‘EACH IS THE OTHER AND BOTH ARE ONE’*
San Juan de la Cruz
“Deprendimiento”—Detachment for the purpose
of something greater.
The other inside
an imaginable God
calls for compassion
**
Jim Bodeen
1-3 September 2026
*from The Ascent to Joy, San Juan de la Cruz
**from The Murmuring Deep, Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg
OVER HERE, AUTUMN BLAZE
--for Leslie & Spencer Hatton
and for Little Giant Fire #2
on the deck, making my street
sign, Autumn Blaze, the great maple,
its canopy a shield, eats up the smoke,
leaves with their five points extended,
working non-stop, cleaning the air,
a miracle of community organizing.
Air underneath Autumn Blaze, clean.
Until I leave the yard for the street
witness for Ukraine, I don’t know
this myself. Smoke from fires,
foul, dangerous like the war—of
course—it’s part of the war,
the fires. It’s Thursday and I join
20-or-so others, witnesses. This is their fifth
year of vigil, and I joined them
last year. One can’t see the Maple’s
work, but sitting underneath it
one breathes free. I have a new sign
today. I don’t give my signs titles,
they’re working signs, matter-of-fact,
you might call this one, Chekhov
in Ukraine. I’ve taken pastoral images
from his stories and travel, details
that move my heart, like this one:
‘a tall Ukrainian, long-nosed, long-armed,
white shirt, embroidered collar, balloon trousers,’
from The Steppe. from a letter, ‘I am
completely enchanted,’ on my sign.
These street signs are shields,
after Hephaestus—his immortal work
for Achilleus—that shield, that one--
model for Ukraine, workers harvesting
grapes, disrobing young lovers--
you can hear their kisses—and music
coming out of streams of silver!
When I came back from war
60 years ago, my professor calling it
a newspaper—last image Hector’s men
would see before Achilleus’ sword
entered their bodies--domestic. My street sign come
from this vision, on cardboard,
disintegrating in weather, hauled
in and out of the car, ephemeral
in traffic,--but make no mistake,
cut from the same metal
Gods gave Hephaestus—standing
with Ukraine, standing against fires,
the one here in Yakima Valley, Union Gap--
the one where you live—that one,
too. And that war. The war in Ukraine,
the same war, same conflagration
as the one where you live--
devastation reaching from ocean
to ocean, blue-band of water encircling
Achilleus’ shield, magnificent
part for the whole, leaping all boundaries.
Jim Bodeen
27 July—29 August 2026
POST TO MY NEIGHBOR REGARDING THE TI LEAF LEI
--for Nicole
--I thought everybody had read
The Breakdown of the Bicameral Brain
Nicole Papagiorgio
After refrigerating the leis, taking notes
on your visit, I wrapped them around
the Iwakura Stone in the garden, called
my brother, the coach, who has Polynesian
instincts, and gave him one. Research
turned into prayer: survival food in canoes.
Merton spoke to me calling trees
the perfect image of God. There’s Mark.
I wrote the story of the Ti Leaf
on the inside panel of a street sign asking
that it protect witnesses from harm.
I wrapped the lei around the 4-panel sign.
I photographed the lei, carrying it back
to the Iwakura stone and wrapped it
around this Suiseki Stone I discovered
in the Spokane River. Stay with me,
Nicole. Today I sliced off the lei
end beginning a palimpsest
on the street sign. This lei
does honest work. On this post card
as well, thinking of other deep listeners
like you, wishing you well.
Jim
16 August 2026
WHAT PEOPLE HAVE SAID ABOUT MY BIRTHDAY
9 August 1945
My mother said I was born on the day the war ended.
The newspaper said I was born on the day
we dropped the bomb on Nagasaki.
Margaret Mead said no elders anywhere
know what we know now.
Jim Bodeen
9 August 2026
PEACE POSTERS FOR UKRAINE
Call these new posters, The Part for the Whole.
Cardboard for this one came from medicine
on ice. Breaking it down and open,
following where it led, folding
four sides into two, a front and back,
I had my sides. Cardboard brown out
street-side. I like 2-sided signs.
I choose two Ukrainian women poets.
We Don’t have the right kind
of basement for our building,
from Anastasia Afanasieva.
From Halyna Kruk, And none
of us knew where the war zone
actually was, the scope of losses.
Part for the whole.
Hand-written, colored sharpies.
Blue and yellow markers.
From a new book of peace poems.
For the street. Coming and going.
I still hadn’t discovered the other side.
The inside. The inside would open
to four sides. The inside
contains the whole world.
Jim Bodeen
28 July 2026
HOW A NEW PIECE OF ART ENTERS THE WORLD
for Marty Lovins
The assemblage gift for my birthday, Marty,
begins today with this postcard. A snapshot
taken with a smartphone. Karen uploading
it to go in the mail. Two veterans changed
by the bomb, each with footprints in Japan.
Stopping time. Nagasaki. 9 August 1945.
Your art circles our house. Medicine
salvaged from cigar boxes, broken
pocket watches. Shields made
from sticks, onion skin covering
balsa wood. Every day another
Hibakusha dies the next bomb
becomes more visible. We pause
entering the kitchen, recognized
by those unknown to Curtis LeMay.
We learned everything we know
from those gardens in Kyoto.
Our commissions come,
in part, from what we carried home.
Love, and grace, and thanks.
Jim
30 July 2026
LOOKING AT AN ASSEMBLAGE BY MARTY LOVINS
CREATED AND GIVEN FOR MY 81ST BIRTHDAY, 9 AUGUST 1945
Time stops the moment this bomb hits this clock.
The clock wobbles too. The circle dangling
below the clock is part of the clock. Nagasaki time.
