KAREN
Family fabric
Student of steadfast color
A thread of being
Jim Bodeen
1 May 2026
DESIRE'S FIRE-DREAMING
Desire's fire-dreaming
Under its own volition
drops at my doorstep
Jim Bodeen
25 April 2026
FORAGING BIRDS
Foraging birds from
elsewhere come here for thistles
shitting their grass seed
Jim Bodeen
21 April 2026
What is Cream of Wheat?
What is Cream of Wheat?
Why does it atract peaches
and maple syrup?
Jim Bodeen
20 April 2026
Storypath/Cuentocamino: : THE DAY OF MY BIRTH, THE DAY OF THE BOMB
Storypath/Cuentocamino: : THE DAY OF MY BIRTH, THE DAY OF THE BOMB: THE DAY OF MY BIRTH, THE DAY OF THE BOMB for Mayu Kaneko and M. G. Sheftall ● He takes us back in time...
CHAIN SAW OIL, BIRD FEEDER, SWIMMING POOL
CHAIN SAW OIL, BIRD FEEDER, SWIMMING POOL
The one subject that is truly worthy of a Christian poet:
The great Mystery of God, revealing his mercy to us in Christ.
Thomas Merton, Art & Spirituality
God for Troublemakers and Tom Merton.
What the chain saw makes possible.
Cut birch limbs fire length, bind them
with rope and display them with stones.
Tough beauty to throw or burn. Find a way
to say you’re not too old. The poet,
if he is one, goes to work. His chain saw
gets him a pass with neighbors and
New World Sparrows. Gayle walks Lucy
by garden porch on extended leash.
May she not get caught and fall. Birds,
here, foraging, bathing, frolicking.
They must mate after their bath,
pretending it’s Sunday afternoon.
Their crowned striped heads shine
full of rich Nyger seeds. High quality
thistles, these, spilled seeds from
feeder by the Finches. We’re with them,
Karen and I. We travel in different
circles from Melania and Don.
My cookies for Camp Hope tomorrow
are counted and stored. King Arthur’s
Best Chip Cookie. Two sticks
Land O’Lakes Butter, three kinds
of chocolate, calling for two full cups
of oatmeal pulsed into flour. A cup
of raisins. Protein breakfast for dessert
following the meal of Sloppy Joe’s
and Cole Slaw. Karen’s in her chair.
The cantaloupe and melon
I cut fresh came from this Earth
which we love dearly. All is not
well in the Gulf of Hormuz.
Constant improvising to fix
problems they themselves created.
I think I mentioned the swimming pool.
I’ll get there. I try for 32 minutes
acting as much like mating birds
as I can imagine. This life, this
blessed, blessed life.
Jim Bodeen
11-15 April 2026
WITH SO MANY THINGS TO GET RIGHT
WITH SO MANY THINGS TO GET RIGHT
for Jim Hanlen
I’m in the free car wash line reading your poem.
The Mountain’s so kind to greet you,
Mountain meets Poet.
This is Grand Opening.at Ducky Car Wash.
Free All Day.
You can’t tip the workers getting wet.
I say to the man in the necktie,
You’re a bunch of cheap Sons of Bitches.
Other things have to do with cookies.
I’ve found the best oatmeal raisin cookies in town.
Winco and Rosauer’s tied for Best Cookie.
Only Oatmeal Raisin. Winco ‘s three bucks cheaper
for a dozen. They’re not as pretty
but they include pecans.
I told the baker at Rosauer’s she doesn’t get
extra points for what the cookies look like.
The manager at Winco refuses my offer
of the Rosauer cookie. Take me
to the baker, I say, a bit over the top.
I’m still in line at the Car Wash,
writing you with thumbs on my phone.
The boys are wearing ties—neck ties.
I’m pissed they can’t take tips.
You could walk out with real money
in your pockets at 5 o’clock..
500 bucks maybe a grand with tips.
Jim Bodeen
He cracks a tiny smile when I tell him to organize.
