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