KAREN FINDS THE STONE OF THE DAY

Full of caves

and calligraphy

fitting the palm

of her hand

Jim Bodeen

5 August 2014

HOW THE STONES BECAME THE WAY WITH THE TREES

Coming to me in time,

across time, exploding,

and then the long wait,

a million, two million years,

waiting for a hand

descending into water

in the moment of recognition.

The first Ah,

my 50 years with Karen.

Palm lines read back in time.

The hand that took my hand

reaches into the river.

The stone evolving and devolving,

arrested. Submerged

beauty surfacing.

Blessed community blessing.

Grateful for all tipping hats.

A community of visionaries.

I carry your names

into the garden where each stone

is a star with your word.

A year of studying Japanese pines.

Oh, Pine Islands, Ah!,

in Sam Hamill’s Bashō,

and reading Bashō,

causes one to lower the eyes.

August 9, 1945,

my birthdate, also a call to remember.

All of this, all of you, part of the blessing.

Jim Bodeen

10 August 2014

HE HAS KNOWN HER 50 YEARS

His feet carry him
further into the river
Language tags along

Jim Bodeen
9 August 2014

LOVE POEM FOR KAREN

Every day

when I go out

in the yard

with spade

and child’s rake

Karen got me

to pick up

dog poop

I say to myself

I’m going to go

right into the house

and thank her.

Jim Bodeen

31 July 2014

The Japanese Art of Miniature Landscape Stones

ADJACENT, AGAINST, UPON,

HIS FEET CARRY HIM FURTHER INTO THE DAY

Walking in the Sculpture Park

after leaving the museum,

the child asks,

Grandpa, when

are we going to go someplace,

like the Space Needle?

Jim Bodeen

26-29 July 2014

SUISEKI COLLECTING WITH CHILDREN

We’re going to explore these stones

under running water. The artist

is the one who finds the stone.

Do you believe that?

You don’t have to believe it.

Will you think about it?

You’re the explorer.

So you’re not going to make a thing now.

Start by walking in water.

What you see makes you the one

who decides. You’re looking

for pretty stones, yes.

But not just pretty ones.

Part of it is color, yes.

When you see something you like,

pick it up. Look at all sides.

Look for interesting shapes, too.

Can you see a mountain in that stone?

Is there a trail on the stone

where you could hike?

Cliffs are good, yes, and caves.

You’ve skied on mountains.

Find a mountain in the river rock.

Explorers and artists.

Every time you take a stone

out of water you change the river.

You’re suiseki artists. Say, suiseki.

When you put the stone

in the garden you make a creek bed.

Yesterday this creek was dry.

Rain brought the water.

When you wash these stones

listen to your fingers.
What do your fingers tell you?

Look at all sides

before you put anything

in your bucket.

Jim Bodeen

29 July 2014

PRACTICALITIES OF THE DAILY INTERIOR

PRACTICALITIES

Practicalities of the daily interior
Adjacent, against, upon
Practicalities of the day

Jim Bodeen
27 July 2014


THE DAILY INTERIOR

Practicalities.

Jim Bodeen
27 July 2014

One of Life's Pleasures

ONE OF LIFE’S PLEASURES

cutting fruit.

Confident, sharp blade

of the chef,

his clean, ironed apron—

technique

so admired by women.

The easiness of it all.

His swift slice through the earth

opening the cantaloupe.

Watermelon, quartered and hollowed,

tipped, already sliced into a plastic bag.

No mess, no fuss. No cleanup.

I have mine, too.

Triangles of melon.

Long, slim fingers of liquid sugar, iced.

Hand-to-mouth succulents.

Coffee-table elegant, triggers.

The Mouth’s first Ah.

I, too, have had teachers.

The campesina is the first.

At the tourist beach, la playa at Mazatlán.

Holding the pineapple with one hand,

machete in the other, two slices, top and bottom.

Followed by a succession of blades

faster than eye can follow.

Fruit delivered

with the urgency and nonchalance of money.

Delicacy by which she hands the rind

holding still-chewable fruit

to the mother and child, hungry behind her.

The country priest in El Salvador, the other:

We need to find the language, he said,

to convince your wives and daughters

to slip their gold rings from their fingers

by themselves and share them

so we all might have enough.

We want you to help them too.

Fingers taken only by necessity.

Jim Bodeen

25 July 2014

CUTTING FRUIT

Cantaloupe, watermelon

Sharp, confident blade

Sweet, receiving flesh

Jim Bodeen

24 July 2014

STONE-CALLED

      ·     

D      Days of making leaves
l             Looking into Bashō's pines

   Shading each other

Jim Bodeen
18 July 2014

      ·     

NEW ROCK IN THE GARDEN

—for Tim

This rock from the Naches River

has been calling for two years.

