*
Sunrise with Grandpa
Mama Bear and her two cubs
Josh and Kate, 15
Jim Bodeen
29 July 2021
TO THE QUILTER, LUCILLE CLIFTON, WHO CAME ON BOARD
TO THE QUILTER, LUCILLE CLIFTON,
WHO CAME ON BOARD WITH THE BLESSING OF THE BOATS
Your poems arrive with pie cherries
from a friend. The dedication, BF,
ma, mommy, grandma, lu,
on pages laid out with so much space
each line relaxes into itself,
your embracing arms.
Michael Glaser and Kevin Young careful.
My mother’s name, Lucille.
A granddaughter, 15, with your names in the middle.
A foundation and brick. Book coming in at 769 pages,
and this is betterness
These are good times
and when these poems come out
I’m just back from Viet Nam,
still don’t know how I found them.
my mama moved among the days
like a dream walker in a field
you’re born in 1936, where I’m going,
quilter. The Colorist Rex DeLoney
brings Colorist Rosie Lee Tompkins
into our family with a painting
he calls Quilt for Rosie Lee,
you two born in the same year,
you two shaping ways we breathe.
Rosie Lee faces my wife Karen,
two quilters while I read
somewhere in the other where
lines collapsing around
the yellow-eyed woman
looking at us in a living room
where/ alchemists mumble over pots
*
Your uncollected poems up front
and throughout, the R.I.P.
5/23/67 for Langston
Oh who gone remember now like it was
the early capital letters, Dear Mama,
all that i do
i do for you
Adhering to gift principles
the gift must always move
poems and quilts blessed by the pastor
they’re all women now
Lucille entering with Rosie Lee
my mother Lucille, too,
like she just got off the bus.
House full of Cele and Lucy and Lu.
Mysterious Luz Belle, smiles
all around coming from El Salvador,
these blessings moving things around
every poet envious of shaman fingers
I get your poems for the pastor
leaving songs of Rhiannon Giddens
by your portrait on jacket of the book.
I read your Crazy Horse poems.
Spirit bird women all
I promise pastor a slice of cherry pie.
*
What’s going on here in poems
happens in needle and thread,
happens in pillow cases
of transfigurations.
Tony Morrison chides scholars.
Where’s the work on Clifton?
Page beautiful forces my read in kind.
Tiny mirrored squared bullets in black ink.
look i am the one what burned down the dew drop inn
I would write on that line and the willie poems
Precision of voice and story, direct line to and from danger
with a truckload of library credibility
and direct access to archives.
Liminal space on pages with time to breathe and recover between poems.
Burning pages. Women at kitchen table. Cherry pie.
In the meantime. I’d go there. Already and Not Yet.
Old Testament witness
Animal blood, night vision, certainties
All that is uncollected belonging and here, part of us,
merciful meaning, mean, meantime
All for mama, all of it, quilts taken down from walls warming,
scholarship of the heart mama’s burning poems remaining
Jim Bodeen
July, 2021
Sometimes That's How it Goes, Building Libraries
SOMETIMES THAT’S HOW IT GOES,
building libraries. Derek Sheffield’s
Not for Luck, for instance, brought
to Mt. Virginia for Nick, who wanted
to talk poems. Bringing it
from the Mothership,
I’d forgotten Derek begins
with this Lucille Clifton epigraph,
And the grains of dust would gather
themselves along the streets
and spell out, These too are your children.
This too is your child.
Opening the front door of Mt. Virginia,
I ask, This elegance, too, a child of God,
because Lucille Clifton’s new collected
rests on the dining room table.
I know this because I put it there.
Here I am with Derek again,
Especially What Needs Saying,
his title, It never stops this reserve
of doing what needs doing.
Nick lost his father two years ago,
writes about him now, but that’s not
why I brought Not for Luck for him.
Nor is It for the ink color switch
so beautiful in Luck on the cover.
I brought it for how Derek has found
a way to go beyond his teacher
without having to be better than,
or even to take his teacher out.
How Derek and Kevin became
better at love together. That,
that’s an important thing to know.
Thresholds bring the damnedest
surprises. And how to tell Nick
I’m not giving him this book
I brought for him after-all.
After this. It’s going to Megan
who runs Mt. Virginia
with a family of women
running a retreat house B&B.
She’s left trail markers for guests
walking the forest, mapped
for people who come to see.
She showed her movie last night
on the environment. She’s
a tree planter. Derek’s poems
might be gnomes in the library.
Gnomes too. Gold fish
in the black pond
and all that attracts light.
Jim Bodeen
13 July 2021
When the Hummingbird Appears
WHEN THE HUMMINGBIRD APPEARS
I’m here to make a poem.
--Deborah A. Miranda
Carry coffee to cairns
setting red clay cup
on road, spilling
as I kneel
before the stones
losing balanced
Righting myself
sun at my back
I replace several flat
stones
that have fallen
during the night
It is early
and I am up
doing my work
Jim Bodeen
20 July 2021
MEANTIME VISIONS OF CHRIST AND YOU
MEANTIME VISIONS OF CHRIST AND YOU
--for Phil Garrison
You may be right, pastor,
what you say about us,
speaking of all of us,
impersonal you
being nothing,
only our I and us,
or our you as nothing,
without your You,
you may be right,
but your language, your...
*
You breathe the water awake.
Jay Wright
*
The poet who welcomed me back
from war more than half century past,
count from 1968,
who, in the middle of that time
made the peyote desert journey
writes me that drug tourists
are stamping out the blossoms
for the name changing ceremony.
Jim Bodeen
10-11 July 2021
MIDNIGHT FOUND POEM
PRIVATE MESSAGE
FOUND POEM
FROM MY PASTOR FRIEND
“I stopped writing on January 6th.”
Jim Bodeen
Midnight
9 July 2021
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