RAINBOW MULCH
October colors
Letters from another war
Torn fall leaf soil red
Jim Bodeen
Dias de los muertos, 2021
MULCHING LEAVES IN NORTH PARK
MULCHING LEAVES IN NORTH PARK
I.
That grove of trees by the tracks
out of town in North Dakota
a mile or so from the grain elevator
Dad managed, aspen, that’s what
I wanted in this ten by forty foot patch,
I call it a park, but it’s that grove
I carried from childhood, planting four trees
of size in late middle-age. Late 70s now,
tree roots can’t penetrate clay just under
laid-down sod by developers, need
nutrients. I feed, aerate and mulch.
Four trees, Canadian Chokecherry,
Juneberry, China Snow, Coral Bark Maple,
Worked by hand, Fall Harvest,
a semi-circle survival must.
II.
Decomposition rate, decay, soil fauna,
nutrient release, tree species diversity.
Getting nitrates. The nitrogen.
Research says oak leaves make great mulch,
but no oak tree here.
Shredded leaves break down faster.
Acid loving plants like oak and beech.
No beech.
Add organic matter and fertility to soil,
insulate roots, cooler in summer,
warmer in winter, attract beneficial organisms,
repel pests, boost immune systems.
But remember, I’m breaking down clay.
Breaking down clay in the North Park.
Handle, foot bar, four tines. Hand-held aerator.
A meditation penetrating through sod to rock and clay.
Dig it up, turn it over. Like compost.
Mulch with the mower, and rake.
This morning I’m harvesting leaves
from three Jacquemonte Birch. They’re yellow.
I’ve harvested the Korean Pear and Autumn Blaze Maple.
Autumn Blaze the great tree of this garden.
Red spectrum dragon-fire.
Five men and a trailer to plant it.
The towering presence. A barn-full of leaves.
Mother-load mulch.
What’s left are two lilac bushes,
a dogwood, and Little Cherry Twist.
And now the yard before me
in its new bumped-up look of colors.
All green gone except for the pastel
of torn beauty from China Snow
among the browns and deep reds.
A carpet of fall foolishness
from a practice of hope.
III.
Small park un-improved.
Child place for old man with book
under-and-over,
unburied and green-leafed.
IV.
Rain last night.
Rain on tarp covering dog run
outside bedroom window.
Rain on soil in North Park.
Rain over my head.
I open my eyes and listen.
Rain drops finding their way
through mulched leaves
through turned-up sod,
dropping from colored fleck
to colored fleck. Pushing time.
Probing tines and worms in clay.
Disrupting hope, oxygen
carriers. Mattress holding
against tightened thighs, cramped.
Willie Loman planting carrots.
Last payment resistance-bounty.
Colors’ redemption.
Torn leaves and gold coins.
Dogwood offering itself bleeding out.
Jim Bodeen
October 2021
LOOKING INTO MY FRIEND in the Cañon del Muerto
OPENING LINES IN A NEW NOTEBOOK
for Lloyd Draper in the Cañon del Muerto
The way I hear the song, Lloyd,
you’re the Blessingway. Listen,
He comes upon me with blessing.
Before him, from there.
That’s how it happened in Chinle.
That’s how the song goes.
One more verse, same song:
Behind him, it is blessed.
Before him, it is blessed.
What happened in the restaurant.
Poems are letters to family and friends.
The notebook will receive all you have.
Your friend in the Yakima Canyon,
Jim
25 October 2021
OCTOBER PORCH HAIKU
OCTOBER PORCH HAIKU
--for Karen BodeenLunch I fix for you
Would be much more delicious
If you liked pickles.
Love, jim
27 October 2021
Storypath/Cuentocamino: : SOME OF WHAT THE BRISTLE CONE PINES SAY
Storypath/Cuentocamino: : SOME OF WHAT THE BRISTLE CONE PINES SAY: INYO NATIONAL FOREST OUT OF BISHOP, 168 EAST, 12 MILES to the turnoff to Bristle Cone Pine Forest, then another dozen miles to Grand ...
SOME OF WHAT THE BRISTLE CONE PINES SAY
INYO NATIONAL FOREST
OUT OF BISHOP, 168 EAST, 12 MILES
to the turnoff to Bristle Cone Pine Forest,
then another dozen miles to Grand View Park,
where we are now. I say to Karen writing down
fragments, Thanks for this, your notes,
for making this journey too. No power,
no company, no smoke, no fires. And
two nights.
Carrying lots of water, lots of fuel.
Tire pressure checked. Narrow road.
Here, a one-land road. If you think
your horn is going to be heard, Jim.
22 August 2021
Mothership Log 14-A
AMONG THE ANCIENTS: Discovery Trail, Schulman Grove
From Grandview Camp in the Bristle Cone Pine Forest, Karen and Jim Bodeen, from Schulman Ranger Station, walk the Discovery Trail, at dusk, among the oldest living trees in the world as they continue their Storypath/Cuentocamino in the Mothership. Their 53d year of marriage. 22 August 2021.
