V. AFTER TEARING OUT THE BLACKBERRIES
ON THE MCKENZIE RIVER, THE WOMAN
APPROACHES HIM SITTING ON THE ROCK
EATING HIS SANDWICH
--for Sarah Hunter
Tell me about Barry Lopez, she says.
He said, Two things I can’t teach.
I can’t teach you hunger. I can’t teach you discipline.
She said, After we’re finished here,
Would you like to go over to his house.
30 October 2023
IV. ON THE MCKENZIE RIVER, THIRD RIVER IN THREE DAYS,
WITH THE MCKENZIE RIVER RESTORATION PROJECT, AN ACCOMPANIMENT
--for Sarah Wheeler & Sarah Hunter
--When asked about his desire to contribute to the literature of hope
on the River, Barry Lopez responds: I would like at the end of my life
to say that I had lived up to the expectation of that River.
--B.L. interview PBS, KLCC, 2016
When he asks,
Where have you been?
Some told him
of their travels.
He wanted to know
what took you so long.
The mind drifts, and I catch
just enough to ask the question
about the beavers.
They love the willows we’re planting.
They’ll replant them near their lodge,
dome-shaped from wooden sticks.
Willows a food source.
Beavers like their food close.
Dams slow water, keeping
it on landscape. Wetland creation,
from streams to form streams.
From harvesting willows. Farming.
This is river talk river-walking.
Taking notes on the Forest Service map
left behind by the others.
Careful with steps.
Can’t rush to catch up.
Don’t fall while imagining,
What if, and what ifs piling up.
Don’t drop these notes in the water!
Last night in the room, preparing,
questions asked of Lopez,
And when you apprentice yourself to the river…
it just keeps going, it absorbs everything.
Startled from the dreaming,
re-locating the others half-circled
around our guide all eyes on the water, half-hearing,
...and if you find water with an oily sheen on it,
poke it with a stick, if it’s natural it will shatter.
It’s decaying plant matter. Yes.
It’s called biofilm. If it clings together, it’s oil--
take a picture, note location, and report it.
Graduate students from Corvalis
don’t know Lopez, don’t know Synder.
Come to these rivers from all over the nation
knowing their hydrology, emptying themselves
from a single van, carrying Dogwood, Nine Bark,
Honeysuckle Twin Berry—that’s the big one,
these are native, for planting. Don’t need to bring up
the heritage of their backpacks. Talking
to each other about artificial gravel ponds,
regrading. Not the logging company
mining gravel for roads and levees.
Disrupt the land in order to create it.
Bury logs, wedge them,
dangerous work to rebuild the flood plain,
for the science of meander. Spontaneous.
An old man taking notes on wonder,
reuniting Elk Creek with the McKenzie.
Me? My father is a fishery biologist.
Take out the bass and bull frogs.
Bring in lamprey. Salmon numbers fry up to 300.
Lopez would cry hearing these kids.
On land and out of waders.
Cut those blackberries short,
Dig roots where you can.
Neat piles. They’ll re-root themselves.
Let Portland have these blackberries,
help them to remember the land they came from.
THE FOREVER LETTER TO MOEN MUSING
--10 April 1932–24 October 2023
--for Ginny
Dear Ron,
you started poems to me like that,
Dear Jim,
heading straight from there to Jesus.
Jesus and a car full of men
on the way to your memorial.
There’s an image
might make you smile.
Men come from Yakima,
Ginny, imagine that.
There’s a march
nobody saw coming.
I got me some memories.
You and Ginny popping
corn on the stove.
Moen musing, that’s
my favorite. Those
pages come in the mail.
You wrote poems
but never used the word
yourself, not close
enough, no matter
how Christ-centered
it was, to Christ.
Any poem written
by man had too much
man in it,
and not enough Christ.
That’s me, Ron,
in a nutshell,
too much man,
not enough Christ,
that’s what
I always loved
best, what I
loved the most,
and took the most
from, from you.
Talking with your family
at the memorial,
Ron wrote poems?
I didn’t know that.
I loved the surprise
on their faces.
I brought out
all the books you sent,
collected all your
musings I could find,
set them by my chair
on the floor,
determined
to get it all
said,
once and for all.
