ANOTHER AND ANOTHER READING
OF MARY JO SALTER’S
POEM BLUE BABY
IN THE NEW YORKER,
ANOTHER AND ANOTHER READING
--Darrell Sagness
1944-1955
--David Schweizer
1950-2024
I.
Yes, yes, no, no.
But this can’t be.
But the years almost
right. Dee Dee
and I--born in the
same
North Dakota
town--he
lived and then he
didn’t, and now,
well, here he is
with David Schweizer.
I’m sitting in the
pew, sixth row,
early Sunday, Mary
Jo Salter, listening
to Bell Choir
practice, my wife Karen,
ringing, with Ruth
Ann’s cello, carrying
your Blue Baby,
pages torn
out of New Yorker,
December 8, 2025--
Yakima, Washington,
decades
from Bowbells, North
Dakota, still
Lutheran, dry land
farm country,
NW corner, top soil
covering
oil distilled from
shallow seas.
I don’t know where
you are this morning,
Mary Jo Salter, but
strangely, you are
in the pew, present,
your poem a part of me.
II.
Darrell, we called
him Dee Dee,
Sagness lived on the
farm outside of town
and I was a town
boy, and my father
managed the Great
Northern Grain
elevator, where his
parents brought
their wheat. We were
playmates,
and Darrell was a
Blue Baby
and that’s how we
knew him
playing marbles in
front of school,
choosing sides for
baseball out back.
Swinging wildly,
choosing Darrell first,
choosing Darrell
last, never
able to get it
right, Blue Baby.
Something of his
blueness in our selves.
III.
Blue Baby. Hole in
the heart.
For the first time,
Dee Dee
would run with the
rest of us,
no longer blue, and
fast. He would
hit, and we wouldn’t
wonder
if he’d be chosen.
And the operation
worked. Doctors in
Minneapolis
opened his heart,
stopped up the hole
where blood spilled
into his face
and arms and legs.
He came back
to us, and none of
us were blue.
His mom called my
mother,
Could Jimmy spend a
day
on the farm with
Darrell,
and the boys would
have
the whole day to
play.
IV.
And then he died.
Just like that.
His heart wore out,
they said.
After all the work
it had to do
while he lived. This
isn’t
the first time I’ve
talked about
Darrell, Mary Jo.
Your poem is salve.
Dee Dee and I sang
in the Junior Choir.
We lived across from
the church
rent free in the
house owned
by the Great
Northern Railroad.
Choir boys would be
pall bearers
with his body. At
practice,
laughter broke out
from my body
stopping the hymn.
Guffaws
bursting. I couldn’t
stop
giggling. Dee Dee’s
heart stopped, and I
couldn’t
stop laughing. I was
ashamed.
We wore white robes
and God gave me
buckets of tears,
relieving
my terror. Like I’d
been saved.
That day at his farm
we sat
on the steel seat of
the old tractor
and ate our
sandwiches and laughed.
V.
There are tears in
your poem, too,
Mary Jo. Thank you
for Caleb’s
walking to the
pulpit. Thank you
for the glimpses of
Schweizer’s childhood
reading long books
in bed,
for the saving
qualities of costumes.
There would be an
acting director
in my life, too,
showing me how
to enter a room when
I came back
from Vietnam. I
would learn how
to wear a hat, how
to dress
North Dakota as
Louis Seize
without causing a
fuss.
For your Blue Baby
shows
how magnificent a
heart might be,
how manly and
flamboyant,
how the beating
heart changes
the music and how
bells ring.
Jim Bodeen
10 December 2025
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