I’ll help with the strike if we can drop the wipe-down rags
at 2 pm when lines are long.
You don’t think I’m serious, do you? I say.
I’m on your side, brother.
I’ll show your guys what to do
with those ties on our way to the street.
ON NOT BEING HERE AT EASTER
ON NOT BEING HERE AT EASTER
for KLP
This will be different than your birthday poem
at 20, Kate—that one, so much fun. Yet
listening to you on the phone today
talking with grandma, my tear ducts
emptied at the sound of your voice.
I’ll write, I said. I’m working on an old
word, vocation. Tom Merton, monk,
calls it our work: deep interior.
Your reading tonight from the Dharmapada.
Practical stuff saying, Thrive.
Buddhas only point the way.
Vocation comes from the divine,
a summons. What you do
as a way of life. If I say anymore
mystery disappears. Over the phone,
I remember saying, Be our roshi.
Love, Grandpa
31 March 2026
IN THE PEW READING MERTON WHILE BELL RINGERS PRACTICE RINGING
IN THE PEW, READING MERTON
WHILE BELL RINGERS PRACTICE RINGING
BEFORE WORSHIP, THE SMART PHONE
IN MY POCKET CALLS ME,
And when the phone call comes,
my friend has been pulled over by police
without a license. Would I come
and get him? He’s close. It’s Palm Sunday.
Jesus on a donkey.
And when the grace is gone
we no longer seem to reflect on it.
His car is in the church parking lot now.
He’s walking. And my car is on the curb
where he was stopped. This is what
I know of what’s real and what’s not.
He sits beside me in the pew
and I hand him back his keys.
I thought I had resolved the problem.
I guess not. I do not know who is
speaking these words. Him or me.
For any problem you got. Here we go.
Two choirs surround me singing.
Two choirs singing and ringing.
Jim Bodeen
Palm Sunday, 2026
NOTE TO PASTOR JILL ROSS WITNESSING AT THE BORDER
NOTE TO PASTOR JILL ROSS WITNESSING AT THE BORDER
We lift up our eyes to You in heaven,
O God of eternity, wishing we were poorer,
more silent and more mortified.
Thomas Merton, Dialogues with Silence
Happy Birthday, Pastor Jill.
Thank you for praying for me.
You’ve always been a monk like that, praying for others.
You make things easier.
And Merton.
When I found him in 1968, just back from Vietnam,
I didn’t know his body was already gone.
I wouldn’t know for certain
until after I was sure he’d gotten
that photograph from the other side
of the mountain.
For those looking for that photograph
is something I pray for. I was reading Four Quartets
with Brother David in the garden.
I wanted to say these things without using words.
I didn’t know how. All I had was Happy Birth Day
Two words. Hyphenated. I didn’t know about the bombs
when I went to bed. Lucky for Merton.
I thought maybe you could feel my breathing.
Or maybe, maybe, you knew I was walking
by hearing my footsteps.
Jim
2 March 2026
LOVE IN 2026 AND BEYOND
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LOVE IN 2026 AND BEYOND
for Barb and Cragg
My hope is in what the eye has never seen.
Thomas Merton, Dialogue with Silence
So many flowers.
So much paint.
So much material to work with.
Silk butterflies from Japan.
So many ways to remember
Harriet Powers. So much gathered
testimony. So many threads.
Barb, Karen, Harriet.
So many mothers of beauty.
The yellow iris bulb is a world.
Jim
5 March 2026
THE GIFT OF LUCILLE CLIFTON
THE GIFT OF LUCILLE CLIFTON
FOR PASTOR ANN MURPHY
She has the voice poets and pastors wish they had.
Doesn’t fall for seduction.
Born with 12 fingers and 12 toes,
revelation accompanies her birth.
Lucille Clifton appears in 1936
like Rosalee Tompkins on this post card.
She writes, feathers waving as we dance
towards Jesus. She’s with Phillis Wheatley,
who stamps these lines valid. Phillis
who gets her name from the slave ship Phillis.
Lucy, light, Luz Bel. My mother’s name.
