*
After walk coffee
misty morning road loaded
with flushed-out dead worms
Jim Bodeen
16 November 2025
Working Barrow
Working with my red
wheelbarrow turning compost
broken eggshell spiced
Jim Bodeen
31 October 2025
80 COOKIES
80 COOKIES
There was music. Poetry. Books. Jewelry. There were assemblages and readings. A cobbler. There were stories and song and memorias y visiones. And friends getting older together. There was a kidnapping and baseball. Outrage. Stones polished and Stones cut. There was fishing, fish, and fish tales. There are candles. There is ceremonia. There is language and people from all over. The home team won.Karen. Friends appearing, and what performances. That bomb. There were some phone calls. A couple of invitaciones. Even so, All of the peach pie didn’t get eaten. From this end, buckets of gratefulness. Many thanks. And as Van sings: That ain’t all there is.
Jim Bodeen
9 August 2025
HAND-RUBBED
Hand-rubbed, hand-polished, discovered suiseki. Some see the the poem, some feel the stone. While sitting on a rock in a river. Years ago. Many hands have participated in the shining. The stone, of course, so much older than the poem, or is it the other way around. Both coming from the same source, different rivers. But what is the attraction? And calling.
MY TOOLS?
MY TOOLS?
The pruner, of course,
in its holster on my belt.
And what else?
Two screw drivers.
One a Phillips.
A hammer, for nails, with a claw.
Wood saw
and a mallet.
Two mallets,
one by mistake
Power tools, too?
Sander and drill.
I don’t plumb.
Oh. The tool box.
My parents gave it to me at Christma.
I must have been 20.
60 years ago.
Jim Bodeen
28 June 2025
SUMMER SOLSTICE PRAYER
SUMMER SOLSTICE PRAYER
--for my granddaughter, S. A. M.
Didn’t bake the bread
but picked the strawberries and
preserved them in jam
Jim Bodeen
22 June 2025
JUNE JOY JOLT
JUNE JOY JOLT
All afternoon
delight swung right through despair
Jim Bodeen
15 June 2025
BEING THE DOMESTIC
BEING THE DOMESTIC
in this house, I can tell you
some things you’d never discover.
Grunge in the fridge
isn’t something talked about.
The gardener takes
his cue from me
without a clue
to coding priorities.
The people who live here
live outside all summer long.
harvesting only contorted
sticks from a man who created
this tree in a laboratory.
Not a one sold in five years
should tell you enough.
His compost, all perfume.
Jim
7 June 2025
A post card poem for Jim Hanlen
JUNE DAYS
JUNE DAYS
Four new born birds
learning to fly
sticking close
on Bloodgood Maple
next to feeder
full with thistles
making the leap
one at a time
the morning
my granddaughter
graduates
I’m picking strawberries
making jam porch sitting
Robins arriving
last week for Juneberries
already too fat
to fly spend
half their time
taking baths
in fountain
Nobody in any hurry to leave
Jim Bodeen
6 June 2025
LAST DAYS OF MAY
LAST DAYS OF MAY
Rain last night,
disturbing roof taps
get me up
to bring cushions on porch
under cover, covert,
quiet, ever domestic
now, grace timing Karen
before her beauty moves
fabric and color. More sleep
while I write my cousin
the long letter for her
difficult story. Light moves
clouds from porch
and even Texas seems possible
to write into her story.
I bring Karen watermelon
spears sensuously sliced,
slender like fingers, show
her the letter to my cousin,
water her geraniums,
drizzling again, Karen goes
back inside while sky clears
and I strap on belt, holster,
pruners, moving to South Gate
with yard bin--Rose of Sharon
squeezed between old rose
and tree hydrangea. It’s muggy.
I break a sweat. It’s time
for Karen’s CT scan
on her throat. Time
to go. Will there be
lemonade for what parches?
Jim Bodeen
29 May-9 June 2025
TREE BATHING : THE WORKSHOP
TREE BATHING : THE WORKSHOP
--for Cindy and David, best neighbors driving by
Alongside newly settled
Scholar-Stone,
Settled on fresh-mown grass,
elbows resting on newly settled
Scholar-Stone, pruners in hand,
Suiseki man looking over at his trees,
the neighbor slows as her window lowers.
