In and Out of Notebooks

ALL MORNING

in and out of notebooks

the day unfolding in paper

leaves fallen ones bound

in and out in and out

with no purpose

and then with purpose equally

at odds a kind of windlessness

no purpose being

where words found

bring with them something

no news can carry

but what we come for

I know this has nothing

but everything but by God

it's hard it is and it isn't

courage it's outside

of the dreaming known

to go there

never mind to get there

Jim Bodeen

5 January 2017

I settle on a letter

a foundation

a kind of platform

the kind of thing

one does leaving

the office to those

left behind oh yes

a letter to a writer

of columns relatively

famous with a father

who asked for no quarter

other than learn a language

and a brother on a boat

this woman speaks to me

and I want to say thanks

with all that can be mustered

she lives in the city of politicians

and willfulness and this is all

what I give myself to

writing her trying for nothing

more giving it my all

I tell her what

I found there over time

Jim Bodeen

5 January 2017

READING W.S. MERWIN'S GARDEN TIME

WITH GRANDMA AND GRANDKIDS

ON THE WAY TO SCHOOL

Temperature in the car

reads -6 degrees outside

but it's tropical inside

surrounded by generations

ancestors we lost track of

addressing memory

music entering the right ear

where I'm placed in the trees

of being, the boy who is me

years and decades ago

walking the gravel road

just outside of city limits

in the North Dakota town

BB gun in hand

just past Shit Creek

and that yellow Meadowlark

on the fence post singing

This morning Karen driving

sun coming up on snow-covered

hills the purple sky behind us

me with the Merwin poems

in the passenger seat

accompanying all this

I read one line aloud

turning to the children

but happiness has a shape made of air

Karen saying, Explain that one,

wondrous invitation,

it was never owned by anyone

it comes when it will in its own time

Me trying to hang on to just this

for now it doesn't matter

without in fact getting it

or not surrounded as I am

Jim Bodeen

6 January 2017

Wang Wei As A Form of Foreshadowing

WITH MORE WAYS

God isn't through with me yet

we say in Recovery.

My friends send poems.

My defense shield has failed.

19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei,

indeed, Eliot Weinberger.

I've just been presented

with 18 ways by God to laugh.

Don't you dare, I say,

as he brings mother

into the room

sitting her before me.

Jim Bodeen

16 November 2016

AFTERNOON IN THE GOBI-RATTLER ROOM

22 DAYS AFTER THE ELECTION

So many possibilities for distraction

following everyone I can.

Jim Bodeen

30 November 2016

Winter Shelter Confrontation

AT THE SHELTER

I ASK THE NATIVE MAN

IF I CAN HELP HIM

PUT DOWN HIS MATTRESS

No, I ain't sleeping

next to no white man

They snore and fart

He waves away the room,

Ah, I'm only kidding

Jim Bodeen

2 January 2017

Sunshine After Solstice

SO MUCH SNOW AND LOST GLOVES

Not by the pair, but singles.

Singles and socks, too much to keep straight.

But we had it all, grandchildren weightless

on skis in powder so light

the hold on gravity is gone.

The way out mirrors mountain

descent. Windshield fogged

like our goggles, all of us

giggling, windshield iced

forcing wipers to close hard

in a smaller arc. The cave

is here, warmed by insulation

from frozen water, bounty

of blankets wrapping our

falling selves in dream field.

Jim Bodeen

2 January 2016 

SUNSHINE AFTER SOLSTICE

            --for Gretchen, Megan, Suzy, Kirsten

He points his ski pole down the mountain.

That's the way down, but this is the fall line.

Two different paths. Water finds

the fall line. So do your skis.

Release the edges and let them find it;

when they do, let your body follow,

bend into your knees, settle in,

complete your turn. That's the dance,

over and over. A simple

and effortless down up down.

On this snow there is only this snow

and this sky. This run you're riding,

Northern Sky, turns us

liminally, eliminating time.

Jim Bodeen

29 December 2016

LIVES OF THE POETS

LIVES OF THE POETS

Tom, folding his flag over his mattress,

coming into winter shelter at the Church,

says he lost his gloves today, Somebody

needed them more than I did,

he says. Opening the night shelter

is the first time I've been out all day,

holed up in my room with my friend's

sermons on the anguished heart--

Atonement--through the eyes

of Kierkegaard. I'm in a lousy mood

all day, to use a word common

to my father, (one that hasn't crossed

my lips for decades), and I hear

his voice and my mother's pain

in the same moment. "...Get men

to judge to get them out of their masks,"

the brave pastor quotes his mentor.

How inventive, my own hidden inwardness

and rascality--how vulnerable--I am

creation in cover-up. Geronimo

has returned to claim his bed

by the door. Each night two men

permitted showers. Who's

going to rub my feet tonight?

is the lone, sweet call from

the corner in the fellowship hall

as the men, exhausted from a day

of surviving, put sheets over plastic

mattresses after spraying them with 409.

I am the most restless traveler. God

of my North Dakota childhood sees

my every thought, the only one who knows.

