TWICE AT 4 AM
Heft of quilt layers
quiets my restless body
A partner’s calm breath
Worth getting up for
New word for last night’s haiku
Now go back to sleep
Jim Bodeen
29 December 2022
Storypath/Cuentocamino: : LOS HUESOS/TRES POEMAS//TRES CULTURAS
Storypath/Cuentocamino: : LOS HUESOS/TRES POEMAS//TRES CULTURAS: LOS HUESITOS, TRES POEMAS / TRES CULTURAS At this point the original poem no longer exists. No existe. In its original nacimiento, it arrive...
BELL CHOIR, CHRISTMAS EVE
BELLS ON CHRISTMAS EVE
Long drive to worship last night.
Dad and Father Hopkins in my head.
Roads dark, icy. I tell Karen
how the bells lift me up.
I wouldn’t be here if you weren’t ringing bells.
Bells ringing—and then she rings the bells.
Do you know Fr. Hopkins’ poem, Nondum?
We’re early so bell ringers
can practice and I sit close in the pew.
I’ve brought my notebook
and the poems of Father Hopkins
opening by chance to Nondum
with an epigraph from Isaiah,
Verily Thou art a God that hideth Thyself.
We read our psalms but get
no answer back. Bells are ringing now,
and Starla comes over to say hello.
She asks me how I’m doing
and I say, Thank God for the bells,
to which she, a bell ringer, says, Amen.
Her mother gave these bells to us.
Father Hopkins, I echo your poem.
My prayer seems lost in desert ways.
A woman tells me I’m reading the lessons tonight.
I’m off by a night. I thought I was reading at Christmas.
Reading for a service that doesn’t exist.
As we drive in the dark, I think,
I’m learning to make reports in the Notebook.
The choir is ringing a Ukrainian Bell Carol.
These reports to God. I’m learning.
They’re just reports. Daily reports.
I thank my dad for this, remembering
when he was sick. I learned how to report all of it
without wincing. You never got to see that, Dad.
After the bells ring,
I get to stand up and read from Isaiah,
For all the boots of the tramping warriors
and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned.
Karen’s place is in the front row on the left.
I take a picture of the choir and of Bart at the piano.
Bells ringing, they lift this line from Father Hopkins,
Yet know not how our gifts to bring.
Jim Bodeen
24 December 2022
THE IMMEDIACY, THE IMMEDIACY,
THE IMMEDIACY, THE IMMEDIACY,
AFTER SOLSTICE
Three degrees isn’t the low
on this walk, there’s wind
from the west. Pause
at Solstice, redemption
isn’t immediate
and it’s a darker snow
in the poet’s inclinations
as he, too walks helpless
before the frozen world,
hard gold to love,
a mother’s milk,
Dr. Williams reminds us
Come in out of the cold,
One can’t report this extreme
and your story-telling
during the year
can’t be improved upon
now, hard hard gold
Jim Bodeen
22 December 2022
LOS HUESITOS
LOS HUESITOS
LITTLE STICKS, LITTLE BONES
My walking stick, mi bicho palito,
mi bastón
punches through ice and snow,
perfora el hielo y la nieve,
chasqueando dos veses
hasta llegar al pavimento,
clicking twice reaching pavement.
Trabajadores rompiendo la tierra
Workers with post-hole shovels
take turns trying to break through the ice.
Los Huesitos, la empresa mexicana de vallas
tiene tres camiones, y una docena de trabajadores
rompiendo la tierra para vallas de plástico
Los Huesitos,
The Mexican Fence Company,
has three trucks and a dozen workers
breaking ground for plastic fences.
Los huesos.
Los huesos y los palos.
Los huesos, the bones.
Bones and sticks.
¿Es posible poner los huesitos
en la tierra fría, la tierra congelados?
Eh?
The old man who walks the development,
greeting them as he passes by.
El viejo caminando apoyado en una muletilla.
El viejo que camina por la urbanización
saludando a su paso.
The workers, excavadoras de postes.
Agujeros, stop to let him through,
The workers ask again--Eh?
I’m the stranger, here.
Soy estranjero en esta huerta arrancada,
this orchard turned housing development.