Jim, You’re a tree bather.
●
This stone,
perfect bench or table
--maybe a stool,
caused so many of its own troubles
for the way it entered the eyes of all who saw it.
Gift from a friend, a potter touched by magic,
arrives in a phone call 14 years ago
when Karen and I wait in checkout line
at Fred Meyers. She names the larger one,
with the letter-pressed by God
heart-shape the size of your two folded hands
that will become the Iwakura stone--
that’s for later, I don’t yet know
Shinto gods and barely have a clue--
being a mere 66—to what Jesus is about
washing people’s feet. I won’t know
miniature landscape stones—suiseki--
until I’m well, well-passed 70.
Pruners
buckled to my belt more than half
a lifetime, no one sees me as a gardener,
why would passers by see this stone
coming from God’s own kiln?
Unsettled language.
How could it be otherwise?
●
Later that day, short-walking
out of the garden—walk
but never leave home--
nine-minute half-mile
around the block meditation
meeting the dog-whisperer
and her partner, asking,
What’s up? And just like Bob
50 years ago singing
that ballad. The thin man,
something happening--
--you don’t know
what it is, do you? I don’t.
I say, I’m tree bathing,
dog whisperer whispers,
Shin-rin-Yoku, light falling
on my feet as steps
take on a Blessingway
adding nothing to bear.
This is the story of how
that stone became a nomad
and how much it had to teach me.
I kept moving it around.
In the beginning I could tip
the red wheelbarrow on its side
and tip it in with two poles.
Later my grandson helped me
do the same, and then, circling
the garden became such work,
it sat invisible trying to hide
an outdoor electric fan.
The two of them couldn’t budge it now.
He paid in big bills this time,
all the while listening for the Navajo Hozho
grandmother’s prayers
Show me something that isn’t beautiful
and I’ll show you the veil over your eyes...
Like the stone knew
from the beginning it was brought here
from Star River
waiting for its caretaker’s birth.
He wasn’t ready. That simple.
●
UNSETTLING THE STONE
Hacking at Korean Lilac roots
with the big ax
trying to take all the light
from the green rock
set by stone garden workers
scholar rock sensei picked out
himself, master’s voice
singing through stone,
Swing again, swing again!
You will never be a gardener.
Jim Bodeen
9 May 2025
●
A garden creates its own government.
In and out of time, trees and stones
will show options in and out of song.
What can be seen sometimes
needs to be listened to first.
A stone can make a tree very large.
A tree can make a stone very small.
You know what the doctor said
about the wheelbarrow.
●
His failures with Bonsai trees remained consistent over time, yet never
diminished his admiration for the world inside the pot and astonished by
the magnificence of the trees. And so he tried again and again, with
a sundry of teachers, artists all, and although he had soft hands essential
for wiring and compassion, and under close supervision, was able
to produce promising starts for his trees, he was not able to sustain
the attention needed and essential for this art. Nevertheless, his efforts
and his failures developed his gardening eye at the same time leading
him to the world of Suiseki stones. He was introduced to miniature
landscape stones through a water workshop he discovered
while attending a bonsai conference. He loved both searching
for stones in water and showing his stones, although his daizas
for holding and displaying were plain, and his woodworking skills
undeveloped, and not suitable for shows. You’ll never show your
stones in California, unless they’re cut, his teacher says. Anyway,
who has diamond blades for this work, he says to himself,
balancing its green serpentine with one of black basalt,
each shaped by the Eel River. He would rub his stones
washing them with water, adding to their patinas. The stone is its
own kind of diamond shaping him, laughing at his monkey mind.
Kawa dojo is the classroom on the river itself. He had had those days.
He experienced them. He had taken them inside himself, his whole
body immersed, running beside him, running through him. The
famous rivers. Searching for stones. Texture, color. Shape.
Large or small. All could be buttes or mountains in his hands.
He saw caves, snow fields and tunnels. Rock walls
sought by rock climbers. All in a stone you hold
in your hand, smaller than a fist.
One morning after pruning the larger Yoshino cherry and lilac
in the south side of his garden, he said to his wife, So
much of what I learned in the beginning pruning roses applies
here. How so? She asked. Pruning the crossed branches, he said.