Jim Bodeen

5 December 2016

BIG SNOW

AT THE POST OFFICE

"I'm the last leaf on the tree."

                        Tom Waits

Looking for the old time post cards,

Marissa, the postal clerk

I've known for years, tells me,

We have what you're looking for

but they're not old fashioned.

Plain, but postmarked, I say,

I want to use the commemoratives.

Laying stamps out before me

I have all but Repeal the Stamp Act.

If you have Repeal the Election,

I'll take all of the sheets in the drawer.

Had I thought that rather than said it

in the hearing of the banal clerk in the next window,

had I thought it in silence,

the white misogynist's poisoned offering

Lock her up,

wouldn't be stamping me days later.

Jim Bodeen

2 Dec 2016

MEDITATION ON THE NAME ALEPPO

AFTER IT BEGINS SHOWING UP IN CHRISTMAS CARDS

There is the Aleppo Boil,

lasting a long time

and leaving a deep scar.

Wiktionary etymology,

from Italian Aleppo,

from French Alep,

from Ottoman Turkish,

halep, from Arabic halab,

of uncertain origin.

Folk etymology,

from Arabic halaba,

gave out milk,

coming from tradition

that Abraham gave milk

to travelers moving through.

Jim Bodeen

20 December 2016

BEFORE THE ROLLER SKATING PARTY IN UNION GAP

Did you see the video of your granddaughter

last night, looking at the stars? my wife asks

as I come in from shoveling snow to rest the back

and warm my cheeks while reading the news story

of county votes Statewide, looking at enrolments

in health care. It seems the poor have voted

themselves out of coverage. The writer for the Times

asks the question, How much are we obligated to care?

He resurrects sarcasm from Mencken:

Common people know what they want

and deserve to get it good and hard.

Shop talking journalists trace it all

to radiating fear and loathing against liberals.

On this day my granddaughter turns nine.

Jim Bodeen

10 December 2016

SATURDAY MORNING, TALKING WITH A NEIGHBOR

Blaze lives around the corner

in the next block, walks his dog, Luna

by my place while I'm out

shoveling snow. Give me a little Luna

light, I say, my glasses already dark

from an hour in snow. About that name,

Blaze, I say, can you say something

about those parents who named you?

I can, he says. Mom and Dad

are in Michigan. Dad was in school

studying philosophers. Blaze Pascal

is who I'm named after. Yes, I nod.

"Men never do evil so cheerfully as when

they do it from religious conviction.

Jim Bodeen

10 December 2016

THE WEEK THAT SNOW COVERED

up November, friends check in

with reading lists and detailed plans

to carry them deeper into the young century.

Flush with new books myself.

Early December, Guadalupe's name day

after the weekend, I can already hear

trombone and tuba marching

through dark streets. Body of Water,

Dead Souls, Montale's Complete, 1925-1977.

Elegance of designed dust covers.

A full year into following an old word:

Banal. Banalities. Poshlost in Russian.

Melville's Clarel, longest American poem,

threads needle towards 2020.

Jim Bodeen

10 December 2016

SHADOWLIGHT IN TALL TREES BEFORE SOLSTICE

Snow came with its beauty, but it came early,

and the cover-up was only partial. Going alone is paradoxical,

as it includes mail, and while mail is no guarantee,

it is packed and cared for as survival gear.

Side light, then. Mid-afternoon, mid-December,

after big snow. Fresh snow.

Real cover this time. Astonishing.

Sunshine hike on skis, in Paradise.

Thighs talking to the eyes, who don't even try to listen.

Jim Bodeen

19 December 2016

A Children's Vest in Memory of Sandy Hook Children

BUT WE WILL REMEMBER, AND WE WILL RESIST

Four years ago on this day my grand-kids

were in kindergarten and first grade.

Four of them, cousins.

Fourth and fifth graders now,

getting ready for middle school.

Skiers. Good ones. They ski the steeps.

My wife and I were in the mountains

with immigrants celebrating Las Posadas

when we heard about the children at Sandy Hook.

Kindergarten. First Grade. We knew what

kindergartners looked like, and first graders.

They were like our grandchildren.

I won't show you photos of them now.

As they are. It would be too cruel.

So much has happened in our country.

We can't keep up with violence

or bullies or elections.

Four years ago my wife made a vest

for the children of Sandy Hook.

She put the names of the children

in the lining. The week she made it

one of our granddaughters was home

from school, sick, staying with us.

That week I made a little movie

of my wife making the vest.

They're in the movie as they were.

Those were some pretty dark days.

You know, America.

It's called The Chief Joseph Children's Vest.

The vest that no longer fits the grandkids.

Jim Bodeen

14 December2016

Vest Maker and Art-to-Wear Artist, Karen Bodeen creates a vest for the children of Sandy Hook Elementary School, while caring for a granddaughter recovering from a virus. Both threads honor children everywhere. Karen witnesses, listens to, and honors the children she sews for, as well as the child at her feet and in her lap.