WHEN ARETHA SANG
How I Got Over,
she was. Mindful, now.
How we end
our Lenten poetry
with Mary Oliver’s
enjambed lines,
like that,
a striding over
smoothly and swiftly
alternating readers
without interruptions
punctuation gone
like screws from door jams
joyful waters
Of descending birth breath
Jim Bodeen
27 March 2024
A WALKING STORY
Such a way to be. I came back from Viet Nam in mid-August 1968, and less than a month later I was enrolled in an evening drama course at Bellevue Community College. (Stationed at the 85th Evac Hospital in Qui Nhon on the South China Sea, I arrived from Panama, older, 22, we took all of the casualties from Tet. GIs and North Vietnamese, too. The North Vietnamese were 14 or or 15, and wrapped in mountains of gauze because they had been under those B-52 bombs that were dropped on them. I'm 23 then, that first night class, and the drama teacher says to me, Jim, step out into the hall with me for a minute. And on the other side of the door, he says, I'm going to show you how to walk into a room.
That story embellished itself over the years, turning into its own thing, but it's with me everytime a doctor taps on the door for permission to enter. And it shows up every Tuesday in Feldenkrais, too. Astonished, Mary Oliver would say.
So, again, thanks. What a surprise. jim
C--,
I've been savoring your question about walking into the room, What was it like? What was my walk like? holding on to it like a butterscotch candy in the mouth. It's that beautiful for me. Those details, I probably never knew, and I didn't have that awareness, Feldenkrais teacher, until this moment. Maybe that's why I had to wait to respond. I was trying to get it, but without success, going straight into the mythology of it. So I really don't know what I looked like. But I know it happened. And I know, that even though I don't have his name now, I wrote to him more than once, in the next year when we were in Ellensburg at school. And he wrote back. It was a good correspondence, and I believe those letters from him are saved, too. What I can add, is that I loved sharing the story with students over the years on how to walk into a room, going out, coming in like a stick man, arms stuck to my side, no bend in the knees, stiff neck, disconnected eyes. Then I would channel him, talking to him, "Like this? Moving my arms like this?" And, "Bend the knees--at the same time that I'm moving my arms back and forth? Like That? What do you mean, in opposition?" And in the course of two or three minutes, collapsing time over months, gradually I came out entering the room like a Michael Jackson country boy from North Dakota. The students would all be laughing at me, raising their hands and saying, Let me! Let me! Let me go out and walk into the room.!
In another room, at another time, taking Mom to the doctor in her last years, The tap on the door, The doctor entering, looking at Mom, then at me, my notebook open. His silence. I would look at him until we had eye contact before saying, "My name is Jim. I'm Lucille's biographer."
Have a good Friday. See you Tuesday. Zoom, Zoom.
THE GROCERY LIST INCLUDES BUTTERMILK
Everybody owns their own Holy Week.
Would you like to sit with the poems of Mary Oliver?
You thought we did that already?
Heavens no.
We were just trying to wash
the matter from our eyes.
And when Karen comes to bed
I’ve been dozing, and books
and papers have fallen
to her side of the bed.
She finds me like this,
I’m a bit sheepish,
pre-occupied,
so full of other things
as the beloved approaches.
Jim Bodeen
23 March 2024
I COULD RUIN YOUR DAY RIGHT NOW, FOLKS,
and I just might. It’s the Fifth Week
of Lent and Easter remains two weeks off.
I’ve been with a group of Christians
reading poems, and as days lengthen,
and Jesus’s resurrection (as well as ours),
too far off to contemplate. People
have been struggling with metaphor
and as one who has walked with poems
I’ve been losing sleep myself. The fun part
(and the problem that follows) comes
right now, and I’m on my way
up the mountain with my niece
and nephew, and their dad, to ski,
I’m the uncle and it’s my job
to show them how to turn, part
of the Lenten experience, right?
My task to show them unweighting
and the downhill ski. They’re 5 and 7,
buckled in the back seat
and their Dad’s driving, talking
to his son about a video game:
You don’t want to wear a Yankee’s hat,
why not be an Oriole or a Red Leg?
To which his daughter begins singing,
Yankee Doodle went to town
riding on a pony, and her younger
brother catches up with her before
he sticks the feather in his cap.
And now I’m paying attention
as they sing again, after the feather’s
in the cap, and calls it macaroni.
I’m singing now myself under my breath,
my breathing hearing something coming
up from the deep. The feather.
The macaroni. That’s the answer.
The connection I’m looking for.
Christians will sing out in praise and remembrance.
I’m writing in my notebook as they sing,
singing as I write, I’m your Yankee
Doodle sweetheart, you’re my
Yankee Doodle boy. Sing it again,
the boy cries, mind the music
and your step and with the girls be handy.
Hear the sounds! I write.
The plosive Ds, the rich vowels.
The repetition and the over and over.
This is hot. The Long A and E
The Y and the elusive double o
singing doodle. All song and all sound.
Everything already loaded
into neuron pathway. Instant recall
and deliverance. Yankee Doodle
keep it up, keep it up. And again.
Yankee Doodle Dandy. Keep it up.
The delight and the repetition.
And the children singing in the backseat,
mountains before us. This ride
into the ecstatic. Forget London.
How fun being in this car singing
with my notebook, and just as fast
as I can write keep it up, just
that fast new lines from old lines.
I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy,
Yankee Doodle do or die.
This is no longer child’s play.
Even the voices have changed.
George Washington is gone.
You’re losing your audience.
Keep it up the pony says,
like is he the drive or the driver?
This is evolution as play.
The revolutionary song is deconstructing.
Where did the feather in the cap go?