Every time I read her poems I get an education.
She knows what women know. Knows men.
Knows these too are your children,
this too is your child. She knew early
what this was about.
She is always dangerous, Lucille Clifton.
Jim Bodeen
African-American History Month, 2026
POST SCRIPT FOR WIL HAYGOOD
POST SCRIPT FOR WIL HAYGOOD
This was Vietnam. This was the war
where it was time to speak one’s mind.
Wil Haygood, Black Struggle in Vietnam and at Home
Mail had already been stopped when LBJ
landed at Cam Ranh Bay, Christmas, 1967.
Thank you for War Within A War, Wil Haygood.
I’m at the 85th Evac Hospital, Qui Nhon.
No mail. We’re together, talking shit.
We’re together 4 April 68, too. Dap.
My sign says, This way home. I’m
with the brothers, listening. It’s Tet.
If we survive this, they’ll send us back to the States.
Martin. Then Kennedy. Your credibility
dapping. What’s goin’ on Lou Rauls?
We’re evacuating 700 Gi’s a month.
Everything but the music. OK.
I’d say, Everything and the music.
634-5789, Wilson Pickett. Call me,
it’s a song. I’ve danced on the porch
at Motown. It’s closed on Friday nights.
A boy, relocated from North Dakota.
Your p.s. I hear your eyes on Hegseth.
Jim Bodeen
5 March 2026
REGARDING THE MIRACLE QUILTS OF GEE'S BEND
REGARDING THE MIRACLE QUILTS OF GEE’S BEND
“Strike the rock and water will come out of it.”
Exodus 17: 6
Moses would love the quilts from Gee’s Bend.
The commemorative stamps would would startle and silence,
he might drop the stone. He’d look at the meteor shower
in Harriet Power’s quilt, and call it scripture.
Two surviving quilts proclaiming,
Nothing is missing, calling for a third
tablet of stone. He’d wonder what else he missed
lost in God’s clouds. Gee’s Bend, The Pettway Plantation.
A husband’s work clothes cut out and sewn
for God’s glory. Go down, Moses. Strike
the rock and water will come. All right,
Moses, and that water came. Grant you that.
But Egypt, now. Tears in the water.
Quilts for God come from God.
And that Middle Passage, Moses.
Call that Middle Passage what it is.
Quilts from Gee’s Bend testify, but
call Egypt by its real name.
Jim Bodeen
9 March 2026
FRIDAY, 6 MARCH 2026, BEGINNING A NEW NOTEBOOK
FRIDAY, 6 MARCH 2026, BEGINNING A NEW NOTEBOOK
An art teacher, Jennie Smith, saw Harriet Powers' quilt at a cotton fair, and sought her out. Ms. Powers then, described each block to Smith, and because of that, we have Harriet Powers' words available to us today. This story documents how her grave site was rediscovered, and a new headstone dedicated. Harriet Powers's quilts are "documents in fabric." If you follow to her portrait, notice how she's dressed. She is "dressed up." And her clothes are also documents. That apron--look at it It's a uniform and a story. For instance, ask an indigenous woman about her apron, a Mexican woman about her "delantal." Its power and place. Look at the thread and imagery of the apron Harriet Powers wears. And in this image, below: Look at the falling stars recorded in cloth from 19 May 1780.
Harriet Powers lives now on the U. S. Commemorative Postal Stamp issued 28 February 2026, the last day of African American History month. Two of her quilts survive and can be seen in museums. Her story no longer confines itself to her quilts. I, too, survive as a fabric block of sorts. It is the first weekof March and my country has entered a new war, and the white chalk of days continues. On Thursdays I stand with others on a street corner for 30-minutes with my cardboard sign, shaped by taking apart a card box box. I have taken lines from Ukrainian poets and written them on the cardboard with different colored marking pens. I find the making of the signs a meditation, as well as a form of petitionary prayer.
