BOATS ON A HOSPITAL WALL

 

BOATS ON A HOSPITAL WALL

[While the beloved is in surgery, the man stands in front of a triptych of fused glass called Healing Hands * Caring Heart, by the artist Richard La Londe. The Triptych is a gift to Good Samaritan Hospital, Puyallup, Washington from the artist, and was installed in 2005.]

                               --an empty journey on that Star River raft

                               --..and immortals set out again in their boat.

                                   Autumn Thoughts, Tu Fu, trans. By David Hinton

I. A hand pulls back a sea-green curtain

The curtain is a waterfall

a river fish jumping white water

to the ocean. Morning sun fish

before outstretched eagle wings

above it all Star River Milky Way breath

breathing cloud breath birthing

below it all

boat water birth canal

hand-held pouring water forth

two-person boat

heads streaming electricity

hand-held horns

rocking on water

the two of them

the multiplicity

waves and hands

II. Cloud Breath River

winds around sun and mountain

snow-fed rivers like hands are hands

holding, housing hand-held water boat

palms up issuing sun-life water colors

hands underneath the boat

part-boat, part of the boat

two faces, three lidded eyes

one-eye issuing water force

back in, or from water, all ways

house and mountain

forested and radiant and rocking dream-held

III. Green waterfall curtain

held back, pulled back,

eyes uncertain on right side

eyes, three of them open

three hands head river holding

planet held by an upper hand

waterfall a kind of vestment

green gown

red heart hand drawn

blood filled those same green

oxygenated and unclear and undefined

Jim Bodeen

11 May-14 June 2024