I run into it wherever I camp.

I sat on it first in water, and later

when the river went down. I turned it, 

edges softened by water and rock

and 50,000 years, maybe a million,

character ridged and deepened

by modesty and its way of sitting up

in water moving around it. Last year,

before winter, I thought

I’d let it go. Why did an old man

need another rock, after a lifetime

of wilderness witness? A kind of patriarch,

this stone, I could see family members,

mostly smaller survivors,

within a half mile of river walks.

That rock’s in the garden now,

an altar capable again,

of standing alone or complementing

others, which might be trees

afterall. Afterfall? When the river

went down in high summer,

I rolled it, carefully around

and between rocks that might scrape

and disfigure part of its skin-shine

adding to its beauty. I found myself

driving to it, inching it along

river bank, ever closer to my Sisyphusian

task which would stop me. And I left it,

my body broken again. I left it

in shrubs, propped but hidden,

14-feet from, and two body lengths

down, from the road. Not a good place

to leave heavenly light blown

from exploding stars. My son

at this time found himself walking home

over mountains where I would pick him up

coming to me on foot hiking the side of the road.

I couldn’t get it, and need your help

I said, after dispensing pleasantries.

More practical than I, with experiences

making transportation available

to those burdened as I am, limited

in external lifting, he knows how hard

those like me can make things.

He makes his life accordingly.

He lives on a mountain

and calls it a mountain.

He calls me his father, knowing

I could see this stone

crossing drainage and mountain range,

its thousand mile slide and tumble,

but couldn’t get it up the road. Knowing

I had no word for what to be done—

leverage foreign as tool or medicine.

I had asked to be useless.

Make me useless, Lord, in all things.

And so I was. My son did lift the stone

from its hidden place to the road,

and onto the truck bed. I can

take it from here, I said, grateful,

asking only, Do you like it? I do,

he said, both of us knowing

star power and invisibility.

Jim Bodeen

16 July 2014

MEASUREMENTS IN TURDS

 PERHAPS THAT'S A PORTRAIT OF ANYONE LOOKING

       --for Marty

reflected in the calipers. Calipers,

you call them? What you used in high school

geometry, or was it science?

          Four rectangular compartments,

carefully constructed. Three with measuring devices

all of the sort used by school children.

     In the odd one, under glass, a stick

laid out in cotton, it appears to be a coffin.

A coffin! A torn piece of paper on the right side.

Is it a zero, or a capital P with a missing seraph?

One can’t tell. The maps on the back side,

beautiful, and easy to see, but only one
hanging the gallery show

or taking art down from a wall would see them.

Crazy Horse never recognized South Dakota.

There is no pattern to the maps
but beauty that I can see.

              I wasn’t looking elsewhere

myself, only to photograph the piece

when I discovered the undersides of the shelves.

Dictionary pages have been put down with an overlay

of gauze rendering definitions unreadable.

This is where the birds are located. On the underside

of two of the shelves. One under a layer of gauze,

one over the gauze.

The beehive in the top quadrant, empty.

Jim Bodeen

8-14 July 2014

AMERICAN RIVER STONE

Maybe when I get home

I’ll ask myself

why I carried this stone

all this way, sore back

and all. I’ll bring

my response from the river

We’ll sit and talk

Jim Bodeen

14 July 2014

BONSAI  SPRUCE BRANCH SETTING

Elegant in quiet wires

Hands obedient to breath

Sun bends needles bright

Jim Bodeen

12 July 2014

·          

SLOWING DOWN THE DAY

Slow this day down. Slow it down.

Like you did yesterday.

Then read, or write (a bit),

towards that slowing

       ·    

Small trees shadow

against a white fence

in July morning sun

the natural practice

I’ll tell you this:

the sound’s off

and the music’s on

I’ll tell you this:

the notebook’s more interesting

than any poem

This is not the notebook.

Work the patina

rubbing the stone.

Jim Bodeen
9 July 2014

PICKING UP MEASUREMENTS IN TURDS 

AT THE ART GALLERY WITH MY GRANDDAUGHTER

     for Marty 

Oh, I say, my friend is writing titles

for his assemblages. Yes, we made him,

the curator says. My grand daughter says,

Look Grandpa, They hung all these cds

from the ceiling and twisted them up.

The curator comes around the corner

and asks, Do you know what these are?

My granddaughter looks at her, unsure

of what to say now. They’re cds,

like you listen to music on, the curator

says. Isn’t that cool? As we look

at art left to be picked up

my granddaughter exclaims, Grandpa,

there’s a beehive in Marty’s art.

I’m going to get the lady. Look,

she says, there’s a beehive in there.

The curator looks until she finds it.

There is. I missed it the first time

around. He put it too high.

He should move it down so people could see.

Jim Bodeen

8 July 2014