Soy el extraño en esta huerta arrancada,
esta huerta convertida en urbanización.
¿Ya sabes o ya no sabes?
There’s a plastic fence around my house too.
Hay una valla plástico alrededor de mi casa también
¿Es posible poner los huesitos en la tierra fria,
la tierra congelado?
Mi bastón está cortado de un álamo.
Más bicho palo que bastón.
Más muleta de torero exiliado.
El viejo caminante,
su bastón es su poema,
Walking stick of a poet.
My walking stick is cut from a cottonwood tree.
Más bicho palo que bastón.
Más muleta de torrero exiliado.
The old man walking,
his walking stick is his poem,
El Palo de Poeta.
Jim Bodeen
16 December 2022
AND THIS ONE / Y ESTE:
Palitos, huesitos
Mi bastón, mi bicho palito,
perfora el hielo y la nieve,
chasqueando dos veces hasta llegar al pavimento.
Los trabajadores con palas
se turnan para intentar romper el hielo.
Los Huesitos,
la empresa mexicana de vallas,
tiene tres camiones y una docena de trabajadores
rompiendo la tierra para vallas de plástico.
Los huesos.
Los huesos y los palos.
¿Es posible poner los huesitos
en la tierra fría, la tierra congelada?
¿Eh?
El viejo que camina por la urbanización
saludando a su paso.
El viejo caminando apoyado en una muletilla.
Los obreros, excavadoras de postes.
Los agujeros, paran para dejarle pasar,
preguntan de nuevo... ¿Eh?
Soy el extraño, aquí.
Soy extranjero en esta huerta arrancada,
esta huerta convertida en urbanización.
¿Ya sabes o ya no sabes?
También hay una valla de plástico alrededor de mi casa.
¿Es posible poner los huesitos en la tierra fría,
la tierra congelada?
Mi bastón está cortado de un álamo.
Más bicho palo que bastón.
Más muleta de torero exiliado.
El viejo caminante,
su bastón es su poema,
El Palo de Poeta.
Jim Bodeen
AND THIS ONE:
LOS HUESITOS
LITTLE STICKS, LITTLE BONES
for Jacqueline and Alexi
My walking stick, mi huesito, mi bicho palito,
punches through ice and snow,
clicking twice reaching pavement.
Workers with post-hole shovels
take turns trying to break through the ice.
Fuertes Los Huesitos,
The Mexican Fence Company,
has three trucks and a dozen workers
breaking ground for plastic fences.
Los huesos, the bones.
Bones and sticks.
¿Es posible poner los huesitos
en la tierra fria, la tierra congelada?
Claro que es posible.
Eh?
The old man who walks the development,
greeting them as he passes by.
El viejo caminando apoyado en un baston.
The workers, excavadoras de postes.
Agujeros, stop to let him through,
ask again--Eh?
I’m the stranger, here.
Soy estranjero en esta huerta arrancada,
this orchard turned housing development,
to give me a better life,
to make my dream come true
¿Ya sabes o ya no sabes?
There’s a plastic fence around my house too.
¿Es posible poner los huesitos en la tierra fria,
la tierra congelada?
Claro que es posible.
My walking stick is cut from a cottonwood tree.
Más bicho palo que bastón.
Más muleta de torero exiliado.
The old man walking,
his walking stick is his poem,
his poems make him feel alive,
El Palo de Poeta.
Jim Bodeen
16 December 2022
TOO ICY
TOO ICY
Too icy to go out
where will steps come from today
Stay in clean kitchen
Jim Bodeen
13 December 2022
SIX BIG YELLOW ROAD GRADERS WITH BIG BLADES
SIX BIG YELLOW ROAD GRADERS WITH BIG BLADES
City trucks huddle in Walmart Parking Lot
under the lights,
Sunday before seven
Snow expected any time
Two trucks with gravel
Safe underfoot to walk
Ancestors will let us know
when they’re good
when all that stuff
they took with them is gone
Jim Bodeen
11 December 2022
NEARING MY HOME
NEARING MY HOME,
the old fashioned question,
surfacing,
What are people for?
