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Month

May 2022

For the People

(x = space)

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For the People

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We give billions

Might I have a smidgen

Might we all and each

Have a smidgen

Two smidgens, maybe

Our money from our coffers

Save other nations’ people,

Too

It’s mid-month and I’m feeling

Especially impoverished

It’s the thirteenth

On a Friday

And I’m tired of

Anything like

The curse of the day

Or Cain

The penury of Lazarus

Under Dives

I know, L gets to heaven

Where it’s wealthy

Without coin

And through and through

But I’m still here today

And want to be,

Not knowing the other

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I’d like to have

Some easy days

If possible

Summertime

As Gershwin says

As she sings

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C L Couch

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Photo by David Sutton on Unsplash

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Tired Love

(x = space)

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Tired Love

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Everything should stop

You’re tired

Haven’t quite hit the wall

But everything’s okay enough

And you’re tired

Time to snap

Like upper and lower crocodile teeth

But don’t

x

Give everyone a break

Sorry if the world does not agree

But you have to

Have a drink

Water’s good

Be still

x

From within, get to know

The bones and muscles

The rest of you

And rest

Some minutes of this will help

If you can retire for the day

Like a vacation

You can feel that good

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Maybe not less serious

All issues remaining,

After all

But better in a somber way

That matters

Then go back to it

To her and him

And them

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C L Couch

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Photo by Simon Watkinson on Unsplash

A crocodile jumping from a river in Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia.

Darwin NT, Australia

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Three-Syllables Agape or Two-Syllables Agape

(x = space)

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Three-Syllables Agape or Two-Syllables Agape

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Sigh

And what does love way

After all the vituperation

All the blame-casting

All the metaphoric bile

In the hate we bear?

x

I don’t know

That we should care for ourselves

And each other

That if we loved God first

Everything else would work

Respecting those who don’t believe

There are good atheists

And good agnostics

Who treat believers

As a crazed minority

And to look at the evidence

Have a case

x

But it’s sin, I guess

From within and without

Our choices, the choices of others

Choose to love

Choose to hate

And who cannot be struck

Without saying OW

That’s natural

It’s impulsive

And deserved

Though it’s not the end

It does not have to rush

To blame and retribution

x

Take a moment

Choose something like a star

Stay inspired through the hurt,

Which is not masochism

But allowing thought

And heart to keep a hold

From everything turned over

Into the nether realms

Of rusting feeling

Gnawing hate

x

Give peace a chance

Can’t we all get along?

It must be so much better

Than saws

And satire

The darkness follows light

Then there’s more light

Illumination

We are better than our hurts

Better than vile agenda

We could make agenda brilliant

And ambition

And profit

And plans

And when there’s a crash

Of accident

Or wills

We could act as EMTs

And then allow a moment

To reconnoiter

And to reckon

How to heal a rending world

Bring it back

To one whole thing

x

Yes, I mean the war

And wars everywhere

But I also mean the virus

We forget

Unless we’re sick

Or around

Those who are sick

And inflation

And corruption

We can do better

To keep the world from burning

We must

x

I should end on a note of love

A song of peace

Measured by hope

But there are questions

To be answered, first

That we must put to each other

Questions

And answers

Reactions and worked-out actions

A process for our accountable part

Of the universe

Yes, that much

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C L Couch

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“Choose Something like a Star“

Robert Frost

. . .

So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.

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Photo by Aldebaran S on Unsplash

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Idea

(x = space)

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Idea

x

Here’s an idea:

Leave Ukraine live

Leave Russia live with remorse

While rebuilding

Its neighbor

x

We know

There is no recourse

For life lost

Beyond revenge,

And there’s no point in that

Since taken to extremes,

Well,

Our planet burns

x

But Russia can retreat

Tying up its turrets

Into shoelace- or ribbon-chapes

Send rubles back

With many, many helpers

My guess is

There would be volunteers

Among the soldiers

And the uninvolved

Back home

x

Let this be a pattern, then

Let the Rohingya live

And South Sudan

And blacks and whites

In the USA

And elsewhere

And the other colors, too

Let there be colors

Let there be textures

Let there be sounds

And smells and

Things to taste

The best of these

Makes an amazing world

x

Let there be self-competition

Dreaming

Without nightmares

x

In the living

Let us be fed and watered,

Educated and secure

So that when heaven comes

We meet each other

Easy, unexpected kindred

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C L Couch

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Photo by Tobias Schlienger on Unsplash

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Conjuration

(x = space)

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Conjuration

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By the pricking of my thumbs,

Something wicked this way comes

x

Was it

A curse

Or a conjuring?

Did she invoke

The wicked thing

Of was she

Foretelling

Simply telling

Sisters

And us all

What would happen

Next?

Are they

Prophets,

Soothsayers

Commenters

Like the chorus?