My wife, Karen, is a quilter and fabric artist. She’s sewing today with others. I helped load her car with her sewing machine and materials. I put her fold-up wagon in the trunk to carry her machine. She’s working with little houses cut out on fabric. Each house is on a quilting square, or block, they call them. I made her a honey and peanut butter sandwich with some grapes for her lunch, and she sat down with me to eat her yogurt before leaving to quilt. She brought in two squares for me to look at. The houses have two windows, or two doors, they could be either, couldn’t they? I ask her. Yes, I guess they could. I intended them as windows, though. Flowers accompany either of them, be they doors or windows. They’re so colorful. They could be curtains, too! Yes. They could be.
She drove off a few minutes ago. She’ll be gone most of the day, cutting out little houses on fabric, creating a neighborhood of fabric houses blocked out on cotton. I can only see so far, and can’t imagine what else will happen during this day of documentation, Of creation. I have a couple of hours myself to do with as I like. I began a new notebook this morning before walking, so I have that set up before me, and I hope to write a couple of post card poems, attaching different panels from Harriet Powers’ quilt newly created in the form of stamps. I will take them to the Post Office, where the postal clerk will provide me with a hand cancellation across the stamp in red ink. I find this last step wonderful. It makes me a bit dizzy. All of this, to tell the truth, makes me dizzy—more than dizzy.
Jim Bodeen
6 March 2026
LETTER TO PHILLIS WHEATLEY WRITTEN WHILE LOOKING AT HER PORTRAIT ON THE BLACK HERITAGE POSTAGE STAMP ISSUED 29 JANUARY 2026
LETTER TO PHILLIS WHEATLEY WRITTEN
WHILE LOOKING AT HER PORTRAIT ON THE BLACK HERITAGE
POSTAGE STAMP ISSUED 29 JANUARY 2026
...blooming graces, triumph in my song.
...a faithful tongue…
...imagination is the empyreal palace of a trustin God
...Now here, Now there, the roving Fancy flies,
till some lov’d object strikes her wand’ring eyes,
Whose silken fetters all the senses bind,
And soft captivity involves the mind.
Imagination, who can sing thy force?
…each noble path pursue… Phillis Wheatley
Jupiter Hammon’s letter addresses you
as elder, poet, peer, Christian, and slave,
both of you freed, and today we might add
immigrant—that, like everything between us
seems stretched. Hammon, born in 1711,
was 62 when your book,
Poems on Various Subjects
Religious and Moral, is published, 1773--
Phillis, you’re 20 years old. Both of you
wrote poems. You crossed at 31,
Hammon dies at 95. Starting with his letter,
he calls you pious youth in the first
stanza; and in the second one, he says
you might have been left behind.
You were 8 when you arrived
on the slave ship Phillis
receiving your new name.
Black writers, black women who insist
in living in ink, your fellow poet June Jordan
writes, have been writing about you
Still, may the painter’s and the poet’s fire,
to aid thy pencil and thy verse conspire?
There in one view we grasp the mighty whole...
...twice six gates on radiant hinges ring
celestial blooms in endless spring
And may the muse inspire each future song!
...these shades of time are chased away…
For nobler themes demand a nobler strain,
And purer language…
for 250 years. You open 250 Years
of Struggle and Song, Kevin Young’s
Library of Congress monument to
African American Poetry, while
Jupiter Hammon’s letter to you
follows your poems. You, then and now,
are the Mother of African American
literature and I address you as such.
Hammon knows your poems
when he writes, ...adore
the wisdom of your God.
Adore, because you might
have been left behind. He believes
America is a good place to be,
making Christianity possible. In Stanza 4
he says it stronger: God’s tender mercy
Inflame the heart, and captivate the mind…
How he has wrestled with his God by night
To shield your poet from the burning day:
Calliope, awake the sacred lyre,
While thy fair sisters fan the pleasing fire.
And through the air their mingled music floats.
Spirits dart through flowing veins
...Fancy dresses to delight the Muse…
...frozen deeps may break iron bands...
brought you here, and it’s worth
all the gold in Spain. Hammon
is a bit overbearing—I’m an old man
at 80, and know that voice, he may be
jealous, too, he wrote sermons
all his life, he urges, Dear Phillis,
seek heaven’s joys. Neither of you
can see the mess we’re in now.
