TUESDAY MORNING PRACTICE

TUESDAY MORNING PRACTICE

begins in the gratitude notebook

followed by Shade-grown ground coffee,

Greek Yogurt with Blueberries.

The letter to Kevin, more monthly

than Tuesday, goes back twenty years.

Six minutes from the airport

I'm early. Leave the motor running

listening to Arvo Pärt's Tabula Rasa.

Tuesdays the plane comes in.

Swift Air ICE Flight. Buses,

usually two, arrive from Tacoma

Detention facility carrying

undocumented immigrants.

A small group gathers

from here and there to witness.

Our photographer sets up his tripod

in the corner, giving him the closest look.

He tells me he's been reading

American colonial history,

Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton.

Washington was kind of a host

for what was happening, he says.

I've just started Barry Lopez' Horizon

who begins his prologue with his grandson

at Pearl Harbor. Lopez and I

are the same age. Karen's, too.

They were born in the first week

of January, 1945. Another friend,

Catholic, back from Faith and Justice

workshop in Seattle meets

Sister Norma Pimentel, MJ,

who directs Catholic Charities

of the Rio Grande Valley.

Humanitarian Respite Center

responding to asylum seekers

from Central America. An artist

she paints a Honduran family

in pastels, Tomasito, for Pope Francis.

Those nuns, she says, the bishops

let them have the floor and talk!

She's fed 150,000 people.

Like I said, I'm six minutes

from the airport, but today

Ellensburg and Tri-Cities have driven here.

Walla Walla brings people twice a month.

Yakima's YIRN leader has a long history

working in human trafficking. We talk

about abrecaminos in Mexico--

Malinche,1529; Guadalupe 12 years later;

Sor Juana 1651, dressed as man,

hombres necio. What other country

can name three women this famous this early?

Another companion tells about

Joanna Macy at Upaya, in her 90s now,

urging us, Don't be afraid of the anguish

because these responses arise

from the depth of your caring.

I'd never heard of her until this morning.

An ambulance from AMR pulls

next to the Air Rescue NW plane

carrying a man with head and neck secured

loading him on to the plane.

Detainees unload from the buses

and board the Swift Air jet

as ICE flight witnesses hold

their banner, No estan solo,

You're not alone.

Barry Lopez was 68 at Pearl Harbor

with his grandson. Six years ago.

He remembers a glass of lemonade,

a woman's elegant dive in a hotel pool.

What will happen to us? He asks.

The photographer asks who

would like to blow the whistle.

A whistle blower? There's a word

in Spanish for banging pots at protests.

I'll bring it, he says. As I get in my car

I remember Kevin asking about

Tim O'Brien, the Viet Nam vet.

I'd forgotten to respond in my letter.

I have the new Scenic River stamps

that runs through Kevin's place

in Sun River. I'll write another letter.

I stop at Jones' Fruit Stand,

pick out a grand Blue Hubbard Squash.

My mother-in-law makes pumpkin pie

from these, she says. And these?

The Cashew Green Striped Mexican.

This is a Sweet Meat, for pies.

I'll take these two, I say.

Do you make a lot of pies? she asks.

I don't know what to say.

These squash. So beautiful.

Jim Bodeen

22 October 2019