I walk around the short block
saying to myself,
Keep going
You’re not ready to come in
Jim Bodeen
11 December 2022
AFTERWALKING
AFTERWALKING
Cookies for friends
Spicy Raisin, Raisin Puffup,
followed by Carrot Cake Cookies
with three-and-a-half cups carrots
Walking the development, taking pictures
in the near dark, afterwalking even walking,
even, like landscaping, a bobcat
camoflaged with a motor running
I telll my friends I like a dangerous cookie
Karen asking as I walk out the door,
Are you walking the development
Out there--
I re-tie my boots
tighten things up
kneel in the snow, take my gloves off,
walk back to that sold house
and take that one picture
before fitting my fingers
back into the gloves
frozen notes too thumb-written
on the iPhone
Afterwalking I say to my friend in a letter
Afterwalking is a noun
it’s a practice, it’s ovenwork
Jim Bodeen
10 December 2022
WALKING AFTER SHOVELING SNOW
WALKING AFTER SHOVELING SNOW
Two and a half miles this morning in the driveway
One set of tire tracks is what I’m looking for
If I’d put on snow shoes neighbors would understand
You could put on skis today!
Ancestral prayers are not timed or tied
My mother is with me this morning
She’s here without a sign
I don’t hear or see a thing
No voices in this snow
On this walk I can’t figure out my own sadness
this edgy-like anger disturbance
while this quiet beautyway
This Blessingway knows
I’ve forgotten how many times I’ve circled this block
where they’ve yet to build houses
My legs are stiff and cold
My jacket and pants are wet
Snow is turning to rain
One day this sadness will not be part of this walk
Ancestors heal one at a time under different conditions
One day my mother will no longer suffer
Jim Bodeen
10 December 2022
WINTER QUATRAIN
WINTER QUATRAIN
Let’s see where this walk takes me
Connecting the dots like I change my shoes
Now that I’ve quit writing poems
I’m a much funnier man
Jim Bodeen
8 December 2022
STAPLE GUNS ARE RATATATTATING
STAPLE GUNS ARE RATATATTATING
On Crown Crest up to 62d
There’s a Spanish radio station
broadcast from inside the hollow garage
Workers still in orange sweatshirts
listening to World Cup
a skill saw sings and shouts go up
when Brazil scores
It’s early half light and snowing
Trucks still warm the workers
An onan running
roofers already clacking away
Walking the development
where no houses were
Where grandchildren gleaned pears
in the orchard
These big belts carrying worker’s tools
hang heavy on the hips
Must weigh 20 pounds
Wound one around the waist
working on a Habitat House this spring
Still no houses on Whitman Avenue
street sign although a raven
sat on top of it during yesterday’s walk
Jim Bodeen
6 December 2022
MID-MORNING SNOW WALK
MID MORNING SNOW WALK
Finding the right notes
Practice won’t hade your weak song
That ice under foot
Jim Bodeen
5 December 2022
FALL ASLEEP READING
*
Fall asleep reading
Lose my Parker pen in bed
Wake stressed at midnight
Jim Bodeen
4 December 2022
SATURDAY, 17º
SATURDAY, 17º
Feeeling the bone in my foot
while still in bed
I wonder about walking
into the kitchen
to put on the coffee
Lacing my boots
after putting out the candles
I look out the window
at the gray sky
Jim Bodeen
3 December 2022
ROB, THE WALKING STATEMENT
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ROB,
This is a statement.
I did some research.
“There is no way I know of walking past the end of the road or singing
past the last silence. There’s only the way to walk while the light lasts
and the road lasts and the song lasts.”
Tom Lea in the Preface to The Brave Bulls, 1949.
“These are Mountain songs, Woman songs, Talking God songs, and songs
of Returning Home. These last songs are used in case the one-sung-over
has been a prisoner of war.”
Frank Mitchell, Navajo Blessingway Singer
I did some reading.
Pretty important Texas man.
I’m calling this walk
The Blessingway Walk
I came to it late
but it lifted me
when I was lost in it.
These many parts to the morning
before sunrise with candles.
You know all about candles.
I’m out there
before they turn off the streetlights.
Jim
29 November 2022
NEW WALKING SHOES
NEW WALKING SHOES
These are ok. They’re good.