Or worse,

Are they

Seed-planters

Giving Macbeth ideas

That were unformed,

Half-formed,

Fully-formed

Ideas as

Ambitions?

Who made the heroes

And the foils

In context

Of the story?

Who is our

Storymaker,

Storyteller?

Glamis, Cawdor

King

x

We who can

Who are allowed

To rise in thought

Have plans

From our ambitions;

Pray we do not meet

The made-up

Or implanted

Witches in the mind

But choose to walk

In other parts,

Another way

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C L Couch

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Macbeth Act 4, Scene 1

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Photo by Marc Schaefer on Unsplash

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4

Await

(x = space)

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Await

x

It is a gloomy day

God appears in clouds

And in fire

These were pillars

If the sky had been painted

With clouds

As it is today

Then how could direction

Have been offered?

But they were pillars

They showed the way

For the Israelites

Perhaps the pillars

Moved as

Progress was made

Perhaps they stood still

As if to say,

I’m waiting for you

Your jealous God is waiting for you

With expectation

With transcendence

And with love

x

It you had not sinned

We would be together sooner

But knowing who are you

And loving you, all the same

I am waiting for you

Come to me

Come to my mountain

Come to my clouds

And fire

Come to my blue

Come to my laws

Come to my love

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C L Couch

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Exodus 24

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Photo by Ryan Yeaman on Unsplash

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The Given

(x = space)

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The Given

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God

Give us this day

One second and the next

The seconds stop

And a new timeline opens

Uncountable

Forever

Light and gold and glass

Given

Owned by no one

And forever

Salvation earned through grace

Which means not at all

Choice and belief

That sometimes overthrow

The tyranny of microscopes

Chained generations

Lines broken by agendas

Made circles

Joined to other shapes

For fantastic exploration

Of heaven’s heavens

Amen

x

C L Couch

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Photo by Genessa Panainte on Unsplash

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0

Very Tall Bill

(x = space)

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Very Tall Bill

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My college roommate died

I saw a blurb in a newsletter

Then went to find an article

He was a teacher

A theatrician

William Kennedy, Ph.D.

Known as Bill to most

And to me

He was a good guy

In the way that guys

That people

Can be good

He was ill

How badly I did not know

I guess the illness took him

At the last

His brother is survived

I knew him some

I knew Bill better

And sometimes wondered

What a pair

So oddly matched

His six-foot and a half frame

(I never really knew

the measurement)

My five-nine

Walking somewhere

At school

And the day we dared

Walk on the grass

Against a rule

To play some Frisbee

x

I am sad

Through and through,

It seems

So as if to feel numb

For a while, now

God take and keep Bill

Teaching

Writing plays

Making productions for

Heaven’s revue

I trust

There is Dad’s Root Beer there

In the green room

At the cast party

x

C L Couch

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Bill taught and wrote, directed plays for decades in his scholarly, professorial career.

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Comedy and Tragedy masks from the Princess Theatre, Decatur, Alabama

image by Marjorie Kaufman

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38298189

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1

The Second Story Mountain

(x = space)

x

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The Second Story Mountain

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Merton wrote

The Seven Storey Mountain

About his journey to faith

And affiliation

David Brooks has written

The Second Mountain

About the search for a moral

Life that also

Has in it

Brooks’s journey into faith

x

There are many such stories

(John Henry Newman, Anne Lamott

Karen Armstrong—I give these folk

in order of reading them),

And high places

Are often an association

x

Once we climb, once we achieve

The phenomenal

The numinous,

We end up

On a mountain top

There is, in fact, the mountain-top

Experience,

A trope of faith

x

On my way back recently,

I skirted a tunnel torn up for construction

And drove over two mountains

As an unmarked detour,

Taking roads who edges were too near,

Too sharp, too narrow

I was scared

x

And wondered among things while driving

How folk could live on either side,

Having these as ways

To take a normal day

x

I don’t like heights

I don’t like driving off the road, either

It’s all done now, and if I’m smart

I’ll never take that way again

There was a mountaintop, I guess

There were two such tops

I only noted a change in incline

Down from up

There was not a park or anything

x

A pullover,

A bench with an inscription in huge letters

Come and have your mountaintop here

Rather the only words I got

Were my own

That said, don’t look down so much

x

I’ll live in the valleys,

I suppose,

And have my faith life there

Or at the oceanside from time to time

It’s not stormy weather

That I mind

Though someday it should take

Me home

x

I’m sorry, this is more a story

Than a poem much cleverer,

Not much more

Than talking

In the room

Over coffee or some such,

Should we be meeting

At a table

Or in comfy chairs

Or with both

x

I have my life of faith, such as it

Might be

I hope, I even pray, that

You have yours

In a healthy sect or tradition

That suits you and

Creator and

Creation

x

Fits you like a story to

Which you return

Time and again

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C L Couch

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The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton

The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life by David Brooks

Route 641

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Photo by Fabrizio Lunardi on Unsplash

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