Aren't We Almost Quartz!

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