III.
THE THIRD DREAM: AT THE PAPER SHACK
This
is not a popular song but a structure.
Located
in Lake City, Seattle, Gary Snyder country
before
we moved in, my parents,Wayne and Lucille,
wood,
with slanted roof, the Paper Shack—
with
tar paper roofing—there could be no rain
on
those papers—on the corner
of
Bartlett Avenue and 115th Ave NE,
one
block off Sand Point Way
and
a block down from Homer’s IGA.
Delivery
Point for The Seattle Times.
Papers
would be there before carriers
would
be home from school,
and
on Sundays by 4 am.
Ninth
Grade. After jobs selling
Christmas
Cards and products
made
by Lighthouse for the Blind,
and
boxboy at the grocery
on
145th and Lake City Way—
where
they dressed deer—
The one job
I
quit because I couldn’t clean the cooler
where
maggots bred in those deer hides—
the
paper route was my ticket out of band—
I
regret that now, giving up that trombone,
and
carrying it set me apart—like Mormon boys
in
white shirts door to door with their hair
all
cut short dressed for Heaven.
I
carried right at 100 papers, a few more
on
Sunday, and had the lake route
up
and down and back and then lake front
itself
where tips were good collecting
at
the end of the month. Always uphill
on
the way home. I learned to smoke
at
the paper shack, and I had money
for
the first time, and that money
went
into my pockets. All carriers met
at
the Paper Shack. We carried The Seattle Times.
Boys
who carried the Post-Intelligencer
were
up every morning, went to work
in
the dark, called us pussies. I was 14,
more
Tommy Dorsey at the Paper Shack
than
I was in band.
I’m upside down,
hanging
from wire and twine
used
to bind the papers. Three blinking words
coming
off the papers on the floor.
Meng
Hao-jan,
the
tiny bell in his boat
rings
for me crossing water.
I found the unborn inner pattern
early.
This is the poetry
dream.
Dream
of the workshop—the poetry workshop.
This
is the third dream. This one,
Dream
of the Poetry Workshop at the Paper Shack
arrives
a week ago. Clear like the others.
The
Dream of the Long Skis
and the Love Story of Sue and Fred.
Chosen,
elected or called. Those three
blinking
off and on. Beginning with one
other,
face obscured, but others
would
come and go. This wasn’t
about
competition. These words,
the
three of them, available to all.
Chosen,
elected, called,
locating
itself—Anybody!
Anybody
could have this job.
It’s
not uncomfortable, hanging here,
a
kind of arrival, reverse levitation
and
left-handed vision bringing clarity.
Meng
come for me in his boat.
Unborn
inner practice
painted
on his oar.
He
could write on water.
Permitted
to be mad for the poem.
With
others in the boat.
His
others and others come for him,
appearing
and disappearing in mist,
all
this without being gone.
The
Abbot. B., and his family of friends.
The
women. And the ancestors
setting
the table of books before them.
Conducting
the sorrow songs.
Jody
and the Itinerants,
the
one-woman band crossing north.
The
Paper shack itself, stuffed with papers.
No
room for anyone has room for all,
far
and away and vanishing, seated
here
on the Seattle Times. Allowances
and
everything going on with everybody,
allowed
to be themselves, allowed to be myself.
Jubilee
and the child. Allowances.
Harold
Bloom driving the truck to all parts
of
the city, this grandfather delivering
and
respecting the poem too much to write one.
Let
him say whatever he wants, we know
he
is all and only the poem.
Reporting
into being with Karen’s breathing,
her
exhale, At last,
voice
in blossom, dream coming
around
the corner with Ella and Etta James.
One
I can call my own, one I can speak to.
paper
shack being and becoming,
girls
and boys on bicycles
beginning
their routes,
carrying
papers, slinging them into doorways
and
on porches, their cigarettes
lighting
up the sky.
Jim
Bodeen
30
November—6 January 2019
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