What happened to the macaroni?
Oh, Yankee Doodle, don’t stop now.
You must keep going. You see,
don’t you where this is going.
This is not a Christian moment.
Look again at Yankee Doodle Dandy.
Consider him for what he is, a Yankee.
Consider the dandy. As a Yankee,
he bears no last name. The doodle
becomes a verb, a doodling.
The doodling is fun, encouraging, too.
A new kind of delight. Dandy evolved,
another shift in our breathing. Some-
thing else is going on. Something, fun,
the body doodling and fine, and OK,
oh yes. Are we approaching
the summit? Skis have been forgotten.
Lent itself is gone. All this joy
as we live out the dark time of book burning.
Poetry itself is suspect.
What is this macaroni? And delight?
Delight in the song? The song remains.
The song still sings. It’s all I can hear,
how can I sleep without singing?
I play Billie Holiday. I channel Frank Sinatra.
I try and bend the notes as Billie taught Frank.
The early upbeat catalog of song.
It’s beautiful. Even But Beautiful
returns from Lady in Satin
with all that sadness. You know
where I’m coming from, don’t you, friends.
After the encore with Lester Young,
after bending melodies, when the stage empties,
it all comes back. Past the metaphor.
All that willful disobedience, beyond
the immaturity. Do or die. Inside the song.
Die and die and die until
you’ve been born again. The poet exposed
crossing boundaries creating chaos.
Jesus will cheer.
Yankee Doodle comes right back.
Maybe you’re making dinner.
I told you I could ruin your day.
You will never be the same.
Poetry will do that. It will ruin you for life.
Jim Bodeen
15-16 March 2024
MY FRIEND SENDS ME AN EMAIL
--for Terry Martin
Stumbling can be lovely
A picture of a person
holding up a bike
after a fall
Once she showed
me where a word
came from
and it was like seeing
ball bearings
on your bicycle’s
back wheel
I wrote her back
That's what they say
those experts
Me, I’m an amateur
I practice lots
All us lovers
Sometimes it’s all we got
is our practice
Jim Bodeen
8 March 2024
AFTER YOU WALK THE CAMINO
You’re a pilgrim forever.
Notes in my back pocket with my handkerchief.
We all took a pair of Maria’s socks after she died.
Walking with Karen
Sudden hailstones in sunshine
Walking with Mary Oliver in her thirst.
Honor the work of a caregiver
When she was the first lady of California
The Journey upended her life.
When he gave me the walking stick
he said Jesus for sure. We’re both reporters.
When you’re dreaming the other
you become the other.
Her furrowed brow, queer and handsome.
Queer comes into the dictionary in 1513.
Connecting to the words of Emily Dickinson
I almost missed the rhyme.
There were some long nights in North Dakota.
This is everything I had in my pocket.
There was a bit of fudging only because
There remained a couple of fragments from an earlier prayer.
Jim Bodeen
9 March 2024
IT’S THE CURSE OF LUCILLE
[Talking with my wife, remembering my mother, after the game]
Even when playing
Double solitaire in cards
Rooting for others
Jim Bodeen
9 March 2024
ALTAR FLOWERS
for M. H.
This is how the flowers see us
leaving worship. Just minutes ago
we were seated before them, these beauties,
Lutherans in Central Washington.
In our pews, mums and roses
below the cross, in between
the piano and the choir.
Our cross, an artist’s creation,
gold leaves opening upward like hands,
giving praise, give silent testimony to live,
an object transformed by suffering.
Minutes earlier we walked
towards this cross, and these petaled blossoms,
giving thanks for a Thanksgiving meal,
and after the meal, the pastor folds
a white linen cloth over the silver cup
resting on the altar, also beautiful,
even as this beauty yields to a life fully lived.
A full bouquet placed in water and arranged in a crystal vase,
once more in between, and standing in quiet beauty,
roses a winter pale, off-white,
pink at the top edge of unfurling petals.
Walking past the altar to stand
behind the flowers with the camera,
one can see what the flowers see
in our departure after worship.
What they see in us, we don’t know.
We have words for them,
ephemeral in their short lives.
And we did sit before them
and marveled at how flowers were possible.
Did we say we were also lucky
to be in their presence?
Perhaps not. But we saw them.
We took in all that we could,
and other things we are not even aware of
happened too. We glimpsed ourselves,
I’m sure of that, made more
beautiful because of their presence.
We remembered Marie, too,
we did, and smiled, remembering her joy,
remembering her Ballard roots.
Some of us were new, this Sunday,
and never had the opportunity
to know Marie. And they partake
of what she has given us. The flowers
are silent before so many things.
I’m one of the blessed ones,--
blessings surely, have nothing to do with luck.
Marie and I were confirmed in the same church
in Seattle—different classes--Prince of Peace Lutheran--
Pastor Olin Nordsletton. Pastor Ollie.
Both us glowed saying his name.
Marie told me, We had 59 of us
in our Confirmation Class.
I countered remembering what I memorized
besides the 66 books of the Bible in order.
Marie was a Ballard girl, that gave her some attitude--
and my wife, Karen, also from Ballard,
smiles at that one. Karen reminds us how Marie
loved providing flowers for Sunday worship.
And this morning, this Sunday,
these flowers, present, again.
Before us, as we enter, watching us as we depart.
Much of what we carry we carry unspoken,
uncertain and unknown to others. And yet
so many encounters with beauty, these mortal
blossoms with the cup and cross and altar.
These participants in beauty and our own unfolding,
as we ask ourselves, What just happened?
What was that taking place in our weakness?
Jim Bodeen
3 March 2024
Posts
All Comments
