#36 This is my prayer
to thee
Daily Jubilee
Waking long view Sunday joy
Compressed 50 years
Each breath ready for what comes
Falling in and out of dreams
Jim Bodeen
22 November 2018
Ancestors Eat First / Dia de los Muertos
Ancestors Eat First: A Meal with Dad
Following in the tradition of Latin America celebration of Dia de los Muertos, Kirsten Schowalter and Jim Bodeen honor Dr. David Schowalter and his family, with a reading and presentation of Kirsten Schowalter's memoir In My Own Skin at the cemetery in Rochester, Minnesota, where Dr. Schowalter practiced at the Mayo Clinic.
AFTER-ALL, THE GREAT SUSTENANCE,
A FEAST FOR OUR FATHERS
for Kirsten
Schowalter
Crops are in as we gather
with ancestors, who may
confuse our offerings
with exploding cannons
no one has names for.
Trusting we'll be recognized
for our tiny poppers,
we go on with the meal.
Sitting before the stone
carved from Mnemonosyne,
Greek Goddess AKA Mom,
her story in time's narrative,
eating after the ancestors,
left-over sushi, pea soup,
and crumbs from that muffin!
Enough--What
appetites!--
words surfacing
through your skin
coming through the body,
then me taking a turn--
interrupted then--sudden
appearances of your story--
Rocks at Lake Itasca
Bobber. What your Dad says
next, clearest word of the day:
Carbon, nitrogen, oxygen.
Something people can use.
Whoa! What life is.
Jim Bodeen
30 October 2018
Storypath/Cuentocamino: : Gitanjali, the Song Offerings Part I
Storypath/Cuentocamino: : Gitanjali, the Song Offerings Part I: Gitanjali , Song Offerings, Rabindranath Tagore Gift copy from the scientist Dr. Gobinda Sarkar, October 25, 2018, Rochest...
Cannonball! Cannonball!
CANNONBALL ADDERLEY FRIDAY AFTERNOON
His sax says things are getting better.
He reaches for more. Moving
into the song a piano helps it go.
Now he says 75 things
are getting better. If this is so,
Cannonball, why have I turned
to the 19th Century? Not to Whitman,
not Twain, all moves I've made
in the past. I'm with Fred Douglass
and John Brown. Douglass
has re-translated Isaiah.
Brown has just left North Elba
following a utopian plan.
Timbukto. We're a long way
from the river Tuckahoe
catching elbows
from contented Christians.
Toni Morrison's letter
arrives in the mail,
Nobel Prize winner
working for Morris Dees
and Southern Poverty Law Center.
White racism, KKK
moving into mainstream comfort.
Riding rails, unsettled in time.
Dred Scott, man! Dred Scott!
Fugitive Slave Law on second rail.
Cannonball, Cannonball.
Speak to me of the 75 things!
Jim Bodeen
18 November 2018
What's the snow report?
NEWS
This morning I read an obituary
of a woman who skied off Mt. Adams,
Pahtoo, Old One Standing There,
she was Queen of the Rodeo,
Stanford, and a language teacher
where I worked thirty years.
She taught Spanish and English,
skied until she was 85. Last night
In bed I reached for a book of poems
by Jim Harrison, Dead Man's Float,
poems about getting old that give you
tooth ache drinking a Coke.
I get mad at myself and can't sleep.
I see where I wrote the day I got the book.
This morning while Karen
reads the paper drinking coffee,
I'm reading his poems.
Harrison's all these different ages.
He's 74 and can't believe it.
He's 7 wondering who he was.
His poems on the bedstead gathering dust,
poems full of Lorca and Machado.
It pisses me off. Forgetting like this.
I paid a taxi in Granada
to take me where they murdered Lorca.
When I find Americans who don't know
his essay on Duende I buy it for them,
that sweet New Directions copy
with poems and Cante Jondo.
What have I done for Harrison?
That woman who skied
off Pahtoo, she climbed Mt. Rainier twice.
She's out of my league. I'm 73,
writing in a notebook.
Her accomplishments make me think
of my failures. She marched with MLK.
I never knew her, never heard her name.
Dark sounds, Lorca, Dark. Dark.
Dark sounds, Lorca, Dark. Dark.
Jim Bodeen
16 November 2018
Spanish Traditions
NOTEBOOK FRAGMENT
Quince jelly on pancakes
Membrillo with Manchego Cheese
Winter picnic from kitchen
Douglass not only used the Hebrew prophets; he joined them.
--David W.
Blight
OK, Karen says,
I'm reading my own book.
Jim Bodeen
15 November 2018
"No Other Desire"
Could we sing again!
Dr. Gobinda Sarkar sings couplets
from Gitanjali of Rabindranath Tagore
in the coffee shop:
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