I’ve been in them a couple weeks.
No. Really. The shoes are good.
The problem’s not the shoes.
The problem’s in my left foot.
What’s that?
That left big toe is 77 years old.
What about the right foot?
It's good.
Big toe on the right foot don’t act its age.
Jim Bodeen
21 November 2022
BEFORE MATINS, REMEMBERING A POEM
REMEMBERING A POEM *
FROM HALF A CENTURY BACK
BEFORE A MATINS WALK
but of course!
The monk as athlete.
Just a half breath
from the athlete of prayer.
He’d get himself in better shape.
He rose earlier and earlier,
and David’s psalms
sang to him as they did
when he was a child.
He walked his neighborhood alone
while his neighbors slept,
and during these November mornings
poems he’d memorized over the years
began arriving like old friends,
and one day, Father Merton himself,
could it be? ...seemed to be walking
with him, whispering in his ear,
You Sister, have chosen a path
too steep for others to follow.
Jim Bodeen
11-20 November 2022
*TO A SEVERE NUN by Thomas Merton
WALKING IN THE DARK
WALKING IN THE DARK
for BG
Midnight crisp, stars out
Big winds bringing in your birthday
Coffee-talk singing
Jim
8 November 2022
"TELL HIM WHAT YOU WANT!!!"
TELL HIM WHAT YOU WANT!!!
–for Lee Bassett
My friend says he likes my walking poem
but doesn’t know Archimandrite Aimilianos,
Elder Aimilianos, as he’s called at Simonopetra,
or even the Coptic Psalter, but
it doesn’t bother him. Is it, he asks,
the same Archie Bell & the Drells,
who sang, Tighten up? Exactly,
Exactly, I say. One and the same.
There’s a rumored
recording of the evening they spent
riffing in honor of the Desert Fathers,
playing on one-legged stools
to keep them alert and upright.
To keep them from the fall.
It is said, too, they were competitive,
that they cried, Foul!
when they were outlasted
by the monk on bass.
Jim Bodeen
17 November 2022
Triptych for KC
TRIPTYCH FOR KC
I. This is the Lord’s doing
And it is marvelous in our eyes
Psalm 118
Front porch, red chair, coffee on, mid-September, waiting.
KC is on his way here.
He made my Chaco Stick wound in white rope
when I left work two decades past.
This beginning, beginning its 19th year.
Chaco Stick on front porch this morning.
This liminal space tucked behind Little Cherry Twist.
This Chaco Stick for Chaco Canyon.
Chaco Stick brought back.
Time-bound. We were time-bound together.
Believing we were the best, knowing we were least likely
for all things knowing. He took children
into ancient ways and dark skies.
Led from Kiva to Kiva. Go up to go down.
When I left that room that led to visions for the young
I followed him into the Canyon, dark stones
under starlit skies in a small, one-man tent
before entering the desert monastery,
that mountain-lifted liminal Christ site.
Praise for pilgrim-sinners in their child-like joy.
Notebook and camera, singing psalms walking
while traveling to the Holy City.
They shall go from strength to strength.
One might say he brought me here.
Here? Chaco Canyon? That, too.
Christ in the Desert. He helped build
that monastery, St. John’s, the Baptist home.
Closer to home on Satus Pass,
where Karen and I stopped in July
to buy cheesecakes, having once been
a capful of vanilla from the secret recipe,
come from Denise and not the Coptics.
Were we led here by cheesecakes?
Led to these small books, this visual delight,
light display. Monographs housing single essays
by Archimandrite Aimilianos. This Mt. Athos Elder,
his Daily Report to God, his Fools for Christ,
this prudent thing to hold for path-walking.
He’s on his way, he calls, Am I too late?
Is it too late to come out?
II. All that I have is my sense of purpose, my affliction,
and my calling out in that affliction. My affliction is my asceticism,
it is my practice, my way of life, something
that I offer to God.
Elder Archimandrite Aimilianos. Psalms and the Life of Faith. p. 320
So we should not want to do the divine part ourselves and expect God
to do what is our responsibility.
A Night in the desert of the Holy Mountain
Metropolitan of Nafpaktos
Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me, the sinner.