But I kinda
knew
Moen’s musings,
the one thing
I wanted to say
would be it,
one thing
you’d admit to
being you,
man of Christ.
Your eternal friend, Jim
17 November 2023
THANKSGIVING LETTER TO KAREN
ON OUR 55TH ANNIVERSARY
I.
The turkey goes into the oven at 6:30.
This bird is stuffed. You left that cavity to me,
doing your own stuffing in the crock pot.
Corn bread stuffing from both of us.
You left out eggs from yours as an option.
I used two eggs and celery,
but let me tell you about mine—as it says
on the box, mine’s a corn bread mix,
not corn stuffing. Homestead style,
protein packed, Kodiac.
Frontier food restored. So add this
to the mix. This corn bread might raise
hell with the bird and the oven.
I don’t know what will happen,
even now.
Even before I put that turkey in the oven
the thought crossed my mind
like it does each year,
that I’m the turkey.
Man in the oven. Baste him
This is no confession.
Cook him in his own juice. Stick him with a fork..
I’ll be right back. I have to go peek.
II.
You’re saying Grace at dinner today.
I loved that Ann Lamott you read me yesterday
sitting in your butterscotch chair. We were trying on
those new support socks you ordered.
Putting them on, getting them over the heel.
They were too tight. Too long.
You talking about Lamott.
Her secret. Even at six she believed in God
in a family of athiests. She had that friend
growing up, they said prayers,
and she was hungry for every word.
Each part of her story that you told got better,
and we decided right then you would say grace
at our Thanksgiving table.
That saves me from becoming the Church Lady, too.
Karen, all of that stuffing wouldn’t fit
inside the turkey. I figured that out,
especially after adding celery and onions--
oh, and carrots, too. I split it up,
putting half of the mix in a loaf pan.
I have no idea what will happen.
You say Lamott grew up around alcohol
and unhappy grownups.
That’s how she became watchful.
Karen, how did you become the beloved?
III.
Last night in bed, just before turning out the light,
you said, There’s one more thing, she said,
speaking of our daughter, those twins,
those two blessings, does it matter which one
told you what? Only in the particulars,
but it was so beautiful. The love coming forth
from the daughters for their mothers.
You, Karen, recipient and seed
of the great Mother-love. I was reading a poem
at the time, a poem by the Canadian Robert Bringhurst.
It, too, was beautiful, and I gave it to you to read
because it seemed to be saying the same thing.
The same thing, but not saying it better than you said it,
not saying it better than our daughters said it either,
but giving us a chance to say it again,
repeating it, a balm, and another blessing.
These lines: We are what we dream of--
music and truth and some unfinished weaving.
Our fire has lasted, and like you said,
How could you tell anyone.
How would anybody believe it.
IV.
Even then I wasn’t ready for sleep Karen,
Did you get the title of the poem, too?
Look at it: How the Sunlight
Gets To Where It’s Going.
My God, it’s beautiful.
It’s beautiful again this morning.
And we did have some unfinished weaving
to talk about. You were coming home
from the store and I heard the garage door open,
and then the door to the kitchen.
Two doors open. And like it is in this house,
in this graced dwelling: Imagine,
having a garage! A house for the car!
Two doors open. And there you are.
Your fabric art on the dining room table.
A mountain scene memory photograph
woven into a wall hanging, with portraits
of grandchildren. Nearly completed,
but in a tough spot. Critical decisions.
Everything’s open, you said.
Consider everything, I’m listening.
The two doors. And we look again.
My stuffing’s been in the oven a long time.
It’s golden, but the toothpick doesn’t come out clean.
Is this corn bread? Is it stuffing?
Is it to die for? Those doors.
I know those doors open, those doors shut.
We look carefully at the art on the table.
We get out the photograph that delivered the dream.
We look again where we hadn’t looked close enough.
Here. Look here, at these lines. This shadow here.
How interesting up against those rocks.
Can that be shown in fabric?
The material you used here, my God.
And what’s small in the background comes forth.
It’s alive and carrying what’s easiest to see.
What we can see, but don’t.
We find all these possibilities.
You find them. We see things together
we haven’t even learned to see.
