CODA
Pulpit as silent
as the church mouse
Narthex after worship
all about cookies
Nobody recites the poems of William Blake
or the songs of Kris Kristofferson
To see a world in a grain of sand
and a heaven in a wild flower
hold infinity in the palm of your hand
and eternity in an hour
I turned 21 in Panama
working with the medics
at the government hospital
in the Canal Zone—Gorgas
its name. GI. I learned how
to conjugate verbs
in high school Spanish
and some Panamanians
thought I was Castilian
right out of Madrid.
There weren’t many
and mostly they were
with Gis in bars
singing Guantanamera
Growing up in rural North Dakota
near the Canadian border,
Jesus on a flannel board
mounted on a tripod
in a boat on water
taking the fishermen
deeper than they were
comfortable going,
Jesus with David,
John the Baptist,
Abraham, Jacob, Joseph
the coat of many colors
I was down for that
all of them so good together
Just months before, fall of 65,
lost from Karen in New Orleans,
failing even with literature
when Hurricane Betsy hit
closing the university of Ponchartrain,
Dylan singing, Something is happening
and you don’t know what it is,
from Highway 61, walking away
from those classes,...do you, Mr. Jones?
How to become a soldier in New Orleans.
What must be done to get back to Karen.
The chaplain in Basic Training
who put me with the medics
telling me, We believe in this war.
Enrolled in a poetry class
at the Canal Zone college
dressed in Class As,
wearing our cunt caps
and walk into that room
full of 18-year old red lip-sticked
dependents of officers
who moved away from me
when I sat down. We read
Prufrock,….would I be good?
And memorized 40 lines
of immortality.
That’s some catch, that Catch-22,
Yosarian said. It’s the best there is,
agreed Doc Daneeka
After Prufrock, Sunday Morning
by Wallace Stevens and I memorized
great chunks of that, Complacencies
of the peignoir, and late coffee and oranges
in a sunny chair...I learned how
to pronounce peignoir, see through
sheer, the negligee itself
floating feathers, and the teacher
whose name I do not know
to this day talking how Sunday
worship’s become common place
next to Sunday morning, and more lines
from other poems, Call the roller
of big cigars, the muscular one,
and bid him pitch…
I could have stayed in Panama
and finished my tour, but
I had to go to Viet Nam
to get back to Karen—again--
A career soldier, Tom Pendergrass,
West Texas Irish Baptist,
loved Hemingway, became my guide.
We drove the Panama-American Highway
in his VW to San Antonio not knowing
about the war in Central America.
I saw Oaxaca for the first time
from the south.
I spent a month with Karen
in Seattle, a buck sergeant now,
on my way to Viet Nam, supposedly
I knew all there was to know
about evacuation. This was
August, 1967.
The question I would ask
people for the rest of my life:
Where were you in 1968?
85th Evacuation Hospital, Qui Nhon.
When the Non Com said,
We’re going North, I told him
my orders were to stay in Cam Ranh Bay,
he says to me, Get your ass
on that fucking truck, soldier.
●
You might not believe this,
but I took my R&R and went skiing in Japan.
Took the luxury train out of Tokyo north
to the mountains close to where Bashō
walked, making his journey to the narrow north.
Hot springs, cotton robes, powder snow.
Flying back into Saigon,
Ho Chi Minh City today, the plane
couldn’t land. Tan San Nhut under
attack. Tet. 1968. Days later
when we got back to the 85th
it was non-stop triage for three months.
We evacuated 700 Gis a month
until Johnson stopped the bombing.
King is shot 8 May
in Memphis. In my letter
to Karen on the 9th
I’m listening
to the black medics
saying, And this time
they’ll send us
back to the United States.
I came home in August, 1968.
Turned 23 in the Nam.
I’m renting violins in a music store
and two weeks later, enrolled
in an evening drama course
at the community college.
That first class
the drama teacher says,
Jim, let’s go outside for a minute.
I’m going to show you
how to walk into a room.
Karen and I got married in November.
The 23d. Kennedy, the president,
was killed on the 23d, right? 1963.
Right after Karen and I graduated.
I’m back in school. Full time.
GI Bill.
And the beer I had for breakfast
wasn’t bad, so I had one more for dessert.
Kris Kristofferson singing.
I’m older. The 18-year olds
ask me two questions,
Did I kill any babies?
Did I have any dope?
Back in a poetry class.
Reading Wallace Stevens again.
Kristofferson had just written that song,
Sunday Morning Coming Down.
That’s what I’m listening to.
I’m in a master’s program now.
Blake and Wordsworth.
Robin Redbreast in a cage
Puts all Heaven in a rage.
I write my paper on those two
Sunday mornings--
Stevens’ and Kristofferson’s
I get all the way to Jesus
but the door doesn’t open.
That door will open too, later.
That door to another existence.
It opens to the Black Church.
It goes through El Salvador.
It rides ICE flights.
Some of that better be here already,
why I read these sermons.
Rudolf Bultmann opens that story.
If you don’t think Bultmann’s important,
you might need a bigger gospel.
Jim Bodeen
11-13 February 2025
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