The Jesus Prayer
He had just finished building
his father’s coffin, and I had been reading
the Coptic Psalter, and asking for a guide.
His father’s obituary would be
in the paper after our talk. Now
at work on another coffin. His father,
a protestant missionary. I arrived here
through Rilke, And you know, he whom
they flee is the one you move toward.
I wouldn’t be ready for the distance between us.
My practice of matins self-serving
to monks beginning with The Six Psalms,
Matins, read in order, or an all-night vigil,
stand quietly, put aside all other thoughts.
My God, unto Thee I rise early at dawn.
Compunction will start you, take you to compassion.
The poet, like the eldest child, claiming
first rights and aligned with the Baptist,
wants this, at first checking discipline, perhaps
a way for him to the beloved,
to catch the attention of the Muse,
perhaps, too, he knows he’s lost,
good as he is, that good, and he
knows he’s pretty good. Compunction.
I had been that far off.
Walking in dark mornings,
The spiritual athlete begins his many steps.
In the solemnity of the hour, this.
Soul-pain. Soul-agony.
Soul-sorrow, Soul-wrestling.
Stopping on a mountain pass for cheesecake
with his wife, and this. Stopping here,
is an action performed.
Reading this verse, Elder Aimilianos writes,
It is like watching a man die.
I have been called out of myself.
This is the walking before sunrise.
Walking in the dark, before lights
go on in houses, I’m the late arrival.
That boat in the garage is for me.
III. Om, shanti, shanti, shanti
From ignorance, lead me to truth;
from darkness, lead me to light;
from death lead me to immortality,
Om peace, peace, peace
(Brihadaranyaku Upshanit--
KC to B
He writes these lines on the inside book cover
of the book he sends in the mail--
Metropolitan’s night on Mt. Athos with the Gerondis.
Don’t ask for names.
Begin this walk in the dark before Six,
listening to Leonard Cohen Tribute
and it’s cold. Gray wool gloves
for the mountain, Sherpa stocking cap,
Chaleco desde montañas en México,
worn under lightweight puff jacket. Lime green
running shoes light the road
when the odd car with its headlights
reveal a man walking. Head lights imagine
a prayer rope in the man’s front pants pocket.
The athlete of the Jesus prayer is a stranger
to every form of pride. Imagine the man singing,
Mercy, Mercy, Mercy, by Cannonball Adderley.
It is 1966. It is 2022. It is November.
Jim Bodeen
25 July—4 November 2022
May this be born of gratitude for KC. jb
GATHERING UNDER CANDLES
GATHERING UNDER CANDLES
--for K, T, V, K
After-walking with first coffee before sunrise and psalms, lighting two candles. This altar collection below, an after-fall, a gleaning. Three painted match boxes, three polished stones, four tiny crosses from El Salvador. All gifts, themselves gathered as if sentient. Candles, too, had arrived wrapped and unmerited. Fall of life, full of color, each touched with hand-held back-story light-shade and bees wax.
The match boxes hand-painted by a friend. Each one paint-raised, lifted, solid circles, three circles on each, three color-rich song tones and bright. Lift one and it rattles. This one, a painted orange box, its one green circle the outer ring, center ring yellow and hot-to-the-touch red in the center. Red target-red, fire circle red, and dying-fire-red as if sunset dusted. Unsigned match boxes, come from the fire of a friend coming through fire, recalling my sister’s offhand telling of her bare-feet fire-walk this spring over hot coals when there was no fire in the forest. These red targets of redemption. This match-box painting friend, a woman, a poet, and serious student of archetypes and Jungian psychology. It is under-stood between them that she is sending another telling of the little girl and the match-box. The matches inside are meant to burn more than kindling. They come from one who knows how to build a hot fire, a fire that will not burn out. I am not told how to build a fire myself, not directly, but implications are clear: Build a hotter fire. It strikes me,--
here, the candles have been forgotten entirely. The candles, too, had come from a friend,
a man, a poet, who came to town to read some baseball poems. And there had been pie. He had taken two candle sticks from shelves behind the pantry closet and put them on the coffee table. How hot do candles burn? Excuse the digression. It was not my intention to enter into the wonders of archetypes
or death psychology (is it supposed to be depth psychology), but several weeks ago, some El Salvadoran crosses I had given to a pastor friend were found in cleaning out her desk drawers were returned to me, and without thinking, I placed them around the candle sticks. Each morning I’ve been struck as if striking a match by the mirror images of the crosses to the match boxes. Nearly exact in size. The smaller crosses fit into a match box. I share this to give you a sense of proportion. The match box is not a coffin. If you have never seen an El Salvadoran cross, or, for that matter, worn one, you’re missing out. El Salvadoran crosses are crosses of life. But to go back.