Michael Harper’s anthology’s here, too.
African American Poetry, 200 Years
of Vision, struggle, Power, Beauty and Triumph--
you and Jupiter Hammon, presented
at the beginning, and Harper gives us
your other visions: To the painter,
to the Morning, and Evening, and death,
on leaving for England.
You’re at the beginning of it all.
I’m looking at your stamp.
Black and white, ink on paper.
25 Million postage stamps of you.
I write as one who has been lifted,
if not saved, by black poets. I sit,
struck by your poems traveling
through time. There’s paper, and
Phillis, you’re holding a pencil,
where you’ve written,
Preface to my Second Volume.
Jupiter Hammon’s here too.
Following always, Jim
P. S. We’re here in the living room, together.
All of us. Here, in the all of it.
Jim Bodeen
29 January 2026
Phillis, we’re here in the living room, together.
All of us. We’re here, in the all of it.
Jim Bodeen
29 January 2026
ON THIS THIRD DAY OF FEBRUARY, 2026, JAMES BALDWIN, HIS STAMP AND OUR TIME
ON THIS THIRD DAY OF FEBRUARY, 2026,
JAMES BALDWIN, HIS STAMP AND OUR TIME
Opening the drawer on the coffee table
where commemorative stamps are kept—ones
I can use, that I hold out for me—not
the ones in sleeves archived for grandchildren,
looking for the James Baldwin 37-cent
commemorative I attach to post card
poems as gifts for friends, this Baldwin
stamp came out on 23 July 2004,
before Forever stamps debuted
in April 2007 (eliminating the need
to purchase stamps in small denominations
to mail a letter), the first Forever
being Liberty Bell, I’m re-reading Baldwin
during Black History month. Listen to him
on Martin Luther King, Jr. “...to state
it baldly, ‘I liked him. It is rare that one
likes a world-famous man—by the time
they become famous they rarely like themselves.’”
This drawer of loose stamps is a treasure
chest of Black history: Ernest Gaines,
August Wilson, Edmonia Lewis, Harriet Tubman,
Tousssaint, Gwen Ifill, Ella—Waters and Fitzgerald--
Arturo Schomburg—Oh, man! Baldwin
wrote this in 1961, “King cannot
be considered chauvinist, what he says
to Negroes he will say to whites, and what he says
to whites he will say to Negroes.” Baldwin
is five years older than King. Until King,
in Montgomery, Baldwin writes, the minister
could not change the lives of hearers: “All
they came to find, and all that he could give
was sustenance for another day’s journey.”
Baldwin again, bluntly, “...the white manuscript
on whom the American Negro modeled himself,
is vanishing. This white man was, himself,
a mythical creation of men who have never been
what they imagined themselves to be.” We’re
not done here, are we? The Baldwin stamp
matches a portrait of him, circa-1960
against a backdrop view of Harlem
where he grew up. So much story
in a square-inch stamp. One more Baldwin
gem: “Europeans refer to Americans
as children in the same way American Negroes
refer to Americans as children...so little experience...
no key to the experience of others.” To
become oneself. These stamps help me
in my studies. To stamps in these times, saving
for grandchildren Grandpa’s stand: February, 2026.
This 37-cent postage stamp, added to an envelope
requiring 71 cents postage, pure and extra,
political, with hand-cancellation, through the mail.
Jim Bodeen
3 February 2026
FROM THE KITCHEN TABLE, JANUARY, 2026, YAKIMA, WASHINGTON--TO THE WASHINGTON CATHEDRAL, 31 MARCH 1968--LETTER TO PASTOR MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
FROM THE KITCHEN TABLE, JANUARY, 2026
YAKIMA, WASHINGTON—TO THE WASHINGTON CATHEDRAL,
31 MARCH 1968—LETTER TO PASTOR MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
PART II
I. After the Sermon
You’re greeting the congregation, Dr. King,
taking our hands as we file out,
and we’re slow go not letting go of your hand.
