Deep and
Wide

(the call
and then the gathering)

 

Tomorrow’s
Juneteenth

Remembering

The
unrelenting drive toward freedom

After war

After the
smaller wars

That

Take us

One by one

Even
together

For a cause

To have a
life

That daily
speaks to

Choice in
where we go

No one to
intervene

Direction

Or allowance

●

To be free

Of that
ridiculousness

That is
itself

Free of ethics

Free of consideration

For the freedom
of the flesh

Itself

Herself

Or himself

Or in the
people

All my
people

As ways

The right to
be unchained

As in each
birthing

In each
house

●

How sad

Tragic

To have to
make the case

For liberty

To use up
energy

Needed for

So many
other

Needful things

In life

For enough
acquisition

Self-esteem
in work

And play

In laughing
with the children

Of our
legacy

●

These and
other lines

Established and
maintained

As on a ship

Where working
lines

Is vital

To the journey

●

Knowing when
to keep them taut

When to let
go

Of everything

To pause
within the wind

Maybe the
wind

That tricks
the journey

Of misdirected

Doctrine

Or information

Then agendas

Without evidence

Or conviction
of

Truth inside

●

Goodness

We go far

For only a
day

But if we
don’t remember

It seems we
repeat

Not the
better parts

But the
things

That bring
us down

Into a
whirlpool

Of unknown
ending

Though without
the likelihood

To brins us

Home

●

Juneteenth

Something to
do with Texas

Though the
nation

Wholly free

Should ring
throughout all states

And to the
world

New liberty
bells

From the
same carillons

That have
been sounding since

From Independence
Hall

And are not
we owed

All of us

Some room
inside that place

That forum

From the
start

When each
one aimed

First pled to
Europe

Then

Campaigned

Consciously

●

While pushing
on

Indigenous

From the
start

And the gross

Wrongheaded

And wrong
hearted

Soiled

Spoiled

Impractical sin

In presuming
to own

People

To work a
place

In which

Nothing was
avowed

For these

●

And by the
way

Of our
family

Traded for

And purchased

In the way
of hell

Against

Disgrace from
heaven 

●

Then begin

Inside one’s
own

And all our
own

Words and
moves

Toward freedom

Centuries

Ago

Throughout

A woeful

Backward aga

Into the
struggle

Even for
this hour

Certainly
for this day

●

Juneteenth

A new day

For triumphant
calendars

For the
meaning

And the pleasuring

Owning for

Instead

Flesh

And home

And fear
only of God

In this
brightened hour

Followed by
another

In arriving

To the
lit-up day

Illustrious

And carried
to tomorrow

For a legacy

●

But in this
time

We have

Please own
it

The idea

The discretion

Humility

Restraint in

Knowing

And having

This second

Freely

Then with
hope

That anyone
might

Freely have

Into another

And another

Toward that
better age

To which we
add

In quiet
ways

Of love

And this

Our proclamation

Of the same

●

Amen?

Maybe we
could say

Syllables for
striving

An

Amen

 

C L
Couch

 

 

Photo by Pawel
Czerwinski on Unsplash