We draw again on separate sheets of paper
Can something be done with this?.
There are places in this beauty-weave
that must be practiced and learned
before you can finish. All of this beauty.
And that, too. That beauty, too.
V.
Check the turkey. Check the dressing.
Dressing itself. Dressing for the day.
Two dressings. Corn bread. Indigenous beauty bread.
That dressing’s been in the oven a long time.
It’s early, though. We have time.
Before family comes.
We set places for everybody.
A plate for everybody and nobody.
One way or another, they’re all here.
Tim’s on his mountain, but he’s not alone.
His cousin Julia’s with him.
He sent photos of them swimming
in a high country lake surrounded by snow.
Wet socks! He said, that. Wet socks!
Everybody here. Sig and Alice.
Your Mom, Dorothy. Your Dad.
My Mom and Dad.
Places at the Thanksgiving table
on our 55th Anniversary.
Love,
Jim
23 November 2023
II. The Situation Surrounding You
“We are leaping into a future that will go one way or the other.”
Jane Hirshfield
Barry Lopez, Arctic Dreams
Night driving with the new maps
is no help, it’s still dark in the car
and these voices come at me like deer.
Karen in her fabric room
preparing material
weaving into landscapes
of thread memory,
me driving away
searching river restoration reach.
Mirages can be described,
and memory? Mine, as a child
in North Dakota winters
from the back seat,
returning from Flaxton
to Bowbells. Jack Rabbits
in dim headlights, my Mother’s
voice in swirling snow
on the highway.
We were closer to Canada
than anywhere in the States.
Slow down and then
The Northern Lights
whiteout winds
and Lon Haley,
a child’s first barber,
drunk, head on into the semi
coming from Minot.
Lens, corrected
and empty space
among rays of light
the child’s eyes magnified.
Our school called us Eskimos.
Mirages are distortions
but the child-mind drives
the car’s heater loud
but there’s no warm air
getting to the back seat
where there’s ice
on the windows.
The mirage can be dis-proven
while the memory
must be lived out.
This, too, is Arctic dreaming.
III. This Driving in the Dark. Driving Over McKenzie Pass
The night before the day on the McKenzie River with river restoration people.
First Fridays at Finn Rock.
Last week at a celebration
a man facing me, recalls another man,
You’re like him, he says,
and I nod, going along
for a time, before saying,
But I’m darker, than he is,
and he nods. I’m asking
for something I want him
to recognize, something
like weight, something
there is in me making
this drive around these mountains
this wilderness where snow
closed the byway last week.
I don’t know enough when I walk.
I never do.
Acuity for what comes up
arrives in the personal, in dreaming,
and I’m so dumb in the landscape.
Ears better than my eyes.
This knowing gives me awkward comfort.
What I know this morning
is far less than what I imagine.
I’m trying and make out
animals on the highway
Moments on the River
In waders, trying to remain standing
while listening and taking notes.
I. WINTERCOUNT
“A cairn is mute and elemental as empty awareness. It orients. It recognizes, but says nothing....for it is about everything other than itself.” David Hinton, Existence, A Story.
He left early in the morning. Early November and dark. He would drive over Santiam Pass and McKenzie pass. He left from Sisters, Oregon, and after circumnavigating the wilderness, he would follow the McKenzie River to the restoration site at Finn Rock near the home of the writer Barry Lopez. Barry Lopez was the trigger that got him here. He Had driven to Bend to hear Lopez read just before the Pandemic in 2019. There had been a fire. The Holiday Farm Fire. Lopez died a little more than a year later, Christmas Day, 2020, days before his 76th birthday on 6 January 2021. During that time of disease and political crisis, the voice of Barry Lopez, along with his writings that had been his lodestar. The fire, too, had burned through here. They had both known the Blessingway. Hózhó. Snow had closed the scenic way through the wilderness the week before. He would have to drive around. This way he would see the McKenzie River at its greenest, those early morning mosses seemingly lit by stars among fallen leaves.
Dark and wet when he gets in the car.
The artist-wife quilting in the famous fabric store.
Questioning your own desire.
Alone with lonely practice, what could be better?
Wanting to be up to the water,
and in it, in waders, up to the waist,
the cleansing still to be done.