El Salvadoran crosses are hand-painted by children in primary colors. Their bright colors tell the story of el pueblo. Mi gente. I have placed one cross, the bright green, on my notebook where I’m writing this, in order to look at it more closely. The crosses, made of wood, are painted in enamel. Bright, deep, rich. (My earlier infatuation with fossil-fueled sports cars from England would call the color of this two-inch cross, British Racing Green.) Enough of this spotted-fragmented and lost past, my story is rural, poor, not material. I sit before these candles as one who has talked his way around faith. This tiny cross on my notebook comes with seven, yes seven, painted images.
From the top right, a portion, or piece of the sun, bright red morning with yellow rays, part for the whole. Child-inspired. Painters and poets employ this technique in their daily lives. (This cross was most likely painted by an older child.) (Yes, there’s a word for it.) Descending the vertical upright post, its tree, is a large, tropical flower, red, orange, yellow and green, out-sized here, and brilliantly full, filling the entire width of the painted wood. Beautiful, where the body of Jesus would traditionally be seen, or, be, in other cross traditions. Beneath the flower, a white dove in flight. And below the dove, a yellow chalice, its base unseen, off the cross but inside the cup, what appears to be a large white orb. This image is made more important by seven tiny black and radiating brush strokes surrounding the orb, perhaps ‘egg’ is a more accurate word. I wonder if my friend who gave me the painted match boxes, knows about El Salvadoran crosses. Or has one? If she doesn’t, I could give her one of these surrounding the candle sticks around the quilted panel on the altar, which is also a coffee table. The hand-made table-runner sewn by wife, in ten story-telling squares. Table-running and fire. Walking across fire-coals.
I suspect you know about the coffee table. Its patience also understood. But wait, I’m not finished. This one cross has more to offer.
On the right crossbar (horizontal) crossing the intersection, a small, swimming fish, red scales, blue fins and blue tail. A white head and one white eye. On the other side of the bar, and also on the other side of the tropical flower, is the largest cluster of purple grapes--they wouldn’t fit into your largest cereal bowl from your kitchen, complete with green leaves and wooden vines. Each grape in the cluster must be less than one-sixteenth of an inch. Cluster-this-packed. Grapes this ripe. Grape cluster larger than the dove, than the fish. This cross, this bright green cross (and speaking of things happening in intersections, last night, another friend, immigrant, undocumented, sends an image on my Iphone of an umbrella, paragua,in Spanish: a deluge of rain, with this: Los libros, Las mentes, y los paraguas Solo sirven Si se abren—books, ideas, umbrellas, they only work if they’re open. She’s Mexicana. Her husband, deported, is from El Salvador.
This cross, this bright green cross on my notebook, and all the crosses, all the match books, original, this green one fits in my hand, is not a crucifixion or a crucifix, but a cross of life. Say it again. This is not my imagination ballooning on you. These village images make up the essence of the El Salvadoran cross. Nor does this cross negate what the crossbars on any cross points to—that being those two other crosses on each side of Jesus, to his left and to his right, the two criminals, Barrabas, and the other one for whom we have no name, the first congregation theologians tell us. How far we’ve come.
El Salvadorans call their crosses trees of liberation, trees of life. They are, well, they’re beautiful, objects of beauty, which is to say, crosses that arrive with stories. They are crosses that come with suffering, and they cross through sorrow to joy. These, certainly, like the matchboxes, like the candle sticks, like the candles wrapped in tissue by my friend, the ones resting on the table runner. Everything rests here, but the crosses are meant to be worn around the neck. They come with an eyelet wound into its top or apex, so that a string can go through. They are crosses of experience, of suffering and trouble
and resurrection, crosses of pilgrims, gardens, children walking to school. They mirror match boxes in size and detail. They are fun-filled and full of fun. And lit each morning by candles, candles running down, light descending. Color-filled and resting beside polished stones, which I enjoy along with the psalms each morning in this softest of light, the warmest of fires.
