WALKING THE OTHER WAY

 

WALKING THE OTHER WAY

Dressed in Sunday walking clothes

I walk the development twice.

Call this worship, the Blessingway.

Under birches before noon.

I’ve been with plums and coffee,

toast with peanut butter and raspberry

freezer jam. A pleasure fest

began in joy’s beginnings.

Grandparents in accompaniment.

A granddaughter’s homecoming dance.

Transportation in times of questioning identities.

Home late, fears absolved,

and we’re all living in larger worlds.

My bell-ringing partner rocks her soul,

as that over-sized September moon

keeps moving from one side of the road

to the other. Two full moons! She says,

in one month. Waning Gibbous

for science and astrologists, first called

Gibbosus in the 14^th Century: O

Humpbacked Goddess illuminate us!

We woke late, waking nonetheless, woke.

Dressed for the Blessingway

in white long-sleeved sun-blocked hiking shirt,

Karen’s vest-for-me vesting me,

in red and black, zippered, setting up

the Tilley Hat, the artist-wife re-models

with Japanese silk hat band, flashing

high and deep with a band tied

by a cloth button. The hat-band mirrors

the tree-short development I walk in,

cream, maroon, deep, black and tall,

with a perfectly placed pin marked

over a small shell created by my jeweler.

Baseball is over for the home team,

and this morning I turn counter-clock wise

so I can run into the also-walking

neighborhood couple, young. One,

a neighborhood community organizer,

(he’s the one with Alzheimer’s), and

the woman, who is a dog whisperer,

talk with me, too. I want to say more

about the DreamBody. Arnie Mindell,

who walked me through extreme states

with my mother, even while camped

in an upturned canoe in a tent on the beach

through a telephone. Arnie said,

When I die pour my ashes down the toilet

because I like to go to where trouble

is found. I want to say to my young neighbors,

My porch is an open porch.

Twice around the development, two miles.

My hearing aids are in, and I’m listening

as Parker Palmer reads a 12-minute talk

to Naropa graduates from 2015.

I heard it then, things are worse:

Violence follows close behind our fears.

I do talk to the walking couple.

We talk about trees, and the dog whisperer

says she’d like to have one of the seedlings

that have survived a couple of winters.

She’ll come over and take a look.

My walking stick is a gift from a friend.

Jim Bodeen

1 October 2023