Much of the rest comes from the bonsai world, or even the craft
of writing his poems. In bonsai, you might take a larger limb
in order to encourage a smaller one. And you’d take new growth
pointing downwards, to the roots. Because the tree is larger
than that of the bonsai, one is able to see branches that block
out light, but that lesson was learned with the small trees
looking intensely with your teacher observing behind you.
That first morning years ago, the sensei spoke to the assembled
students before taking them to the river. Those of you who
are married, or wearing rings, he said, remove them before
we get to the river, so when you’re lifting them from
water, you won’t scratch the stones. The stones. Of course.
They’re belonging. What Stone Sensei said to Bonsai Sensei:
Stones are so much older than the trees.
●
His body is shrinking. He told the nurse that when he went
to the doctor. When he and his wife moved into this house,
more than a decade ago, they had considered this a move
honoring their age. Everything on one floor. No stairs
to climb, no basement with the washing machine. Smaller.
A corner lot. His wife approved of planting mature trees
and they paid gardeners with power equipment to help
them in transporting large stones collected over the years.
Now the trees were larger. They had crossed the threshold
into their eighties. When trees made the stones
appear smaller he had to ask again for help in moving
them, so as to retain their sense of dignity and place. Some
days, raking or maybe composting, he saw it all in new
light again. Everything seemed to be different. Changed
not only in size, but in his daily tending to trees and stones.
The potted plants, his wife’s geraniums. It was as though
everything was here in a bonsai pot. His tiny rake.
His tea cup. It was as though from the first moment he
crossed the boundary into the lawn, with those first plantings
this garden surrounding the house, and even the house
along with he and his wife were living in a bonsai world.
●
This has something to do with tree bathing. It was just
days ago his neighbor had pulled up next to him on
that stone, turning down her window saying, Tree bathing.
He didn’t know what it was. A tree bather. To be
such a one as this. Cleansed by the tree. Water-washed
in branch and limb. She had learned this in her prayer
group, this neighbor. That fit. And then, just as she
was driving off, that this tree bathing came from
the Japanese. If this was out of her range, he also
knew he’d been given another gift on top of the first.
Shinrin-Yoku, Japanese medicine of forest bathing. It didn’t
take long for research to open the library of the forest.
Immersion
in trees. Stress disappearing under branches.
He started laughing. Birdsong, walk in the woods.
The more ancient Thoreau. Forest and city park.
His own porch reached into trees. Finches
in the feeder eating thistles, juncos
foraging beneath them. In late May,
Robins arriving waiting for Juneberries to turn.
All that, that and more. His neighbor understood.
He was no longer so strange. She gave him
a thumb’s up as she drove to work. One
with the prayer group as well as science.
●
Harry Lauder Walking Stick—pruning and harvest of two in their maturity. Cart of new creation. Give the two blessingway trees another way to be in their become garden way. May harvesting. The harboring of marginal power. Crucial in being of questionable use. Majesty of another kind of seeking. May Day in June. Memorial Day. Where were you in 1968? Keep walking pilgrims. Power of flower arranging. Sculpture. Art stands with the immigrants.
He would design a flag with one word: i m a g i n e. He would prune this tree and harvest these twisted crooked sticks.
●
He kept his pruners in his holster on an old belt,
buckling it in the morning after first coffee. He
had learned this decades ago walking with the woman
through her trees at the nursery. His pruners, his trees,
his stones. How he inhabited his days.
He is tree bathing again after the rain.
He’s back from the Berry Patch
with rhubarb. Karen teased him
as he went out the door? Rhubarb?
What? Nobody buys rhubarb, Jim.
Rhubarb is something you grow
in your back yard, something
you get from neighbors. There is hail.
These are the artists underneath
tree canopies. Beneath Autumn Blaze,
beneath Blood Good Maple, and even
Little Cherry Twist, out of the storm,
covered. He remembers Stormfield,
the name Mark Twain gave his mansion.
What are you washing off?
Of what does your cleansing consist?
You and your ointment made of oxygen.
Did you know? Oxygen comes to us first as waste product.
Pick up the cushions. They’re getting soaked.
Hailstones bounce in gutters and children
run outside in marginal understanding
half-terrorized, half-thrilled, up and down the sidewalk.