Echoes of Lopez? Gone too far?
Lopez in a tent in Antarctica,
40 below after the morning warms up,
What could be more perfect!
River work. Inside and outside of a body of water.
The ear at work in a dark morning.
Slow the river, slow the mind.
The boots aren’t too big, she said.
Because of the wader’s stocking,
your hiking boots won’t fit.
One size larger, and balance in the river.
Slow the mind so you can slow the river.
Put these on before I change my mind.
You’re taking notes on the Forest Service map.
McKenzie Pass, Santiam Pass Scenic Highway.
You drove this green wilderness from Sisters
leaving in the dark. Traveling
through Stafford country, asking of rivers,
towards, and onto, the McKenzie,
Barry Lopez’ river, rivers of the poets,
ask yourself, What do you hear?
What does the river say?
You’re not the first to ask these questions.
You’re taking notes on the Forest Service map.
McKenzie Pass, Santiam Pass Scenic Highway.
You drove this green wilderness from Sisters
leaving in the dark. Traveling
through Stafford country, asking of rivers,
towards, and onto, the McKenzie,
Barry Lopez’ river, rivers of the poets,
ask yourself, What do you hear?
This, Terry, catches me quite unaware this morning, mourning into the beauty of the heartbreak. Diving into it, I'm doing this only because I was caught off-damnit, guard! This is no link! This beauty-way of a wreck. This re-entry into communal territory, oh, yes, I read that book, a friend gave it to me, I know exactly where it is on the shelf, it was Terry who gave me the book, Terry Martin, Consolations the name of the book. This David Whyte, he loves etymologies--I have my etymologists, too, and they, too, wake and sustain me, oh, oh, oh, I see what you're doing now, you're escaping through the mind when you were on the right impulse track of heartbreak and friendship of forgiving, then you knew what's what, you weren't trying to save yourself, but look at softly yourself you better you know you could soften all expectation no should, you're right, no should in this forgiveness stuff, where sustenance and hunger accompany your every real desire.
What does the river say?
You’re not the first to ask these questions.
HOW FORTUNATE YOUR EYES
TO LIVE BESIDE THE HEALTHY RIVER
for BG, 77
Walking Three Water
Digging stones with character
Cairns for your birthdays
Jim
5-7 November 2023
III. Evocations of Barry Lopez, McKenzie River
I.
Walking Three Water
Digging out mud soaking stones
Building this house river
Landscape found in edge dreaming
To bring what is together
II.
Finn Rock tomorrow
Karen quilts face-fabric mountain
What fall emptiness!
Looking out over my hands
Unable to stay on page
III.
When his friend’s request
for a handful of small stones
became a question
River running so narrow
River runs like a fire hose
IV.
Reading you Barry
In the way I’ve been given
And this extra breath
Arctic whale ivory tusks
Edges of any landscape
V.
Slow this river down
Take out invasive berries
Those hungry bull frogs
Walking among tundra birds
I was camped close to the edge
VI.
Beside a small pond
Cranberry walnut cookie
My once-sweet country
Bowing with hands in pockets
Benign forgiving sunlight
VII.
Stops along the way
Literature at first light
Poet’s learning curve
Camera gets out of car
White living willow water
VIII.
Back home to poems
Flood plain, beaver and bullfrog
Back home to notebook
Don’t fall over in water
And now so short of knowing
IX.
Traveling through the dark
Barry Lopez on hunger
Bill Stafford country
Sublime beauty penetrates
Rigging wild shower of sound
X.
If chance darkened me
Darkness brought me to rivers
Textured landscape stones
The people who change nature
Trust chosen companions
Jim Bodeen
I. FURTHER RIVER WALKS IN WADERS
First light pullover
Old growth moss-covered brown leaves
Colored water stones
II. SING RIVER BACK HOME
Sing earth Blessingway
Sing rivers meandering
Sing Good Fire’s Return
Sing floodplain beauty
Water blessingway water
Sing tree ancestry
Sing justice liturgy
Sing ethics of oxygen
Sing river trust green
Sing tree ancestry spreading
Sing red-legged frog
Sing Blessingway Singer, sing
MCKENZIE RIVER RESTORATION
AT FINN ROCK
A Water Suite Winter Count for Barry Lopez
Blessingway is used for everything that is good for a person, or for the people. It has no use other than that. As for the prayers, you say, “Beauty shall be in front of me, beauty shall be in the back, beauty shall be below me, above me, all around me.”