Born in the instant, I am. We are.
Conditioned already. There is a mirror
in the lower right of the assemblage.
Karen and I are watching TV, at dusk.
I look over at the wall where it hangs,
in dusk light. Wait, Karen. Stop.
The TV. I walk over to the piece,
Untitled by the jeweler, Marty Loins,
and take a picture with my smart phone.
That’s me in the mirror. Self-portrait
at the moment of my birth, 9 August 1945.
In the after-time, the after-birth,
the morning time, sunlight hits the circle
more directly, casting three shadows
on the wall. Air movement, people
walking by, into the kitchen, or,
on their way to the bathroom, cause
the circle to move, slightly. You
may not notice. Another thing.
The synesthesia. There is music in this piece.
You’re a musician, maybe. Something like music
right here. Only my jeweler knows. He, too, is a musician.
A part for the whole. Synecdoche.
Oh! That’s the Taj Mahal
in the one photo, and a class of graduating
students from Yakima, in the other.
There’s more, yes. The dizziness.
Jim Bodeen
12 July—30 July 2026
DRAFTING LINES FOR SIGNS OF THE TIMES
BEFORE JUNETEENTH IN YAKIMA, 2026
Transforming despair into poster art.
Into signs. Getting our people safe
to the other side. Keep your form.
James Baldwin and Eddie Glaude, Jr.,
shiver at the cheapening. Celebration
what. Cheap grace. Together, these two
prepare me for Juneteenth,
Rise Up and Sing.
No king is coming for you, America
These are the Juneteenth James Baldwin Blues
He’s beginning again, and so am I.
The Anthology of Signs begins with your name.
Hold on, now. You gotta hold on.
Hold on if you can.
What does your sign say?
You know people driving by
can’t read a word
your sign says, she says.
What she says.
The Back women justices
on the Supreme Court
don’t suffocate because they’re not
breathing alone--
Lean into the fiction.
Freedom on a sucker stick
taped to the rear window of my Fit
Nobody knows Juneteenth.
Listen up kids.
Mom and Dad didn’t know it either.
Baldwin calls it the Aftertimes.
Don’t feel bad. It’s not easy
to wrap your mind around this one.
So here’s the first Juneteenth.
Galveston, Texas. 1866.
I know, I know. Hang on.
Yes, Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation
January 1, 1863. Before the war was over.
The Civil War ended April 9, 1865.
On Grandma Cele’s birthday?
On Grandma Cele’s birthday.
Look. Nobody can understand this.
Supreme Court Jusice John Roberts,
Right now. Head of the Supreme Court Justice Himself
can’t understand it. He thinks history’s a straight line!
I’m not dumbing anybody down.
I am talking to a whole bunch of people at once.
Justice John Roberts is one.
Jim Bodeen
13 June-3 August 2026
JAMES BALDWIN JUNETEENTH POSTER ART BLUES
Commingling days contribute
to the Anthology of Signs,
double-sided, pressing against
each other through cardboard,
my pocketful of colored sharpies
learning from the kids with paint cans.
The fallen crown discarded: No king
is coming for you, America--
this is the necessary shock
before the jail break. Birds
are singing it’s a busy time.
Kings leave behind despair,
and James Baldwin has come home
to begin again. “Everyone was paying
their dues and it was time.” My friend
sends me Martín Espada’s poems
as he traces his father’s camera
“searching for the faces of the people
he would call our people.” These
are the after times, and when
I finished my sign on the porch
I met the NAACP group in the church
parking lot and we caravanned
through Yakima. Not too many
of us this year. Transforming
sorrow into poster art. Shivering
and huddled, Eddie Glaude, Jr.
hunkers down with Reverend
Trumble who asks what time
service is tomorrow. We’re shivering
before the fact and fear of cheap grace
of birthdays. Even our people
don’t know the black poets.
Glaude calls this the weaponization
of jubilee. Jusice Harlan’s lone
dissenting vote—score it 8 to 1,
made separate but equal
the law of the land, didn’t they,
Justice John G. Roberts.
This blues-soaked hope.
Raw song singing for discarded
crowns. Who would want laurels
with all this available? Baldwin says,
I’m beginning again—and so am I.
Signed on the poster. The path
is right. Ir’s a good path.
And true. No King coming.
Discard’s as easy as gin rummy.
We do this one by ourselves.
Jim Bodeen
13 June 2026
HEY, DEE—HEY GRADUATE!
For Deanna Victoria Pappas
9 June 2026
Hey, girl—young woman—Well done!
You carry so much love, and I kinda
wanna look at a few of these things
on the day you’re about to graduate--
but first, I just pruned the pine tree
out front, the one you’ve been styling
on your own, these growing years.
Styling is your specialty, well--
your genius. And you, girl, your
genius IQ is off the charts. It’s
in your eyes—not your make-up
eyes, your inner eyes, the eyes
no one can see. The eyes we all see,
when we say, Deanna. We don’t just say,
Deanna, either. We say, DEEZUS,
and it sounds like Jesus. That’s
what we see, that’s what we say--
because it’s what we’re thinking
when we say, Hey Girl! What’s up!
Style. Well, style is genius. You
did the work to get you here.
Now, girl. You’re about to find out
how much more there is. Let it find you.
When it does, you better believe it.
Love, Gpa
Desire's fire-dreaming
Under its own volition
drops at my doorstep
Jim Bodeen
25 April 2026
Foraging birds from
elsewhere come here for thistles
shitting their grass seed
Jim Bodeen
21 April 2026
What is Cream of Wheat?
Why does it atract peaches
and maple syrup?
Jim Bodeen
20 April 2026
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
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.
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