PAINTED DESERT CAMPGROUND
Archeology and history preserve each other
in the petrified forest. In an environment
without oxygen, organic matter changes.
Silica enters the cells, filling them over time.
How then with Karen and I? Another night
to sleep with her, here, a painted desert
becomes its name. More than 800 memorable
sites beautified before the eyes. Mothership
landed for the night. Coffee now, and Karen, long
love in human time--how could this be done
without love's stony presence? Aren't we
almost quartz ourselves! Liquified
and softened one by the other.
How marriage continues itself
beyond gold's commemoration
into daily Jubilee. 50 years ago
today, married just over four months,
me back in school, Karen at the bank,
finished with first classes, the two of us
on a Montana honeymoon, our names
pulled from a hat, lucky ones
blessed and skiing free for a week.
This tiny cabin on wheels.
The two of us. Karen comes
from the bathroom's tiny door
and says to me at the small table,
Good night, countered by my,
No, no, no, and, Good morning.
We're having oatmeal,
Sailing from Byzantium with Yeats,
we are come from Holy fire--
while you slept we covered
dreamscapes through winter.
Snow bridges, cornices forming
fingers shaped by wind, reaching
for one another; sastrugi over-layed
with snow and dangerous
on both sides. How we crossed
and learned to stay together
day by day becoming each other,
bringing only ourselves. We are
in spring waking to SW light
and the many shades of gold
in sandstone. I wipe my eyes
with cotton pads cleaning bacteria
from aging skin, a daily ritual.
The physician does not know
Blake's Everlasting Gospel,
or Karen's message
from a cousin in the ancestral world.
A lost one who has found
her mother after these years
of not knowing. Ring
the Buddhist Bell for Jesus.
Jim Bodeen
29 March--23 April 2019
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