cascades.

His skis make the quietest tracks in fresh snow.

I’m not as certain about the location of the moon.

Rexroth is not oblivious to the presence of rabbits.

5 January 2019

DESDE EL RANCHO A LAS ALTURAS RODEANDO

Riding the chairlift with the homies

three of them on snowboards, riding,

You must be pretty good by now,

they say. Do you do somersaults?

We laugh, talk about Michoacán

where grandparents and great grandparents live

alongside the banks of Lake Chapala.

We’re all in snow costumes. I say,

Pertenesco a un rancho se llama La Cuestita,

They laugh in disbelief.

They live in Grandview now,

they went to school in Prosser.

When I tell them the name of their history teacher

they don’t know what to believe.

6 January 2019

MY BROTHER WALKING AGAIN

Grief enters this time

as a better friend. Stories

from the baseball field

Jim Bodeen
High Camp, Goat Rocks, White Pass, Washington State
7 January 2019