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February 2019

All We Like Sheep

All We Like Sheep

(Isaiah 53)

 

Somewhere in a mountainside

Or on more flattering pastureland

(depending on the kind,

and there are many kinds)

There are some sheep

 

And someone to care for them

It’s not a glamorous matter

There’s bad weather and a constant

Concern for good grazing and

Good water

A predator from outside crashing through

It doesn’t matter what size the flock

The worries are the same

 

I want them to live

I want them to grow

I want them to procreate another generation

There is a purpose for them

Some purposes are docile

Some will be drastic

That is the prophecy for sheep

And tending them

 

They are often wayward

They might need something like a stick, not

For punishment but guidance,

Especially to reach and

To enter through

At the end of day

The gate to home

 

C L Couch

 

 

“boys”

Sasin Tipchai

Amphoe Phochai/Thailand

https://pixabay.com/en/users/sasint-3639875/

 

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Breathing in the Morning

Breathing in the Morning

 

It’s the kind of cold that

Gets into your bones

If you’re a pirate

On a creaking ship

In a northern sea

Or simply go outside

(hell, look outside)

On a gray day like today

 

C L Couch

 

 

By Claude Monet – Digital photo by User:Postdlf, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11872788

Waterloo Bridge, Gray Day

 

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Marching Home

Marching Home

 

I’m in the South now

For a time,

Which is fine

I’m from here

I like it fine

It’s coastal Carolina’s version

Of the winter

The thicker blood in me has a chance

To thin gradually

While I’m here (fifties and sixties)

 

I just heard a smart person from Mississippi say

That Mississippi is known for

Writers and racism

I suppose that’s sad but true

Except for the writers part

I’m here for chores

House care, care for the dog

Old with bright eyes

Maybe we’d take a good picture

Near each other

 

Racism is a special kind of hate

The lack of seeing people for the people

It’s not forest for trees

It’s willing blindness

Not to look at bark or touch it

Smell the air that carries life

Hear the joy of birdsong

 

Taking paint away from canvas

Flame away from fire

Food from off the stove

Prejudice owns nothing

But tries a tyranny on everything

Until its own atoms fail

For lack of cohesion

And entropy claims all

For lack of reinforcement

No new energy, at last

 

Can we wait for an empty fire to burn off?

It’s not Centralia (up north)

It’s vapid, mean,

And tries to tear apart what is

Without substance (unlike the fire

that rages underground, which has it)

The world, notwithstanding

So much bigger

Owning all shapes and sizes

Colors to coordinate or glare against

And isn’t that just wonderful?

 

Join the world

Take the cosmos

You can ride the whirlwind as a miracle

And wake up to the brilliance on another side

 

So far, so good, my hours in the South

I hope you’ll join me

 

C L Couch

 

 

By Zp, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1897898

 

Updates from https://www.offthebeatenshelf.com/blog/

Off the Beaten Shelf Book Blog – Off the Beaten Shelf

In the 02/16/2019 edition:

 

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Found Art

Found Art

 

My sister’s shop

Is cool, if you like old things

I do

Actually, she’s moved it home

Closed up her vendor site

And now is selling though an auction

Place up the road

It’s working well

 

The shelves with all the items on

Them are now

In the guest room

I’m surrounded

 

By a bunny mold with eyes that have

No pupils (they would be added in the icing

once the cake is made), yet it somehow stares at me

There are cordial glasses

Old-style mason jars

Filled with marbles

Or shells found on beaches long ago

Nancy Drews

And cookbooks

Cameras that take film and mild-blue flash bulbs

She tells me they all function, still

 

But what I see everywhere is

Anthropomorphizing

Like the rabbit without eyes who looks at me

Pig, mole, gnomes, more pigs

(she likes pigs)

Dogs, Santa Claus

Unliving metal, porcelain, and glass

All made into living things

Representation

I have lots of company in this room

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Mario Calvo on Unsplash

 

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Want Adds

Want Adds

 

“we are seeking talented, enthusiastic individuals who are ambitious and hungry to grow”

 

Why can’t anyone

Be seeking laid-back

People who like to write

Poetry and to live

Like hobbits?

 

It gets worse

The ones on board are dressed in black

Or maybe deep, deep gray

They have many, smiling tiny teeth, maybe in many

Rows like sharks

They’d have slow-moving fish like

Me for lunch

 

Wanted—someone who likes art

And history

Someone who reads novels for lunch

Someone who eschews the necktie

The power whatever-else to wear

(female or male)

But who is loyalty

By default created

Who loves patterns and textures that

Go so far down and up so high

 

Who dreams

Who wants others to dream

The kind of dream that makes us real

If you have a job

Like that, please post it

Or maybe forget that and dial or

Wire me directly

(sorry, text or click

 

but) If you light a bonfire on a hill, that

Might do

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

 

1

Pooh and Paddington Meet at Victoria Station

Pooh and Paddington Meet at Victoria Station

 

I thought this was a place as good as any

We could have picked, ah, you know, Paddington

You have a station named for you?