A finch flies in under the dogwood
looking for cover. Four golden birds
at two feeders feeding.
What is it like bathing in these trees you ask?
Being in this thunder wonder.
What does one do after a tree bath?
The inner cleaning after-now.
Shinrin-Yoku and your dislocated language.
Do not permit the margins to disappear.
How does one preserve white space on the page?
●
Peonies taken from your wife’s mother’s grave
in the heartland decades ago
open on Memorial Day Weekend.
While re-stacking fallen cairns
in Carin’s Park outside the white fence
the dog whisperer and her partner
let you know they’re passing by,
not wanting to frighten your meditation,
that quiet, their Good morning. They
know about tree bathing.
They know,, leaving you to wonder:
How long have they known?
●
Imagine, he thought. Imagine.
The song, of course. Lower case i.
The long white limbs of Jacquemonti Birch
pruned to preserve his neighbor’s sky space,
also lifting and raising tree canopy
in his back yard garden. It takes his breath
away, the rising canopy. His childhood reading
knew their white paper bark once fashioned
canoes. What might he do with such beauty?
Could he fashion poles to arrest
what was pious and false in his own breathing?
Where might that courage be found?
What was taking place in the composting?
●
After I set the round boulder
on top of the nomad stone couldn’t move.
My eyes won’t turn away
Two stones in a cypress forest
I gave myself to you, Karen.
My life is over.
Are you going somewhere?
Karen asks
coming from the bathroom.
What are you doing?
●
Give Trees a Chance
In Seattle Growth Plan Vote
Headline in Seattle paper.
[Daddy, what’s a headline?]
Setbacks will shrink. Precise
language in urban building codes.
The setback refers to required space
between edge of a building and property line.
Setbacks—it’s so hard to contain language--
will shrink from 20 feet in front and 25 feet in back
to ten feet in both front and back
with zero distance if there’s an alley.
Big trees will come down, replaced
with what can fit in cramped space.
More concrete, less green.
Tree canopy costs. Birds.
Birds and us. Birds are us.
Little houses on the hillside.
Old song in a bonsai pot.
Seattle’s goal for tree canopy
is 30 percent. [Daddy,
what’s a tree canopy?]
Read the editorial for yourself
in the Seattle Times, 20 May 2025:
Check for accuracy. They won’t
make it, they won’t make it.
●
Balanced on the ladder,
Karen spots him against her will,
he takes one more step, lifting
the extended 10-foot pole saw
into the Jacquemonti Birch.
If he could take this one, reaching
straight and firm, he could get
the second one, too. The two poles.
white-papered beauties, fluttering
in his imagination, he might attach
his oddly-shaped flag above
the fence line into blue sky.
His sky was blue like his flag.
One word in white, letterspaced
in lower case, like it was
on the album cover.
Jim Bodeen
May Day—Memorial Day, 2025
CERTIFICATES HONORING TWO GRANDDAUGHTERS
CERTIFICATES HONORING TWO GRANDDAUGHTERS
ONE OF THE GIFTS FROM THE KITCHEN
--for Sam
Sammie of course. She comes by
Grandma’s house after cooking class
with samples that come hot
from the oven. Last week
her first meringue on top
of her lemon pie. Bakers
use the torches, too. Sammie
brings it all, her rolls, pizza,
hand pies and pasta.
When Sammie comes over
joy enters the house.
Suddenly Grandpa’s smiling.
Grandma knows Sammie’s
three-word song,
I love you, and she sings
it over and over.
Things change in the oven.
Sammie’s not just about cookies.
She’s the beauty who likes to work.
She has the eye, too, that knows
how to stand for truth and justice.
Gpa Jim
28 May 2025
WHAT HAPPENS IN BEAUTY SCHOOL
--for Deanna
You might ask your granddaughter
why she chose beauty school
when both of you know she already
has great hair. She knows it. And
she can work on the eyes
until they seem to be reaching for
the person she’s looking at. This
is all true, yet there’s so much more
to this story. Her love for others,
this deep compassion. And the time
she’ll spend painting butterflies
on Grandma’s toes! Grandpa
knows what she does in the garden.
