The Ascent
Creation
Foundation
Re-creation
What remains the same
What changes
We cycle through
We break the cycles
Or they’re broken
For us
Inventions all around
Adaptations
Also what is newly made
With materials of Earth
Sometimes of us
The controversy
What might we interject
Though we haven’t changed a generation
On our own
Except in that
We have more things
Sometimes for more time
And then fill the time with
Pursuits
Playful
Progressive
Or vainglorious
Are we stages
Phases
Headed toward a final place
A seeing place
A hearing place
A place to touch
And on
Which could be battlefield
Or a launching platform
To meet divinity’s wider hand
As we are
Able
Having chosen virtues
Carefully
And as a better planet’s people
A world
That we made better
Also
Maybe first
In
And of ourselves
C L Couch
Photo by Michael Dziedzic on Unsplash
Out of Cosmogony
(that is, 2 poems from out of the arrangement of things, however fancifully)
The Place of Drones
Should someone set me
Atop
One tower or the other
Of the gate
On the bridge
That is not golden
Save in metaphor
Well
I better be an angel
Delighting in
The lack of restraint
Being so high
And so perilous
A perch
That I could slide
Down the cable
Or merely leap
Into the Lord’s
Good atmosphere
Between the particles
The humans
Tragically
Provide
And is this how
The angels
Who aren’t demons
Do it
Which is
To set themselves high
Or low
To have the better vantages
Scouting for assignments
Maybe the demons
Lie this way as well
With
Or without wings
Sacrificed
Mything Pages
And
Do I have
Anything for you
Today
How about
A word of God
That was a word
In the beginning
To make
Everything
Thus
Setting precedent
For spells
Inside fantastic
Stories
About making smaller
Things
Admittedly
Though wondrous
In eldritch hue
And timing
All the same
That
Someone said
Is the meaning behind miracles
The usual thing
And yet
The timing
Is extraordinary
Is saving
In fact
Of dwarves in trees
Or the royal child
Trapped in
The tower
Before
An evil pretender
With forces
Breaks into
The easily
Barricaded chamber
While such
Are stories
And creation
Is a story
Too
Recalling
That the myth
Is grounded
In the real
And our fantastic tellings
Overdone
Or undertoned
Are actual
When happening
Before becoming
Passages
And chapters
(John 1:1)
C L Couch
Photo by Syd Wachs on Unsplash
suburban childhood
Saturday morning
cereal
doughnuts
cartoons on TV
trying to forget there might be chores
(we had
done a week of school
after all)
Sunday would be church
and then who knows
the rest of homework
fretting
over Monday
c l couch
photo by Pawel Kadysz on Unsplash
For
June is
For
The end of spring
The summer of surprise
June is for
Berries
For first imagining
Of an adventure
All again
In green
C L Couch
(MidAtlantic USA—you could write where and how it is for you)
Photo by Julie Blake Edison on Unsplash
Wondrous
I love you
Says the Lord
Which is
Why
I made you a world
With stars around it
And isn’t it
Grand
The starlight
To give you something
Wonderful
To dream
C L Couch
Photo by Tengyart on Unsplash
Kind Brief Invocation
O God
Be our Tuesday help
Forgive us our
Mistakes
Our other-side-of
Edenness
‘Cause
Sometimes
We let fall
Or we forget
Without malice
But our flaws
Pervade
There is
The Kintsugi of wisdom
Help us fix
And even beautify
The scars
By
Gold understanding
C L Couch
Photo by Brian Pappel on Unsplash
[sun and dew transform—goldify, as it were]
(maybe) it’s not that easy
we find
an abstract
verdant image
is it a meadow
or a forest of
a hemisphere's summer
(someone) looking
up
or
(more) fancifully
is it the capillary network
in a frog
sometimes it isn’t easy
being green
sometimes with any number of
means
by interests
it’s easy
(well
if) with being hard
having green
lives
hale
on green worlds
c l couch
there is referenced the song “Bein’ Green” by Joseph G. Raposo, famously sung by Kermit the (green) Frog
photo by Artur Łuczka on Unsplash
2 poems about presence
Quantum Theory
God
You are around
Visiting nuclei
Somehow
Also gliding with
The quanta
Inside
Colliders
In the air
Presentable
In earth and sea
All the igneous
Layers
Of creation
Riding the rings
And showing where they meet
Between
Well
Galaxies
Connected by comets
As Hermes runners
With
You know
Cosmic messages
We’re still
Trying
To interpret
So that one day
We might message back
Words that Rise
I am alive
So are you
You might be reading on my shoulder
Waiting for the final words
To calculate
And then
More importantly
Go outside to play
Then later on
More words
Inexorable
For you
Inexorable
A readership
A friend
A nemesis
When
Necessary in revision
Or keep it
To yourself
And we’ll discuss
The other things
Inside
Or outside
Should it be
A fall day
Accommodating
Certain kinds
Of ease
Enough
Between us
C L Couch
Photo by NASA on Unsplash
Jupiter as Seen from the Hubble Space Telescope
Salvation Chair
Really
Now
And should the Spirit
Come to call
After the dancing
For the sky
After all the lights released
Half
A world on
That’s felt
One’s own half of the world
After ingesting
All petitions
In all the other continents
Even on the
Needful
Melting fields
To the south
And north
Between the poles
It stops
To dwell a while
In my
Clay house
And maybe find a room
For me
In a truly quiet hour
While I give all the rest over
To
Possession
And renewal
At the same time with
All other crises
And the stretched-out needs
So
Casually asked
Sometimes
Please
Sit
Have something
While I work out with you
How to have
My own
On both sides of enigma
That is
Mystery
Of faith
That is
Saved
When given over
C L Couch
Anne Bradstreet, a prominent Puritan poet, employed the “clay house” metaphor in her work. In her poem “As Weary Pilgrim,” she reflects on the impermanence of the physical body and the longing for spiritual rest. Here are some lines from that poem:
A pilgrim I, on earth, perplext
wth sinns wth cares and sorrows vext
By age and paines brought to decay
and my Clay house mouldring away
Oh how I long to be at rest
and soare on high among the blest.
https://www.poetry.com/poem/3075/as-weary-pilgrim,-now-at-rest
(the note before the excerpt by Copilot)
Photo by Asim Hamid on Unsplash
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