#24 From the traveller
Boxed harvest butter
Perfumed flesh grown for blossoms
Aphrodite's quince
12 November 2018
#25 Give thy-self to
sleep
November's kitchen
Lumpy quince odd crossed jelly
Autumn aroma
13 November 2018
Live inside your word
#20 My basket empty
Newspaper flutter
With beloved at my side
She clears her throat
#21 A thrill passing
through
Left-handed chopsticks
All my transgressions leave trail
Side light sun-breath cold
*
Frederick Douglass
Now he would be a writer
By my own table
Jim Bodeen
10 November 2018
GITANJALI, Song Offerings
SONG OFFERING FROM THE BUTTERSCOTCH CHAIR
I have no desire at all
except to sit at your feet
When you sang into my telephone, Gobinda,
from the corner of the bookstore, this couplet
from Tagore's great hymn, I was certain
you had told my life story with the beloved
with the signature of science and boatloads
of empirical evidence. Rabindranath Tagore's
Gitanjali from
your hands to mine. Here
anniversary day, ours, Me,
with the beloved in the body. 50 years.
I remember you telling Kirsten,
I attended my first American wedding
when your parents were married.
This, our situation here.
Married
and blessed in that other year,
of love and violence,
1968.
Gracious Scientist, least religious man
in the Mayo Clinic, but among the holy ones.
After your father leaves your
mother
and you start the school of hope.
What else?
Splitting assignments
you take one half, she takes the other half.
Bengali, science and math. My Mom. Wow.
Binapani Sarkar, Goddess of learning.
I am the least religious man in the world--
with a passion and determination.
Beliefs can do a lot of things.
Gobinda means God you say.
We talk about the Bodhi Tree
and the dog in pain. Why we suffer.
Empty stomachs and big laughs.
I'll buy the food and you keep talking.
I don't have any religion.
I have a pure free mind.
I am a free man.
You give up the big laugh.
Calcutta your birth place.
India, Bengal, and Bangladesh.
Tussles between Hinduism and Buddhism.
I am Hindu.
British and Indian Independence.
Your long road through Canada
to science and laughter through hope.
You pass your gift to the Bengali people
to me through the depth of your laughter
and books. I carry your copy of
Tagore's Gitanjali from bedroom
to the garden, surrounded by song.
Offerings to the Beloved. What
I try for each day, one song at daybreak.
Read and discover. Tighten one line
into five syllables of music
written into my notebook. Carried
into the day with the task
of music and listening. To harvest
17 syllables, one haiku of praise.
Three lines of obedience. In prayer
for the one who loved me
before I could see or sing.
Before I was present to love.
Gobinda Sarkar. Doctor. Scientist.
Least religious man as you claim.
Gift of the Mayo Clinic.
From Calcutta to Rochester.
Man who opens the famous clinic
with laughter and song.
Most present to the Beloved
and long marriage on this Yakama day
where we give offering in song.
Love from Jim
3 November 2018
#1 So Many Distances
Another way home
Never quite arriving
Wind gone into the Dakotas
Jim Bodeen
25 October 2018
#3 Sky to Sky Music
Your voice comes ringing
Two hands singing four hand bells
Bells in your hands delight2 November 2018
A Blessing from High Forest Rest Stop
Annnie Wright, Janes Wright's 'A Blessing' came to the Rest Stop outside Rochester, and how Kirsten Schowalter got there. A beginning narrative.
LETTER TO ANNIE WRIGHT FROM YAKIMA
AFTER A LIBRARY CONVERSATION IN MARTINS FERRY
WHILE REMEMBERING A SNOW STORM IN MINNEAPOLIS
AND FINALLY, WONDER OF WONDERS,
FINDING A REST STOP JUST OFF THE HIGHWAY IN ROCHESTER
Dear Annie, By now you've most likely heard from Kirsten
in her own skin and seen pictures too. I'll try and sound
like myself
and not confuse you with word costumes at Halloween.
Do I sound like him? Or do I sound like the other guy.
Both men quick with tears, as am I. Thank God
for them, Dick and Jim both. At the end of the day,
beginning this sentence, I remember throwing
jackknives in Jerry Grouer's front yard
with neighborhood boys trying to stick
the knife in the grass and not into someone's
outstretched toes. Manufacturing spots of time
before we knew Wordsworth--but we knew
more than dandelions even then, all those
daffodils in prairie gardens of our aunts.
Your generosity, Anne Wright, lifts Kirsten's
story into another of the sacred circles,
hyphenating and spirit-filling them with blessings.
Feel this in Kirsten's shout! The snowstorm
cancelling in her earlier trip home, makes you
one of her guides, showing her how poets
reclaim what has been lost in love's pursuit.
Isn't this what you gave Jonathan Blunk
authorizing the biography. He says
your marriage brings more sunlight
into the poems and sobriety.
No clear glimpse of the poet without Annie.
I felt the two of you like that in Martin's Ferry.
Empathy of the poet. Negative capability of Keats.
How you hang on to your being.
How you share it with Kirsten. With me.
The woman in front of my eyes suspects
I'm only trying for what's clever, something
someone might remember, and most of the time
she's right. When she's not, she's closer
than I am now. She's a bit like you.
Tomorrow I trade in the baseball cap
for the fish bone wool knit from Yoruk Nation
I picked up a few years ago looking for stones
on the Klamath River. Trick or treaters
come tonight and we have Milky Ways
to keep kids safe walking streets.
The doorbell rings. How does someone
as poor as me respond to ponies?
Jim Bodeen
5 November 2018
Anne Wright's presentation at James Wright Festival, April, 2018, Martins Ferry, Ohio:
Riffing Tagore
#6 Last day end before
Butter and honey
On toasted French Bread, green tea
Filling out ballots
Jim Bodeen
1 November 2018
El Día del Perdón
*
I don't quite know
what this is, this time
together, this
time
with all
I had a flicker
of it, but
I was way
way ahead
of any
knowing
Jim Bodeen
21 October 2018
KIDS FOLLOWING THE CAIRNS
STAMPS IN THE MAIL
for M.D.
Bicycling circles of houses
winding in eights
as Karen comes home
con crema de pollo
lunch she didn't eat
but I do with green tea
and honey, she's still
full of her cold sneezing
me listening to Coltrane
peddling outside of time
Trane driving and turning
a cop on the block
pulls me over, Hey Jim!
It's Mike--
thanks for the letter
and stamps I sent
him a block of four
First Responders
Forever a couple of years
ago he stopped kids
from knocking over
my stone cairns
coming into our place
Finally I get to thank him
I get to say your name
all the time Mike
People ask
Don't kids
knock down those stones
Not since Mike
brought them
to my door
Jim Bodeen
30-31 October 2018
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