*
This Twisted Light: Among the Ancient Bristle Cone Pines
Walking the Methuselah Trail in the Bristle Cone Pine forest with poets, priests, friends, family, artists and writers. A conversation and an invocation, during the fire season of burning forests, 2021. Part prayer, part homage, a blessingway of grace. Walking and listening, voices emerge with the silence. The near and the far, everything close with the oldest trees in the world.
LISTENING TAKING PLACE
AMONG THE BRISTLE CONE PINE WALK,
THE NEVER-ENDING ONE
That we may laugh and fight and sing
And of our
transience here make offering
Edwin Arlington Robinson
This twisted light, this walking with the ancients.
Older than Methuselah. This man against the sky.
Out of order. Oh, my people.
Edwin Arlington Robinson. And Lao Tzu.
Robinson, first great modern American poet.
You can quit writing anytime you think you can.
But beautiful. The turnaround walk,
this steady tone poet Robinson,
Walking into a new century
Walk that turns you around
Don’t pretend.
Remember what the ranger said.
My people named. Vance, Barry, Marty, Kevin, Karen,
Krista, Leah, Tim Bodeen, twice,
Bill Ransom, Don King, Mary Oliver,
Navajo Blessingway Singer Frank Mitchell,
Grandchildren, Wes Hanson, David Hinton,
Chuck Bodeen, tree planters in the empty bowl. Lena.
Mom and Dad, Grandma, Grandpa,
Vonnie. Vonnie & Craig.
Vonnie, Craig, Tyler, Brian.
Lee Bassett, Terry, Jane,
Women poets, Dan Peters,
Rob and Jackie, Ron Marshall.
The Christians, Jesus, all blue begonias everywhere,
Pastor Harald Sigmar, Ethel,
Father Stanley Marrow,
Rudolf Bultmann,
Jim Engel, Erica,
Dr. Edmund Schulman and the Schulman Grove,
Pastor Ron Moen, Raymond Carver.
Walking the zone of individual difference
This, too is the story of a house of trees in stony soil.
Flammonde doesn’t know where he came from,
And he’s the world on fire.
As far as this, and more, cresting the hill
With questions, that won’t say no,
As if he
were the last god going home.
These images stuck early, blessed and blessing,
Walking with friends into the wild
Who would and will, show themselves against horizons
Allowing Robinson’s question,
Where is he going, This man against the sky?
And my friends would take pictures,
Photographing all.
Gary Snyder walking here--not a single footprint.
Jim Bodeen
22 August—19 October 2021
*
THE PURPLE PINE CONE
“Sunlight, rain, snow, air. Indeed, as we now know,
earth is made of heaven’s scattering of stardust…”
David Hinton, Existence, A Story
Back at the Mothership,
Karen shows me her photo:
It must have been a purple pine cone
at one time--I didn’t know
about purple pine cones
until now—I heard, I say,
couldn’t see, but...I just noticed
she says, it must have been
purple at one time, had to have been.
This darker color with sap running
out. This living. This, these.
Oldest trees in the world.
Karen and Jim Bodeen
Storypath/Cuentocamino
Mothership Log, 14-A
23 August 2021
*
HORSE TRAIL
HORSE TRAIL
Out Summitview early to Rocky Top,
clear sky, blue and cold, testing memory.
Schneider Spring Fire smoldering ash.
First time away since Karen’s stroke.
Count to twenty blessings, start over.
Day hike with apple, protein bar, quart
of water—the Yakima to Mt. Rainier,
William O. Douglas Trail—this one,
Horse Trail at Earl Anderson Trailhead.
Listed trail closures, Upper Ha-Ha-Ha,
Tooludu, closed due to erosion.
No shade or water, rattlesnakes and ticks.
Past Walk and Roll, Green Harvester,
my friend, Doug Johnson, poet-painter
named these trails, his reward
for trailblazing the vision.
Shrub-steppe bunch grass, old growth sage,
past Orange Harvester, rural camp art Johnson,
after Anderson Rock & Demolition Pit.
Douglas hiked these shrub-steppe foothills
to strengthen legs weakened by infantile paralysis.
“The desert hills of Yakima had a poverty
that heightened perception.” Scabland,
bunchgrass. Hozho. Cattlegate.
Kyrie Eleison.
This Blessingway walk, mine,
fenceline Monday. Stick gates
hand-painted, Close gate
to keep cows in. Barbed wire
rust, patina. Farm tools,
old combines, grief and joy,
simultaneous knowing.
Gates that I step over thunder-clear.
This way is the world.
This is the freeway around barbed wire,
rust-red beauty way without razors.
Dangers of blessing it all. Nothing hinders.
Is there any joy that is not wild?
Jim Bodeen
12-13 October 2021
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