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Memory of Father
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I have a memory
Not so long ago
So it might be true
Of visiting my father
They had let his hair grow
He looked like Gandalf
Or Saruman
Or Merlin
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The silver hair was beautiful
We talked
I left
Next time I saw him
His short hair was back
He looked like Hemingway
A compliment of sorts
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C L Couch
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Photo by Joshua Brown on Unsplash
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(x = space)
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no God approves
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sorry for those who died
from explosions and gunfire
at the Kabul airport
from those who believe
that civilians trying to escape
is not a sanctioned reason
to let live, rather to meet
with onslaught that
no God approves
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c l couch
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photo by Joe Woods on Unsplash
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(x = space)
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Get Out
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Of Kabul
Of Afghanistan
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Actions of diplomats,
Soldiers, staff,
And airplanes
Take you
Away
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Don’t hesitate
Do you
Hesitate?
What’s up to you,
Leave now
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There is violence
I’m sorry
Take up the politics
Tomorrow
What matters to you is leaving
Get out, now
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C L Couch
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United States Air Force C-17A Globemaster III
Photo by Nick Morales on Unsplash
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(x = space)
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Calliope
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What is the song
In your head
Just now?
Mine is “Song Sung Blue,”
Because everybody
Knows one
Sometimes it’s “One Voice”
Sometimes it’s
“Color My World”
Now you know
Where I’m from
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Sometimes
It’s a theme
From a movie
Or a show
TV or Broadway
But if I stop
To catch it,
There’s always
Something there
Always music
And that is something
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C L Couch
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Pyrophone of Georges Frédéric Eugène Kastner (1852–1882).
By photographer unknown – Hermann Ludwig von Jan: Johann Georg Kastner, ein elsässischer Tondichter, Theoretiker und Musikforscher – sein Werden und Wirken. Breitkopf & Härtel, Band 2, Teil 2, Leipzig 1886, p. 308, Digitalisat (Internet Archive), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25667386
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(x = space)
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The Agenda in the Storm
(having gathered)
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New York was hit
Awfully bad
It’s moving north and east
The fires out west are also
Famously terrible
And there are storms
And floods and fires
Elsewhere
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It is bad in Kabul,
Too,
The President asking for
More planes from non-military
Sources
And we can’t compare
This to Saigon, because
The fighting isn’t over
There’s a force ready
To fight the Taliban
Will North America and Europe
Recognize this group
To send them aid,
If an irony of aid
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And there are other groups
In prisons and dealing
With worse persecution
(another irony)
On the outside
These groups are in Myanmar
And China
And northeastern Africa
And in North America,
Native Americans
And First Families
And do we want to keep the
Border nonporous to the south
Because we want to contain
Mexicans for being
Mexican?
And blacks and whites
Where are we now?
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These are the ethnic
Fires and the flood of hate
And fear;
In the USA, we once liked
The melting pot
Though now it seems a crucible
To separate us and to test us
Then we might go back
To melting
In that first, patriotic pot
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There’s climate
And still too much unchecking
You know, there’s a town
In Ohio that found natural gas
In a parochial way
And burned it all,
Frankly, excessively
Until there was none left
I don’t want to blame them
For excitement
Or working out technologies
At large, we need to do that,
Too
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But I suppose there’s a lesson
In there, somewhere
And we have so much to learn
And do
To stop the fires,
Contain the floods
Mine in every way
Our minerals well
Maintain both poles
Step in, step out
So there might be
Peace in western Asia
And elsewhere
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And then there’s hate
And fear behind the hate
That’s for our dealing,
Too,
To have a planet that we’re
Fond of and it shows
It breathes, it smells,
It tastes, it sounds, it feels,
It looks
Grand as canyons,
Vast as deserts,
Cold as frozen,
Hot as eruptions,
Living as oceans,
Deep as thought
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C L Couch
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The Gathering Storm by Winston Churchill is alluded to, above.
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Photo by Kevin Grieve on Unsplash
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(x = space)
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sorry, long
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Three, One, Three Again
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1
Creator, savior, guide
Maybe I understand the trinity
Maybe not
They are lively
And immediate
They are at work all the time
And understand rest
They commend a sabbath
And the days on either side
They are all efficiency
And all love
We have access to them
And, as teachers and advisors
Not to mention
God,
They nudge us
All the time
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2
What kind of commanders
Legions at their call
They give us time
And patience
Before anything like
A final battle
Victory assured
I mean in this moment
We wait and wait and wait
Or, worse, deny
While they withhold rejection
Until the moment
Past the moment
Before judgment
Should decide
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They give us time
Keeping everything at bay,
Which is love
All love
Splicing revelation
Tailoring salvation
For each one
Each encounter
How wondrously and thunderously
Special
What kind of God
What parts of God
Can do this
And then do it
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3
Hear, O Israel
And all other nations,
Catch them in the human heart
Live as one
Each one as all
Repair the ruin of the Earth
There is so much faith
And good work to do
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They are mild
They are also Armageddon
What kind of love
What kind of God
Three then one
Then three again
They live in constant relationship
So should we
Within the parts
Of ourselves,
Each one
And then
Altogether
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More than one in one
We can have that, too:
Remember might
Remember love
Both mingled in each moment
Quicksilver
And slow water
Everything that moves
And tries to rest
They show us the way
To give us something every day
Then just after our last day
After work
And battling
And sabbathing
To lead us home
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C L Couch
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Maybe it’s not my tradition, but I mean to be respectful of the Shema.
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Temple of Edfu, Egypt
Photo by Jeremy Zero on Unsplash
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(x = space)
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believe when things are bad
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it’s a naïve message,
I suppose
I thought about it during
Bible study,
which was
about assurance
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an assurance
that things will go bad
even as
a season entered,
x
but God is there
and we should be as well
(we should
show up)
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believing is a practice
a practice of
a presence,
Brother Lawrence
might say
in church,
the pastor showed
a picture of
Where’s Waldo?
and I thought
we were
supposed to wonder
where God is
in that;
x
but I understand that
God is there,
all over
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and the question is,
Where are we?
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good agnostication
sharp skepticism
I hope
that we have more
x
along with
our petitions in the
practice
of the season
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c l couch
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Psalm 121, a psalm of assurance
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Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God
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Rainy Water
Photo by sanjiv nayak on Unsplash x
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(x = space)
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Doctrine by Tempest
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And should I turn
To the Spirit,
How shall she say
Or guide?
To love in all things,
Though that
Can be a mystery
Like faith
And should I ask for grace
Or is that bestowed
In quantities
Already
Measured out by God,
Dispensed by angels?
I don’t know,
I think grace might be wild,
Ready to fall itself
Into the crisis
Spreading all the elements
And changing time
For
Working things,
Which means perhaps
That prayer
Is unchained, too,
And to do so
Into the storm
In terror
And unformed bequest
Well, it counts
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C L Couch
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Hurricane Map
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(x = space)
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Escape from Afghanistan
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I don’t know how it is
To crowd myself
Inside an airplane
I don’t like heights
I don’t like the
Closed-in feeling
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I don’t know how it is
To climb upon the side
And hope that
The massive vehicle
Will stop
To let me and mine in
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But this is life
This is escape
This is relief
And so they pack
And so they climb
Something starts moving;
It is the hope
Of leaving
Where we are
To anywhere but here,
Which we think
In the moment
In the crisis
Must be better
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I might surrender
All my fears
To try for something
That might
Take me through
The filtered sky
Of what has been
My home
Or simply
My assignment
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C L Couch
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My escape from Afghanistan on a US military plane: ‘It was total chaos’
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NO EXIT
Photo by Nathan McDine on Unsplash
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