Frank Mitchell, Navajo Blessingway Singer
But...beautiful. Like kissed tears.
Geoff Dyer, But Beautiful [A Book About Jazz]
blessings to praise the stumbled on stone
Jane Hirshfield,
With Singing and Banners
The first
Water Poet
stayed down six years.
Gary Snyder
Turtle Island
ALL SOULS DAY ON THE HEADWATERS OF THE METOLIUS RIVER
Streams and tributaries.
These are the streams and tributaries.
Streams and tributaries of the Metolius.
This is a surfacing of the underground river.
Walking again. Walking after driving.
Walking lost. Driving lost with maps.
Sixteen miles out of Sisters on 20 West.
Turning onto Metolius River Camp
Camp Sherman store
but that’s not where I want to start.
Water that comes from below,
from the monk’s vows,
obedience and bifurcation.
Far from the fish hatchery.
Surrounded by spring and bounce, so many
unreadable maps, the brown needles
from pines falling with each breeze
with so many options for grief,
bringing this bronze light
this river walk asks our ancestors
to follow story tellers
along this riverbank
canceling all fireworks,
surefootedness in mud.
Miss the turn and end up at Camp Sisters,
headwaters, but not the trail.
Among all that I don’t know, this:
a full-sized river, the Metolius,
flowing ice-cold, springs appearing
originating from beneath Black Butte
what park signs say.
Geologists call this misleading,
believing springs have their origin
in the Cascade Mountains to the west.
An underground river.
Free flowing, spring-fed.
These are singers who have traveled to get here.
Samhain. Dias de los Muertos.
And today, All Souls Day.
Singers have been asked to open the trail.
What music in cold water.
Water nutrient rich. Plants, insects, fish.
A restoration project before hikers walking in rain.
Resident and migratory fish thriving. Look.
Rain so steady I return to the car, change coat and hat.
Native Redband trout prey on insects.
Down river endangered bull trout
feed on small fish.
Fall colors splashing against the rain.
Red sockeye migrate from Pacific.
A man walks over to me, points
to still water, Kokanee right beside me
on the bank, not a foot away.
Cross the bridge to fish hatchery.
Signs on trail: Target invasive plants--
Reed Canary, Ribbon Grass, Perennial Pea,
Yellow Flag Iris. Herbicides used:
Polaris, Roundup Custom.
Tributaries and restoration sites.
Colors showing up for the camera in changing light.
The trail, all the way to Bridge 99
is no more than two feet from the river.
The man just picking up his mail.
Steady drizzle percussion drops on hat brim.
Big gulping water songs from deep river.
Standing bass jazz solos. Pressure rising.
Beside my feet, eight inch wood markers
with blue restoration ribbons.
Baby trees to the left of trail.
Grasses growing from fallen trees in the river.
Once, where the trail leaves the river
ascending to the left, a grandfather pine
has fallen between two elders growing together,
spitting their trunks, breaking in two
against the two, a perfectly
balanced confrontation. In return
for the river’s protection. The contribution.
A breaking before your very eyes.
Every step as tributary. Look at flow.
Kneel-down knee-soaked knees.
Look at the water moving to the side
in among fallen leaves, the slow swirling.
Walk as far as your feet will take you.
With you, contigo, contributing
to your bowing practice. You spring.
Take in what you can. You tributary.
Trust this restoration and when you doubt
the euphoria of this, hiking here,
smaller into larger, following,
look at the 100 photographs on your camera.
These pictures of November light a responsibility.
Not a response, all that is awe and before you.
The light is raw data, empirical.
Light as breath, your breath in the water.
Jim Bodeen
2 November 2023
WHYCHUS CREEK TRAIL HIKE ON ALL SAINTS DAY
Accessing the trailhead in parking lot ten miles out of Sisters.
After putting on my boots, checking my pack,
I look for a nearby rock to sit with the notebook.
