In his classes
it would seem
nothing was happening
then all at once
lightning would flash
and you would think
so that's how
the minds works
that's what this word
is trying hard to tell us
then he'd smile
and seem amused
like a magician
showing a child a trick

He was such a gentleman
with him you never
felt talked down to
when I told him
I was leaving after all those years
he shared with me his own
desire to leave
while a young man
but it was during the Depression
and by then
he had a wife and child
and so he chose
to stick it out
it was a kindness
that response
when I was feeling
that I was letting
all my teachers down
dashing my father's
hopes for his oldest son

Of Boodberg's history
I knew but little
seems his family
had fled the Bolsheviks
his parents coming
from aristocratic stock
were at risk
they made their way
to San Francisco
back in nineteen-twenty
when he was seventeen
and already
something of a language prodigy

One story from his undergraduate days
asked on an application
to name race and religion
he'd written "mixed"
and "animism"
this would not do
the dean had called him in
for explanation
and he'd said that having taken
first-year anthropology he knew
there's no such thing
as a pure race
and that when the faith
of ones forefathers no longer serves
what's left is animism
one can only think
he left the dean non-plussed!

One time
knowing I was drawn
to buddhist practice
he wrote out for me
this little tribute
to the Middle Way

For, unto and within
the billion bions
the blessed Buddha's bell
booms, bings, bongs
billows and becalms

Why bings?
because, he chuckled,
the Buddha also has
a sense of humor
as did this genial
scholar, multi-linguist
my guide to classical Chinese
and to the secret
life of words
during those years of war
in Vietnam and strife at home
so it's his half-quizzical
half-laughing smile
that comes to mind
each time I think of him
and take a moment to reflect
on just how blessed
my life has been
for knowing such a man