NOTE TO JAMES BALDWIN ON 'SABOR'

NOTE TO JAMES BALDWIN FROM THE GARDEN ON SABOR

It never occurred to me to hear Jesus from a pew.

I heard the demand, what was said of my father.

No one saying, You are the salt of the earth.

No one saying, You are the light of the world.

My friends, God bless them, say, Jimmy,

did it ever occur to you, maybe you're not.

Friends laughing me to Jesus.

Your essays in a summer garden,

your biographer calling you, Jimmy.

We share the same initials. JB.

I savvy threshing crews in Dakota.

Don't know a thing about threshing floors.

You in Paris. Me and Mexico.

Not a word for sabor in English.

What I find everywhere in your essays.

Street food filling me. Real food.

You are the salt of the earth.

You are the light of the world.

For insisting you must be one seen.

Punching that ticket. In my poem,

that stone, me. My feet, that stone.

What I'm trying for. A kind of molé.

Chiles sliced thin into chocolate. Sabor.

Sauce all over my face. Finger food.

Note that won't settle, a letter.

This started years ago, finding now,

bought with pain, proved in testimony,

preached and promised in what's old,

your father's text, from the psalm,

How can I sing the Lord's song in a strange land?

137: 4. Our fathers not easy men.

I've only ever been forastero. Quién son:

Sal de la tierra. Luz del mundo

Cantando, insistiendo. My stunted maturity.

The wonder. So many, still reading.

Jim Bodeen

8 July 2020