This is your last public sermon
and this time we get it.
You’ve just stepped down
from the Canterbury Pulpit
Cathedral Church of St. Peter & St. Paul,
commonly known as Washington Cathedral.
March 31, 1968.
●
15 March 2026
II. Dear Pastor King,
I’m going to call you pastor, Dr. King.
That’s what you are for me, Pastor King, my pastor,
and I’m coming from the pew. I, know, too,
your titles, and the epithets that come with you,
and I’m still inflated by it all, from the Canterbury Pulpit
to your place at the right hand of God.
We’re getting ready for your birthday.
I’m walking before breakfast listening with hearing aids.
I’m 80, and no longer need to embellish. You’re telling us
about Rip Van Winkel, how he slept for 20 years,
sleeping right through a revolution.
King George III. We have other worries now--
Yakima, Central Washington State, it’s cold, and the ink won’t run
in my pen. I take notes on the recipe card while walking. For the Pecan Pie
I made for your birthday.
On this day, end of March, 1968,
I’m 22 years old, 85th Evac Hospital, Qui Nhon, Viet Nam
during the Battle of Tet begun on New Year’s lasting until
Johnson finally stopped the bombing. I’ll pick up there.
It’s my job to get our guys off choppers and onto planes
and out of the country to Japan, Philippines, or, closer to you
in D.C. at Walter Reed—Ft. Sam Houston for burned bodies.
I can relate to what you say about just to have crumbs,
about the appalling silence and indifference of good people.
I didn’t hear it then. I did, but. It wasn’t exactly chronological.
I had a teacher in high school, 1963, who told us, broke your story--
but I didn’t know, then, you wrote that Letter from Birmingham Jail,
then, 16 April 1963. No, I didn’t. Then, that, that I didn’t know.
When I did know, later, I put your Letter from Birmingham
into my New Testament. It’s right there next to Paul’s letters.
But in March 1968, I’m at the 85th Evac, a GI.
And I’m bunkered with medics and we’re black and white,
and we’re brothers, as you say from The Canterbury Pulpit,
...standing in brutal solidarity...young black men
and young white men, fighting and killing
in brutal soldarity, that is us.
And in a few days,
when you are murdered,
that’s where we are, and that’s where I am.
And when you are killed, GI’s in Vietnam,
we’re all wondering what just happened. You say,
Dante couldn’t imagine it. We’re using other words,
talking in GI. And writing home. Writing home.
Brothers in Black and White. And that’s how
I remember those days—and Bobby Kennedy’s
still alive. No confusion there. “They send us
to Vietnam, and when we’re done here, they’re
going to send us back to the United States.”
What I won’t know for years,
Dr. King—I do slip in and out of those titles,
is that this is what’s in my letters. We’re together
in that hospital, one in bunkered solidarity, telling
this cruel joke on ourselves. “That’s what’s going
to happen.” It’s in my letters to Karen. When I found
those letters she saved, I felt redeemed. You say
in that last sermon...and when they come home
they can’t hardly live on the same block together.
Being part of the cruel joke is part of our blessing.
Dr. King, what I want to tell you
in this letter is this. We’re in the same pew.
We’re in the same block, too. Always have been.
It hasn’t been like this for everybody,
but that’s how it is here, with me, with us.
III. HOLDING ON TO PASTOR MARTIN’S HAND
I’ve been holding onto this one over 50 years, Pastor Martin.
I’m conscious of the man beside me, I am,
but this time, not my time, but we’ve been in line
a long time. I’m talking to you in a letter
and I’ve got grand-kids, grown now,
and I’m talking to them through you,
in your words, through that pulpit over time,
and then there’s my notes from what you
said on that toilet paper from Birmingham Jail.
I’m just coming to that,
They can hear that direct from me.
Dr. King.
Yes. That sermon.
That’s life.
Life in that sermon
that’s not going away never.
Jim Bodeen
15 January 2026
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