He hands her his pruner’s
pointing at the pine tree out front.
He trusts her eye to shape the tree.
She will bring out what’s best
in each branch. She’ll find beauty
in the tree others would never imagine.
Gpa Jim
28 May 2025
SELF PORTRAIT DURING THE HARRY LAUDER WALKING STICK HARVEST
SELF PORTRAIT DURING THE HARRY LAUDER WALKING STICK HARVEST
Harry Lauder Walking Stick—pruning and harvest of two in their maturity. Cart of new creation. Give the two blessingway trees another way to be in their becoming garden way. May harvesting. The harboring of marginal power. Majesty of another kind of seeking. May Day in June. Memorial Day. Where were you in 1968? Keep walking pilgrims. Power of flower arranging. Sculpture. Art stands with the immigrants.
UNSETTLING THE STONE
UNSETTLING THE STONE
Hacking at Korean Lilac roots
with the big ax
trying to take all the light
from the green rock
set by stone garden workers
scholar rock sensei picked out
himself, master’s voice
singing through stone,
Swing again, swing again!
You will never be a gardener.
Jim Bodeen
9 May 2025
FRIDAY LUNCH
FRIDAY LUNCH
--for Karen
While Karen sews pansies
on a white linen background,
I toast her homemade rolls
giving them a thick covering
of strawberry jam
we cooked together last summer.
Jim Bodeen
9 May 2025
NOTES AND TESTIMONIOS FROM THE MAY DAY WORKERS MARCH, YAKIMA, WA 2025
NOTES AND TESTIMONIOS FROM THE MAY DAY WORKERS MARCH
YAKIMA, WASHINGTON, 2025: A REPORT
May Day, 2025
I.
This is Miller’s Park. It is May Day
and these are my people.
It has been May Day for a long time.
These are the Signs of the times, OK.
Here it’s all prayers and dancing.
The hours before the March.
These are my people.
This is my community.
Our stories are documented
and we are a people of great faith.
We are inclusive.
Aquí es mi testimonio.
II.
After making my sign, driving to the park,
asking myself, Why change parks?--
Why not Henry Beauchamp Park like always?
Learning later from Lucero Méndez,
LatinX co-chair, Cesar Chavez stopped
here in 86, Miller Park. Memory animates
us. I’m early to walk through tables,
see and record. First sign Beckoning:
¡CUANDO LUCHAMOS,
GANAMOS!
WHEN WE FIGHT,
WE WIN!
UFCW3000.
Necesitas Una Unión? Need a Union?
206.414.9601. Blue, Yellow, White,
Colors of Ukraine stopping my breath.
United Food and Commercial Workers International.
Beckoning. Drawn in like that.
My good neighbor’s good dog, Beckon.
Good dog, Beckon. Good dog.
May my sign, too, speak to what’s loyal.
Sube a nacer conmigo, Hermano.
Neruda with me on cardboard,
Brown oil ink Sharpies, black outline,
Iqualdad, Dignidad, Justicia,
luminating blue oil. 2025.
May Day! May Day!
Turtle Island in turquoise,
may there be natural boundaries
for all of us. Gary Snyder
bows before Don Pablo
ascending Machhu Pichhu,
signing my sign, saying my name.
The back side of this sign
from last week’s march:
Se hace camino al andar--
Antonio Machado backing Neruda.
Walking you make the road.
Caminantes somos,
y en el camino, andamos--
refrane learned from a taxi
decades ago in Nayarit.
Surrounded by angels on cardboard I pray
will surround us on the street.
III.
Other signs, other tables.
Las alturas de Macchu Pichhu.
Between the ridges in Yakima Valley.
I’m with YIRN.
Yakima
Immigration Response Network.
A reporter with a notebook. A citizen.
Are those credentials?
I’m with YIRN,
but this is a park with many tables.
If there’s no dignity for workers,
what’s left for me?
Larry, the militant, here
with a table full of books.
His newspaper in two languages:
El Militante. Turn it over and around,
and it’s The Militant. For five bucks
I get twelve issues sent to my door.
Dulce Gutierrez, former council
woman, calls for amnesty for all.
Libros para la lucha obrera.
How did you get here?
By accident. I’m one of 15 children.
●
Here’s a sign, and here.
