(x = space)

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3 poems of encounters

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Love, NOAA

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Emily

Franklin

Gert

Harold

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The writer on

The wuthering heights

The character from PBS

Maybe the nickname

For Ms Stein

And I heard one forecaster

At least

Call it Harry

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Our alphabet

Our panoply

Of names for the destruction

Small gods as small pilgrims

Manifesting through the portal

Moving away at last

To foreign altars

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And what they do to us

Who would be faithful

If we knew the rites

The saints

For weather and

Forfending the destruction

Of an age

Each time

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Grocery Store Evangelists

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I met two evangelists

Last evening

After I got all the pills

That I needed

Well

Nearly

(the count after

means I need to order

more

silly

heart disease)

And was shopping

For a little more

When a tract appeared

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Do I believe in God

How about Jesus

And the Holy Spirit

Am I saved

Do I read my Bible

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I could say yes

And so we had

A pleasant conversation

In the spirit

We invoked

As two and three were gathered

(that’s in the Bible

too)

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Their work is urgent

And actually

They’re happy

In it

Still the greater task

Not to take on faith-attackers in the forum

But to reach

The dispossessed

Who are indifferent

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The lukewarm dogs

That Revelation says

Are the greater challenges

To see

To hear

To taste

The need for faith

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Through all the rings of Earth

The rounds

Of worldly agendas

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I wish them well

I wish no violence

I wish smooth rhetoric

All love through

Everything

They are

And move

And have their being

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For through God we live and move and have our being.  As some of your own poets (Aratus, say) have said, “We are God’s offspring.”

Acts of the Apostles 17:28

NIV with paraphrase

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These Girls, These Women

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I wish I were more

Like Meg

But I don’t have a seeing rock

And I’m not that faithful

Though my feelings

Toward my father

Moved

Evolved

As well

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I wish I were like Angharad

But I’m not a warrior

And have not won

A blue sword

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Or the young women in

The Witch of Blackbird Pond

Who was running

From her persecutors

Turned

And beheld

Her ship of rescue

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I have the managerial acumen

Of Mom

Some of her anger

Too

And there’s my sister

Who does everything

So well

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Maintains a jungle

In her home

While I take my few plants

To turn them brittle

Though

The pots look nice

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These girls

These women

We should learn so much

About being boys

And men

And girls

And women

And scions of great literature

Ourselves to qualify

Among them

Should someone tell

With fictive elegance

Our stories

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A Wrinkle in Time

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C L Couch

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Photo by Vlad Frolov on Unsplash

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