THIS IS THE DAY THE LORD HAS MADE,
TWICE EASTER, 2021, A SUITE OF POEMS
for pastors Jewel R. Withers, Jr. & Kathleen Anderson
Little Rock, Arkansas—Yakima, Washington
and for Rex Deloney, Colorist, Little Rock, Arkansas, &
Karen Bodeen, Fabric artist, Yakima
AFTERWARD OR FORWARD
Walking the yard, pruner in your old leather
holster, lopper in hand, that Monday
after Easter, how was it? You stopped,
as always, by the Hinoki Cedar
and bonsai-like, Pinus Contortis, lost
in trunk diameter beauty, foolishly probing
ungloved hands into the pine
after dead needles, giving new growth
a better chance for sunlight. More
meditation than prayer. More nature
than Christ, even as you believe
without doubting, Christ-presence
in the branch? How was it, Easter?
LET THEM EAT CAKE?
Twice blessed Easter, This is the day
the Lord has made, twice. Worship
streaming from your native place,
and again, from Rex in Little Rock.
This is the day the Lord has made,
three days, Friday to Sunday, and while
the faithful wait out Saturday,
you get married children and grandchildren,
out door and verified proof of new life’s
transfigurations. Stones, cairns, boulders
marking way, nothing hidden, no one
waiting for anything except cake,
early baked in your oven, new
recipe, coconut cream injected
to sweeten what’s already sweet,
Flaked coconut spread over whipped
cream. This is the day that the Lord
has made a day early.
You live
with a fabric artist, your friends
poets, painters, jewelers, surrounded
by all desire that may be delivered.
Sol y sombra, you move at will
from beauty to beauty, silence and word.
Let them eat cake.
“SUCH, SUCH WERE THE JOYS…” WILLIAM BLAKE
Such are the joys of listeners,
great inheritors of Catherine
and William Blake up through fabric
artists come through the rural south
the quilter Rosie Lee Tompkins,
and Alice Walker’s two sisters arguing
what’s to be done with Mama’s quilts
in the story Every Day Use--
frame and bequeath them in wills
or wrap bodies warm, exhausting
their threads so you may better know
the cost of your grandmother’s love?
Among the questions, Eli Leon.
Eli Leon, her champion.
They meet at a flea market
in Oakland, red thread
among everything gold.
These questions, along with similar
others, are your only unknowns
waiting for sunrise on Easter morning.
You are the one who remembers
the Jim Harrison poem. You still
hold out for more justice, Easter Morning,
proud, poor white peasants, where
we come from, who we are, frying potatoes
in bacon grease, joining the army
for the GI bill in exchange
for being shot at. The dice.
ASCENDANT INNOCENCE
Listening first from your butterscotch
chair in the living room, with your notebook,
the visiting pastor, an interim you haven’t
bothered to meet, Kathleen Anderson,
her name, baptizing a child, breaks out
into giggles, overcome with joy
before the baby, surrounded by family.
She giggles again reading Mark’s gospel.
Pout and be gone, poetry man—your wife
feels what you cannot on Easter. More
proof in how much you are loved.
throw water from palm branches on all.
Worship again while you walk. Following
worship reading from Eddie Glaude Jr.,
the black professor’s rare book,
Uncommon Faith: A Pragmatic Approach
to the Study of African American Religion.
You, who have had late coffee and oranges
with your wife of half a century, Sunday
Morning, carrying Wallace Stevens.
You, who hears Duke Ellington play,
Come Sunday, coming through Archie Shepp’s horn.
My Lord, what a morning. Rare book,
headphones in your ears, Church of God in Christ,
walking Yakima in Little Rock,
this may be your come to Jesus moment
on Easter, walking the neighborhood in clothes
hand-sewn by your artist wife. Hand-carved
walking stick from a cottonwood tree
from the hands of the ancestor-griot himself,
your friend, Gil Chandler. Walk,
my privileged friend, listen.
Holy Temple Cathedral, where the distance
is worth the difference. Rex brings me
through the door. Senior pastor
Bishop Jewel R. Withers Jr.
Hand clapping. Foot-stopping.
Clap hands, clap hands.
Far from shoreline, but the boat,
the boat’s right—get in the boat
Getting through Saturday.
Rex the colorist. Artist, painter, pilgrim.
Coach too? He did some coaching.
Brush man. Jesus man.
CROSS-COMPANION
Saturday’s the day my children
will be here, the pastor’s wife says.
Saturday’s my Sunday.
Jesus understands. Jesus
knows all the Sunday songs.
Resisting breath is resisting God
Cross-walking.
What?
Resisting white supremacy.
A cross-walking.
Easter’s uncommon faith provides.
To be otherwise. Being so.
A yes to how broken we really are.
On my Easter morning porch,
Professor Glaude, cup in hand,
Pragmatism encounters the underside…
Thrown into the messiness
of living. Who’s that behind him?
Is that, no, could it be Howard Thurman?
This, the invocation of Jesus,
a distinctive form of Christ,
a change of will, no longer content.
No longer resigned—daring
to be otherwise--
otherwise with the green light of no guarantee
Walking the development with earphones
This is Easter Sunday in Little Rock
after the song--
way out, way through, way maker,
man on a walk, man in a pew
looking at the back side, beginning.
“They didn’t kill him,” Bishop Withers says,
“He died on his own terms. Those sad ones,
living in the past. When my wife
hands me a jar that’s too tight,
I’m not giving it back until it’s open.”
Use everything. Women smiling, men chuckling,
that tiniest crack acknowledges the past in the moment.
We stand on diseased, distorted and deformed ground,
directed against us, here where a different way
of being in the world, a made-possible us,
in new space, a foundation made of shards.
*
Walking the Sunday yard, sun-stoned, altared
Sun-stoned altar
Alter-chained, changed
Re-written halleluiah
To save us from ourselves
Blessed by the question that carries
Eat long, as long as I can
Live Easter, as long as we can
*
The Lutheran pastor now, singing camp songs
from the pulpit, Pastor Kathleen,
So high you can’t get over it.
You gotta come in through the door.
Door, door space, threshold aha back at you.
The women knew exactly which tomb
overwhelmed by trauma and ecstasy.
Cross-companion every day.
She asks, What else really matters?
In the garden
you can say it twice
What else matters.
Say, Amen.
This is Easter.
Little Rock Yakima Easter.
*
WHAT ELSE REALLY MATTERS?*
*Pastor Kathleen Anderson
Reading sandwich recipes on the telephone
I may think that I want to read.
A small yellow-bellied finch
lands on bird bath with fresh water.
Another one waits on a nearby branch
of the Ed Wood Half-Moon Maple.
Sunday morning. Come Sunday.
Ellington wrote it for Mahalia.
It’s for all of us. Kathleen Battle
and Johnny Mathis. Ben Webster
and Oscar Peterson. That’s the day.
Finch in the birdbath. Finch in the maple.
Old man in the lawn chair with coffee.
Surrounded by Easter-image music blind.
Practicing in paradise.
This glimpse of the accessible, accessed,
if only in the doorway, glimpsed.
What resurrection is.
Before me in the safety of my own house, a quilter
and the story of Rosie Lee Tompkins.
Rosie Lee Tompkins, from Gould,
74 miles from Little Rock. And Rex.
But beautiful. Clap hands.
Unknowns and risks in every color.
Walk me to the threshold.
The gospel of what shows up
The gospel of who in wonder.
Jim Bodeen
4-14 April 2021–10 May 2021
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