Black background, Green cutout
letters, sans serif, like my teacher
used to make for bulletin boards,
HANDS OFF. Five cutout hands
in white, purple paper pasted
on palms, hand-lettering,
single word on each hand,
Schools, Libraries, Democracy,
Voting Rights, Judges, Constitution.
Sign on a stick. Woman in her fifties
standing behind it, both hands
crossed over each other, back
from the crowd, in hat.
String pulled taut under chin,
eyes open, listening maybe?
Here’s another: Green flag
draped over a man’s back.
Territorio de derechos:
No te Metas. Raíz,
side by side with Planned
Parenthood, Lettering
made from white garden
flowers in sunlight.
●
A mother with a baby stroller.
The child with an American flag
in each hand, waving. This,
Immigrant Rights are Human Rights.
Citizenship Ambassador. Save Our
Social Security and Medicare:
We paid for it. Speak up
while you still can—with photos
of family members taking turns.
Respect the Rule of Law.
Put ICE in coolers
Not on the street.
Keep families together.
(Over and Over in 10,000 ways.)
A busload of Seattle Postal Workers.
One America with justice for all.
Those soft cotton tshirts.
Marching for Immigrant Equal Rights--
It Began in the Delano Grape Fields
A photo of Larry Itliong: 1913-1977.
A history lesson in the Park!
MayDay! International Worker’s Day.
Another photo from 1965,
Cesar Chavez and Larry Itliong together
beginning UFW-CIO uniting.
Woman in white tshirt with a YIRN button
(More on YIRN in a minute),
Free the...covered up by sign,
sun glasses, purple brim, red lipstick,
fiercely beautiful. This hand-written
acrostic, Donald John Trump left side
in black letters—middle aged daughter
giving her mother’s testimony: Mom wins
these sign painting contests!
Devilishly Demonic
Obviously Odious
Notoriously Narcissistic
All Around Asshole
Lewdly Lame Loud Mouth Lier!
Disgustingly Distrustful.
Do you want his middle name?
OK, a couple.
Obstinately Obdurate
Nauseously Nefarious
And Trump, terrifyingly terroristic
Repulsively Republican
Unlawfully UnAmerican
Menacingly Maniacal
Petrifyingly Putin-like
RESIST on the right in red.
Dump the Dog
Oh, this beautiful woman
holding the yellow cardboard
with graphic illustrations coming out
of hand-drawn words: To Learn
(her L is a magestic Saguaro Cactus)
who rules over you
find out who you are not
allowed to criticize,
citing Voltaire. With great smiling
dimples. Health Care for all workers.
We Are in a constitutional crisis now.
Prison without Due Process is a concentration camp.
The retired Air Force man
in the blue and yellow baseball cap
drove from Seattle, too. We swap
medevac stories from Vietnam.
He’s wearing the Woodstock 69 tshirt.
●
Yakima Immigration Response Network
(YIRN) has its own table. These are the people
who bring me along, lift me, and so many others,
up front, OK this disclaimer? Yearn,
the German word,
Sensucht, from C. S. Lewis
around the time I came home
from the army. I never
got over the word, can you
feel its presence in the poem?
--For Danielle Surkatty
AT THE YIRN TABLE
(Yakima Immigration Response Network)
Buttons, and people coming
to the table. A woman
with complicated signs,
her signs, too, calling for attention.
Protect your immigrant work force
and their rights, illustrated book
open to the field workers cutting
asparagus, rows leading back
all the way to Mt. St. Helens.
Post cards come with a tutorial.
Pick your issue. They’re printed.
Due Process for All, Stand Up
for Community, Immigrants
make America Great. I choose
five cards. And who do you
want to send them to? The Yirn
volunteer asks. She has printed
address labels all filled out,
from Representative Dan Newhouse
to Senators Murray and Cantwell.
County Commissioners, Which one?
Including City Council. Here are your stamps.
You can write your cards on the table.
Our leader, tenacious, she led us
through three years of ICE flights
at the airport, counting bodies,
tracking their safety from departure point
to destination. Concerned for well-
being, I always felt honored to be
in her presence, never as vigil,
but a body. On this table, piles
of the Red Cards, ready for distribution
to immigrants, Usted tiene derechos
constitucionales: White lettering, bulleted,
NO ABRA LA PUERTA NINGUNA PREGUNTA
si un agente de nmigración está tocando la puerta.
