*

Here, in here,

The museum of failure

Jim Bodeen

14 July 2018

Ojas de Nada

*

In order to protect one

it was necessary

to exile the other

The way to move

into the imagination

the only one I had

the other

in

empty pages

Jim Bodeen

19 July 2018

Kiss of the Beloved

KAREN'S KISS

Returning to her

Who brought our son to this life

What I had to do

Jim Bodeen

10 July 2018

It's Arrowsmith's Montale, too

WILLIAM ARROWSMITH'S NOTES SECTION

IN HIS TRANSLATIONS OF EUGENIO MONTALE'S POEMS

READ LIKE ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF SPRING

TAKING ME DEEPER INTO THE GARDEN OF VOICES

The voice, in short, in which poetry, fusing with life, becomes incarnate spirit, language ablaze, with something like divinity.  "Syria" (1951-52), Notes, p. 732. William Arrowsmith, The Collected Poems of Eugenio Montale 1925-1977.

Beach reading pitiless holiday,

grandchildren surround me,

digging sand dollars inflecting

multiplying treasures of rainbow, 

citing ancients on poetry

as a ladder to God, Montale

excuses himself. Daily decency

after reading names

in mid-day sun

memorial at Sant' Anna.

Desert flowers, lost shoe horns,

every written line evoking

road, underlined, referenced.

All I want in Little Testament,

no longer able to memorize.

Return to time among children

tenderness and cruelty

no love for God or opinions,

they make nature theirs

without worshipping.

Can I go back?

Dig my toes into sand.

Walk the beach.

Sandals and rain jacket.

Hooded for wind,

with my phone for photos,

finding sun reflecting foam

in tide pools. Clouds in sky,

clouds in sand. Close-up, abstracted

for patterns. The road ahead

is not a way. So beautiful.

Like jazz. Grasses with shadows

drawn towards early sun,

one burnt log banking sand

in earlier wind, stammering

like that log, sastrugi sand,

rousing language. Happy

kids selling washing machines.

A way out of memory,

mind. Where I find,

Heat, Lightning. Where

the poet laureate found it.

Did it make them brothers?

Children face the ocean

with two shovels, animated

themselves by sea, surf

pounding 12-year old hearts.
Me in sinking lawn chair

rocking, wool gloves

around my fingers writing

in a notebook. I have also

spent my life facing

memorials luchando\

mi fé, finding confidence

in the other, in others,

my other, now in Arrowsmith's

Montale: dissolved

into other, at the point

just before saying yes--

elsewhere, too, partly

how we apprehend

what children inhabit,

ineffably, momentarily, again.

Jim Bodeen

3-5 April 2018

HEAT! HEAT!

COPPER BASIN

Weathered logs, snow fields,

great water for propagation

of mosquitoes, and fog! Still

able to this, after hiking

through burnt forest,

Wolverine Fire, 

in its surroundingness,

knowing, too, how fires

move fast, uphill,

preheating fuel,

accelerating.

These trees.

Jim Bodeen

16 July 2018

AND AFTER THAT.

what joyness noodles its way in, like song-souled, no, no, no, song-sold, oh no, no, that won't work, won't do, won't become, never, never, never, now--now, now, no. Stop. On the first one, where you'd be proud if your dog behaved, crossing that lined-up in the cross-hatched place of wonder-color, it can't be done, raw like that. Jim Bodeen

TREATISE FOR MICHAEL

TREATISE FOR MICHAEL DALEY

That learned practice

When writing didn't matter

The morning Godsend.

Jim Bodeen

7 July 2018

The Ultimate Brief

WHAT WOULD I GIVE

            for Zev

First possessions

The 1953 Mickey Mantle card,

what stays, remains what

can't be gotten rid

of, no matter, how boxed, scis-

sored, treasure-traded

Jim Bodeen

5 July 2018