No, you see, it’s where I was found

Oh, yes, I was once found—then I got lost again

Oh, I’m sorry

Yes, well, I was on my way to Paddington to meet a friend

To Paddington?

Or was it on the way to Friend to meet a Paddington?

Yes, well, shall we have tea?

Would you like to share some tea and honey?

Oh, yes, very much

Good, I’ll take the honey, thank you

 

C L Couch

 

 

Two Bears drinking fountain, Kensington Gardens

By http://www.cgpgrey.com, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37262732

 

0

Myriad

Myriad

 

(watching it on TV)

“sorry, kid”

Wilson College to a Black woman wanting to attend and qualified, until the interview

“dream deferred”

going into Woolworth’s

I liked Woolworth’s

singing while being arrested

Rich’s Department Store

“it wasn’t about the food anyhow”

Morris Brown College

“I can be smart, I can have curly hair, I can be whatever I want to be”

student at Spellman

it’s so exciting to hear young Black people, excited

FAMU

#HBCURising

 

(plot)

I don’t want to do anything to

You know, intrude

But I’m so thrilled

Because I’m a stupid person, I guess

Untrained in the ways of prejudice

If there’s a better choice, it’s so easy to make

It goes something like

Of course, of course, of course

 

I never learned to hate someone whose

Skin color was not my own

I know my own, it’s dull

I find other skin colors so interesting

It’s marvelous—I can’t do that!

I suppose some will call me traitor

Probably do

I suppose I do not care

Except for sadness that the myriad

Cannot be loved

Have I been passed over so that

A Black woman could be preferred

Probably

Yes

I understand

I mean, I want work, too

And I know I didn’t start it

But really

What does it take for anyone to get a job

It should be the work

But I find too many places with those who

Do not care in the wrong way

 

(benediction)

Get them up, then

Those who need the rising

Rise over me

That’s all right

Don’t worry, anything I might feel by way of

Patronizing is compensated by the pain

Of loss

But it’s not only my own

It’s yours

And I’m sorry

For a change, let’s all take the chance

To bleed

 

C L Couch

 

 

Tell Them We Are Rising | History & Impact of Historically Black … – PBS

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/tell-them-we-are-rising/ Tell Them We Are Rising explores pivotal role historically black colleges & universities (HBCUs) have played over 150 years in American history and identity.

Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story of Black Colleges and … – IMDb

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6333094/ A haven for Black intellectuals, artists and revolutionaries-and path of promise toward the American dream-Black colleges and universities have educated the …

 

A black man goes into the “colored” entrance of the Crescent Movie Theatre in Belzoni, Mississippi, 1939.

Marion Post Wolcott – This image is available from the United States Library of Congress‘s Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID ppmsca.12888.

Public Domain

 

0

Heading Home Again

Heading Home Again

 

I cannot write as Mary Oliver has written

About snow geese and the song of dawn

Over a living pond far away,

Because she’s far away from me

Now more than ever, more than forever

 

She commanded nature by

Never giving orders

She sensed through more than senses

All she met and came to understand

I think we can rely on her, through

Words and more she left us

 

I wish like wishing on a star

That I could have sat with her just once

Maybe we would not have been good company

My inclination would have been

To do little more than listen

And maybe she would not have left it that way

But like nature as she cast it

Only settled for full participation

 

In my place under town lights

I cannot see the stars

But on the inside I can travel like Thoreau

And other theories

And read her words to let them sink

Like stones returning home from the rim they

Had been cast upon, long ago

 

We can all love the world better

Through our pastored mischief-making

There is need for redemption

But we need to look more closely, all the while

To remember all the places where love sits

Or rises now and then to play

 

All the people who will take us home

Or simply push on gliders made by wind

As we arrive

 

C L Couch

 

 

Oliver lived in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and Hobe Sound, Florida, until her death in early 2019 [which is now]. She was 83.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/mary-oliver

 

Wild Geese

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/wild-geese

Mary Oliver

 

(image)

John Fowler [destined, if not predetestined] from Placitas, NM, USA – Snow Geese, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24663639

Incoming snow geese fill the dawn sky at Bosque del Apache.

 

0

Sunday Morning after Sleeping for a Change

Sunday Morning after Sleeping for a Change

 

I’m not sure what to say today

It’s a sunny day outside

Clear and cold with an edge

Like runners on ice skates

 

The sun is winter-tilting, so

I can see enough

Not all the dust motes, thank you

But like the movie,

Everything Is Illuminated, all the same

 

I could make a point

But the day is its own

There’s meaning in the pattern of

The leaves against the window panes,

 

Enough philosophy for two

Whoever might join me

Who’s already here

No prosperity but the pleasure of one’s company

 

C L Couch

 

 

Observing the Sabbath-closing havdalah ritual in 14th-century Spain.

Unknown – Detail from a miniature in the Barcelona Haggadah, British Library Add MS 14761, fol. 26.

(Public Domain)

 

Everything Is Illuminated, a film from 2005, directed by Liev Shreiber, starring Elijah Wood

 

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