Usted tiene el derecho a guardar silencio.
Like that. In two languages. Cards available
to citizens and noncitizens alike.
Take as many as you need. Practice
again and again. It will help you
when the knock on the door arrives.
Show the card through the window,
or pass it underneath the door.
IV. A BECK AND A HINT
Almost a nod. This, too, a sign.
Call to attention. Non-verbal nature of beckon.
An indication—readiness to receive the divine.
Beck and hint. Beckon.
When words are insufficient—the urgency.
When Peter is freed from prison
he can’t believe it either.
Las cadenas cayeron de las manos.
The angel said, Get dressed,
calzate las sandalias. They went crazy
when he knocked on the door,
and he motions to them with his hands
to be quiet. Quedaron pasmados.
When the fish filled the nets
of the disciples, they signaled
to the others to come.
Any attack on the poor is a summons.
That good good dog, Beckon.
To be at your beck and call.
This is the sign, not of subservience.
Not of servile.
This is the invitation of the eyes
to fill your boat, to harvest the fish.
V. TWO PRIESTS WALK INTO THE PARK,
wearing collars, dressed in black.
It’s warm and maybe they’ve wandered over from St. Joe’s.
No. I’m wrong. This is my small faith reporting.
Vamos caminar juntos como hermanos
en el camino del Señor.
Why am I not listening to the song?
Padre Jesus Mariscal and Bishop Joseph Tyson.
They are here to bless the workers. Bendiciones.
Gracias por el don inmigrantes.
Todos aquí pueden discutir los dones de trabajadores y campesinos.
It is our workers, documented and undocumented alike
that make America great.
People are nervous and afraid. Staying home.
Obispo Tyson tells us his grandfather was a baker
in Yakima Valley. His grandfather formed a union.
I listen to the woman sitting beside me. I know her
from La Casa Hogar. She is a family friend.
Now they want you to self deport.
Now they’ll pay you a thousand dollars to leave.
Other times we came we had open doors.
Now we have to lock our offices.
There will be a misa tonight, A mass.
It will be the misa de soda pop.
There will be a pachanga, too, in the church.
But the dance will be after the mass.
My friend says the priests have ears for the people.
VI. HERE WE ARE BETWEEN THE RIDGES
Between the Ridges is another force.
Between the Ridges is a display of the land.
Between the Ridges
Between the Ridges says it best.
The nonprofit mirroring Yirn.
The Valley entire.
Native people, Anglican priest.
Lower Valley roots to Campbell Farm.
Describing the Valley. From the edge
of eastern Cascades, with the series
of ridges dividing, and the Yakima River
running through it, traditional lands
of Yakima nation, including
borders and barriers that separate.
Forming communities with open eyes.
A listening community
with ears for the people.
Third ear listening. A learning community
for the common good, saying this:
We won’t save places we don’t love.
Saying this: We don’t know places
we haven’t learned. With Yirn:
Defending immigrant and refugees.
Hope is our resistance. Our fabric.
VII. THE AZTEC DANCERS
Ceatl Atonalli,
Mexica culture, Aztec
who established Tenochtitlan
entering the park
circling in a circle
blessing the four directions
holding me within their feathers by chance
Huehuétl and teponaztle drums
carved in sound
Ayoyote rattles, sea shells,
Ayoyote on their ankles
Vibrations in the grass
There is a why
We carry a why in the dancing
A carried why within
VIII. THE MARCH THROUGH DOWNTOWN
--The word advocate has Latin origins, derived from advocatus. One called
to aid, coming in turn from advocare, to summons or invite. The noun advocate
entered English through Middle French as avocat, and advocate followed later, around 1640s.
How many of you like to walk fast,
like speed walkers, raise your hands.
Good. You guys will be in the back,
because this march is going slow
through downtown Yakima.
How we start
and starting with our Why
All of us blessed carrying our why
within, our beating hearts are signs
and our signs all of them
a kind of why within
and seen for who we dancing are
Jim Bodeen
Storypath/Cuentocamino
May Day—8 May 2025
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