MID-AUGUST WATERMELON FOR KAREN

 

MID-AUGUST MORNING

      for Karen

Sliced cold watermelon offering

on the garden porch for her

open to Dr. Williams' poems

 

she is a quilt opening again

re-imagining herself

in all of the colors

 

of her past. Irrigated

desert flower, pink

choral birdsong thread

 

work, trilling

scissored-cloth works

my paupered hands

 

opened for her

graced by the poem

a shrill cry, best guess

 

how it came to be

wonder-fed each of us

but how could

 

any man, any one

treasure-filled be

but for the poem

 

Jim Bodeen

28 August 2020

In Japanese Art, Size Is Relative

 

IN JAPANESE ART, REMEMBER,

SIZE IS ALWAYS RELATIVE

            for Michael Collins

Even after they moved you, Michael,

away from that corner

where you sat with your tripod,

focused on each man and woman

boarding chained for deportation,

this image of you unfazed

by the jaws of the outsized backhoe,

sustains me in my study. I step

back of necessity searching words,

James Baldwin say, writing

of his mentor, Beauford Delaney,

the painter, no greater lover

has ever held a brush.

Acts of love in witness and image.

 

Jim

22 August 2020

AFTER HE GOT OFF THE THRESHING FLOOR

 

AFTER HE GOT OFF THE THRESHING FLOOR

 

Karen and I walk down

to Jeanne's house to see

the peace pole she planted

after Larry died. The spotted

horse, beautiful by the fence.

I took Karen's picture

by the pole trying

to count the number

of times James Baldwin

says the word love

in his 842 pages of essays

in the Library of America

edition. At last count

it was far more

than the number of times

I've heard love said

in the Lutheran Church

during the past ten years.

I don't keep score

and I don't lose track.

 

Jim Bodeen

22 August 2020

Ken Blackerby on the James Wright River

 

A NOD TOWARDS KEN BLACKERBY

ON THE JAMES WRIGHT RIVER

WRITING POEMS DURING A PROPHETIC TIME

 

Right about the time my son

discovered alcohol he brought home

a dog named Trouble. At the time

John Lewis was the furthest man

from my mind. Young men

like their music loud.

There's always an adult in the room,

even at SNCC headquarters

back in the day. Tone it down,

John. How could one know

that dog would be good trouble?

How could we know what

was still to come would require

sobriety none of us believed in or imagined.

 

Jim Bodeen

4 August 2020

 

 

Looking at Anne Spencer's Harlem Renaissance Stamp: A Letter

LOOKING AT THE ANNE SPENCER FOREVER STAMP

ONE OF FOUR HARLEM RENAISSANCE PORTRAITS,

A LETTER, WHILE READING HER POEMS

DURING THE SUMMER OF HER STAMP: 2020

 

Dear Mrs. Spencer,

 

Paths in your garden cover you like a shawl.

Forever is more than a stamp, Mrs. Spencer.

Marked, a vow, another word for Heaven.

The company you keep. Dr. W.E.B. Dubois.

Your chapter of the NAACP.

Those in the room listening to you read poems.

I've not found your recorded voice,

but from my garden, I'm looking into yours.

This stamp, with your portrait in light,

eyes coming from shadow marks

in tree pathways, full sun

on nose and cheeks to chin

contrasted red lips dappled in shade

bringing out the certain particulars in your poems.

Not quite a full smile. A golden leaf

illustrating your left cheek,

a full curl of your hair on the right side

of your forehead. I gave my grand daughter

your poems in Negro Poetry, and had

to go online to locate Letter to My Sister,

 

Paths in your garden wind into Edankraal.

Ed and Anne gathered, corralled.

Radically open conversation in time, just now--

Just now. Another one. Another.

From your one-room garden studio,

bringing the world to your side.

 

Your garden's been rebuilt.

I write you from a stone garden in Yakima.

Ancient river stones, carved by water,

altar-elevated, where I listen from.

 

This morning, riding my bicycle,

I'm thinking of you again,

again in your garden, imagining

you greeting others who garden,

who write poems, who build conversations

surrounded by flowers. The justness

of talk, surprises of who shows up

even danger in safe places.

 

What is sorrow but tenderness now.

Your garden is Gethsemane for others, too.

Your grace for us in your poems.

Sitting on a stone under a Japanese Maple

I imagine myself quiet on a side path, listening

as people wonder if perhaps you're greeting today.

Yusef Komunyakaa has been here.

Your garden, now a public trust.

Your poems on cards. Yusef brought

Ota Benga, from the equatorial forests

near Kasai River. Yusef freed him

in a poem, and the two of you sit together,

enduring. A pound of salt and bolt of cloth

quilted and beauty-stained.

You are holding Ota Benga in your arms

which are the eternal and forever lines of Yusef's poem.

You live in a garden where all gets said

each knowing all the other brings and holds.

 

Jim Bodeen

June-August 2020