Letter to Joy Harjo, Listening

LETTER TO JOY HARJO

LISTENING FROM MY BICYCLE

She had some horses, she did.

She had some horses.

It's the order here, and how.

The how and the beauty that goes beyond.

The horse and the rabbit.

The rabbit's been with me for some time

and I have a friend, Jane,

who's a potter and shapes them

making mischief in her hands

before taking them from the kiln.

I've been with these rabbits

and yours, too, and when the rabbit

opened for me in your Holy Beings poems

Karen says, You've got to read that one

to Jane, and I did, on Facebook,

from the mothership

in Los Sueños campgrounds

on the outskirts of Santa Fe.

My friend, Jane, she has some rabbits.

The kitchen table can't be owned,

but I can still call it yours. You pick out

all songs for the juke box.

I'm riding the neighborhood now, listening.

Listening and riding backwards. On my bike.

How in the order of things saying thanks.

Poems in my backpack weren't opening

and they were good ones hand-picked

and we'd been on the road long enough

for me to demand of the book store,

Nourish me. That's how Holy Beings

came into my hands, carrying me

collected and dishevelled mothershipping me.

Back on my bicycle a timed release capsule--

from 85th Evac Hospital,  Qui Nhon, Binh Dinh Province

when T.C. Cannon was painting, writing poems

from the 101st Airborne same time

I didn't know him, know his paintings,

his poems now, from Heard Museum,

didn't know you two were classmates

in Santa Fe, don't know about the time,

don't know that, I love the story of that school

your school, I found a street school

that took me when I came home,

taught there being taught

my jeweler taught me how Fritz Scholder

did it, the how of it, and now, on this bicycle,

in the development, I'm not dead either,

I'm good, last week your voice at Cornell

so good with those students, so good,

listening, reading, hearing/seeing that

the day before Crazy Brave arrives

from interlibrary loan and I sit with you

start to finish, rabbit's feeling important,

and the clay man's not stopping,

and you put it all in Crazy Brave

and I'm so glad you're in a band

mixing song and poem and voice,

all these lost tracks in the neighborhood

and that poem of yours on the kitchen table,

that's a poem that brings its own drum.

This is the bicycle in West Valley.

Yakima, from Yakama, Washington State.

This is your book of poems,

Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings.

playing with Coltrane in Oklahoma,

I'm a North Dakota boy whistle-

walking railroad tracks--

a kitchen table grandpa.

You can name the poets who aren't poets.

You're reading at Cornell

and then you're Crazy Brave

and now you're singing to me

in West Valley as I circle houses,

circling with your songs,

what a school, what a band.

Horses for teachers.

I'm sanding a salvaged cherry wood board

with a live edge,

making an altar for river stones,

remembering you remembering

the woman making decisions
keeping her

on the 13th floor.

Jim Bodeen

17 May 2019