The book of poems iin my hand, new, Jane Hirshfield’s
New and Selected Poems, The Asking.
Before setting out I sit with the book for an hour
in the bookstore. I am asking these poems
to open me to this hike, and I open the book
without thinking of where my eyes might land.
I have opened to this,
Three Times My Life Has Opened,
and I begin a blind transcription of the poem,
reading as I write the words
that are opening before me on the page.
Once to the fire that holds all
becomes the good fire, first step, walking this trail.
Walking the fire right through this parking lot,
a man appears, walking over to me sitting
on the rock. He introduces himself,
says his name is Curt, asking about the notebook.
How he brings up Pádraig Ó Tuama
when I’m reaching for the name of Irish theologian
Glenn Jordan, after saying no to John O’Donohue.
This is live on All Saints Day. Jordan
died four years ago. I’m carrying him on this hike.
Curt’s magnetized by the notebook, and poems.
He knows these pines, this Whychus Creek.
These rocks take the trail up and away
from the creek and back down to it.
I’m guided by a promise, too,
to retrieve small stones for Barry’s birthday.
An hour on the trail I still hear creek song.
It’s raining, and drops on my hat add
to the music of water. Percussion. This far in
I know that man who walked out of the fire
is Gary Snyder. I don’t make things up.
As a boy walking North Dakota coulees
I believed myself to be a Mandan Indian.
The Mandans taught me to break small branches
as I walked so that I might find my way back.
This is belief and practice.
I stop along the way making miniature cairns,
smaller than my fist, pick up a broken twig,
burnt, and hold it up. Root ball
of the ancient Bristlecone Pine.
I’ve walked the Grove of the Patriarchs.
Setting it on the large stone,
photographing it, I almost miss
the tiny shelled seeds left by chipmunks.
I turn and turn the root branch
in my hand, asking, as I’ve been taught,
What is the front? What is the back?
The Iphone camera gathers it all,
and I place the miniature root
in the outside pocket of my pack.
Some cairns in the Arctic are twelve feet high.
Hiking, now, away from water,
nearing tree line, pausing
for a sandwich, two hikers
come around a large stone
from above, stop for a greeting.
A man and his wife.
Looking at me, he sees the tree
through the mesh in my pack.
What’s that? The man asks.
A tree, I say. It was in the fire.
A Ponderosa. When he looks
at his wife, she looks over at me.
No further talk. I will continue
until I descend again
to Wychus Creeek, where
I’ll search for those stones
I promised Barry.
It is All Saints Day
and I remember my mother and father.
The world is on fire
and I am walking in woods
along Whychus Creek in Oregon
a fifteen minute drive out of Sisters.
Jim Bodeen
1 November 2023
MARKETING THE LEAVES
for Kevin Miller
“It doesn’t happen except through individual leaves.”
Jane Hirshfield, Radio Interview
And again on Tuesday,
leaves are mulched.
Years ago, questioning
my own practice, I put a call in
to County Extension
asking, Do some leaves
give back more than others?
I was encouraged
when the agent
took my question seriously.
There are raised eyebrows.
And it’s cold, but not freezing
everywhere. That’s my joke,
that’s all I got,
turning compost
one last time before Thanksgiving;
Thank you, too, Tom Waits,
Autumn winds have taken
that darker turn. You called it
in another song. If you had
your choice of leaves, which
would you harvest? Golden
leaves of birch, or dark red maples?
Hojas en español,
Pages in a book, hojas.
Last year leaves didn’t fall.
Local folk still bring it up.
Nobody asks me about failed crops.
Nobody around here even thinks
I’m a farmer. Leaves didn’t fall
when weather stayed warm,
then froze. I had no crop.
Leaves weren’t told
what to do. Didn’t grow
abscission cells, they act
like scissors, saying, It’s time to drop.
Leaves died instantly, hang
into spring. Not pretty
in your winter garden.
This year’s leaf harvest is good.
Mulch and compost, No leaves
in black plastic bags, nothing
picked up by the city.
Leaf poems as political action,
outing us all. Leaves as neighbors,
mine anyway, act for social justice,
breaths of fresh air,
like words, my community.
Jim Bodeen
7 November 2023
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