Jim Bodeen
21 May 2022—16 October 2022
FOR HE WAS ENVIOUS
FOR HE WAS ENVIOUS
...seeing the peace of sinners
--Psalm 72
That day he made raspberry jam.
He’d picked the berries
two days earlier.
Second harvest of red and golden
from the berry farm
a couple of miles from his home.
The frozen kind.
That afternoon, walking the development
where construction workers with hammers
built homes in the uprooted, torn-out orchard
where his grandchildren gleaned apples,
he felt wind blowing dirt from backhoes,
and smoke in his eyes from Goat Rocks Fire
where he still hiked and skied,
he remembered—he and his wife
were serving meals that evening at Camp Hope,
the shelter. He’d have to pick it up.
These men, los marjinados, wearing
hooded orange sweatshirts for sun protection.
The builders. Not the homeless.
His wife had told him
Julie had made sixteen loaves
of bread that day. He’d been reading
the 72d Psalm for two weeks.
He couldn’t get past it.
From the Coptic Psalter. That, too.
He had failed to move on.
But Thou art my portion.
That one came to him
from Sandy Hook seven years ago.
Mi herencia.
Marked in his bilingual Santa Biblia.
All this moving and he’s still stuck.
He would take some jam
with him for Julie to the shelter.
Jim Bodeen
11 October 2022
On the street where He lives
On the street where He lives
Released from writing
Not from the practice
Jim Bodeen
5 October 2022
THIS TINY CROSS
THIS TINY CROSS
for Megan
hanging from a spider web
on an old growth tree
while hiking Box Canyon
with your dad, my brother,
on Mt. Rainier,
years ago, surfaces this morning.
This cross is for Sunny crossing.
Sunny, who could bite, and did,
is with St. Francis. Your companion,
Sunny, this cross, and the 10,000 ways
animals live among us
showing us how to love.
Uncle Jim
5 August 2022
CONVERSATION ON GRATITUDE DESCENDING BURROUGHS MOUNTAIN
CONVERSATION ON GRATITUDE
DESCENDING BURROUGHS MOUNTAIN
WITH MY BROTHER AND SISTER
--for Chuck and Vonnie
Oh, thank you, but not from me!
Gratitude comes from Chuck!
No, no, I got it from you.
That can’t be. It was given to me.
How could I not know that, Vonnie.
How would I know.
You send me gratefulness
every day in the mail. Take this trail.
Three siblings passing on the gift,
like the desert fathers
not knowing how to start a fight,
beginning with the brick.
Just say, The brick is mine.
OK, it’s mine. No, it’s mine.
OK, you take it.
Jim
22 September 2022
BELOVED IN THE KITCHEN
BELOVED IN THE KITCHEN
Greeting my wife
with a kiss this morning
as she comes into the room
she whispers,
Go hike a mountain
Jim Bodeen
1 September 2022
LONG MARRIAGE
LONG MARRIAGE
Sore left feet
Two of them
Two sore left feet
Two left feet sore
Two of them?
How is that possible?
One is Karen’s
One is mine
Jim Bodeen
1 September 2022
BERTHA BRINGS ME A ROCK
BERTHA BRINGS ME A ROCK
from Railroad Creek
at Holden Village, the old copper mine
turned retreat center where
she just returned from. She
was there with Israel, her husband--
It’s his birthday today!,--we’re out
on the patio eating pie and ice cream.
We spent ten years with them,
the abrecaminos, at Holden Village,
mining our hearts, cruzando fronteras,
but didn’t go this summer.
Bertha hands me this stone
saying, This mountain
has come down to you.
Afterwards, Israel, whispers
in my ear, as he sings,
Caminos de Michoacán.
Nobody can hear as we take
the one road out of Quiroga.
Jim Bodeen
22 August 2022
Mil gracias, Bertha y Israel!
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