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clcouch123

In conversation, I prefer Christopher. My mom named me after Christopher Robin, after all. In writing, I use “C L Couch” (or, more simply, “c l couch”) because the form is genderless and also frankly easier to use. I have awful writer’s cramp. I am an educator more or less retired, more or less due to disability. At present, I live in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania (USA). My writing here I mean to be occasional and also devotional. Either or both. The banner and profile photographs are by my friend and peer Debra Danielson. More of Debbie’s work to be enjoyed is at debradanielson.org. Thanks to each of you and both and all for coming to my blog.

Odd Gratitude

Odd Gratitude

 

The weight is in my eyes

Just over my lungs

Inside the muscles

Pressing on the bones

Everything moves, anyway

Fingers, hands

Knees stretch

I blink, swallow, turn my neck

To see what’s what

 

The day’s ahead, and I’m

Thankful

Surprised?  Shouldn’t be

Life is nearly always worth it

And always, really

There’s torture in the world,

Which must challenge the price

To pay

 

But this is being tired

Really tired

And there’s pain

Though not enough

To wreck the odds

Of there being maybe many

Good things ahead

 

C L Couch

 

 

Gratitude Stones

https://www.firefliesandmudpies.com/gratitude-stones/

http://www.yessafechoices.org/parents/character-education-corner/gratitude

 

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A Coda for the Hero

A Coda for the Hero

 

A face broken by my pain

Looks down at me

While I fade into unbordered places

All perception rendered into

What will come

Sleep, I hope

And good dreams for a change

And wakefulness to a world

I could never know

Until I come upon it

You’ll be there

And everyone

The everyone I can recall

And so many new to meet and

Love for the first time

 

C L Couch

 

 

9/11 Photos, Creative Commons 2.0

https://americanlegalnews.com/hero-fbi-agents-and-first-responders-sick-and-dying-from-9-11-exposure/

 

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Looking at You

Looking at You

(first films)

 

Have you ever seen The Big Sleep?

Like the earlier Maltese Falcon

Philip Marlowe

Sam Spade

Raymond Chandler

Dashiell Hammett

Many people say the plots are convoluted

They say that because they are

So we watch for character

The personalities

The texture

The underlying value

 

I like both films a lot

They are cynical stories

But there’s an underline of care

Otherwise, why watch?

I know it’s fashionable to avoid a message

Sometimes the words get through, anyway

 

They are in the folds of a trenchcoat

In a look from woman’s or man’s eye

In the outcome, which only

Works if

We look subcutaneously

Appreciate not the lack of technical justice

But the abundance of

Sound conclusions and livable ethics

Manifest

 

I’m sorry, I don’t want to give away

The endings

Have I said too much?  Sorry, again

But watch the movies, anyway

They have action

They have dialogue that ricochets

Sharper than bullets on stone

They have energy

They bring the oddest hope onto the screen

Something to talk about on the way home

 

C L Couch

 

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The Temple on Pot-Bellied Hill

The Temple on Pot-Bellied Hill

(built and carved before the wheel)

 

We would not go inside

 

We built and then retreated

Outside the presence of it

As God came in more and more

To dwell

We ate our meat close by

So that we could build again

These were our days

 

It’s what we did and what we knew

And there was little more

We built because

The God would have it so

We were commanded without words

Only with the knowing

That it must be so

And more and more

 

God came to dwell

We weakened, and we died

And still the temple rose

 

The last of us will finish it

God’s house

God’s cave above the ground

God’s palace in a desert place

To reign over scorpions

Rocks and sand

Snakes and

Predators who fly

Or those who seek the carrion

After another’s kill

 

This will be God’s place

We will move on

 

C L Couch

 

 

Cradle of the Gods, National Geographic Channel.  All about Göbekli Tepe.

(image at) http://www.milliyet.com.tr/amerikan-arkeoloji-enstitusu-gundem-2577893/

 

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Hello, Kitty

Hello, Kitty

 

(an image of a tiger)

 

Isn’t he amazing?

I say he because the caption says so

I have no trouble believing that

The female is amazing

He sits among the roots and shadow

Of the tree

 

Resting or waiting?  Is he

Hungry or in love or meditative?

Is he tired?

 

What will happen next?

What happened?

I think he lay there for a long while,

A study in stillness

He stayed until he decided

What he wanted next

 

C L Couch

 

 

A young male tiger rests in the roots of a banyan tree, in Ranthambhore national park, India. Photograph: Chris Brunskill/Save Wild Tigers/Eye On Tiger

appearing in The Guardian Green Light

 

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Magic Tricks

Magic Tricks

 

All the illusions that

Help us through the day

 

That looks all right

I have room for

That

I’ll have time later to

Get to that

A little bit of that will do

No harm

 

I have these

Maybe you have them, too

 

C L Couch

 

 

u_dg9pheol

https://pixabay.com/en/magic-tricks-magician-japan-magic-3644528/

 

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The Start of Day

The Start of Day

 

You give this to me, Lord

These hours and these days

I don’t want to waste them

And I don’t want the world to

Define waste for me

 

It is wasteful and so earns

Skepticism regarding definitions

Careless with money

Food (forty percent in the USA)

Relationships

With nature and each other

 

Yes, I’m of the world, too

And so don’t escape conviction

But there is a conviction

And conviction

We can do better

I can

 

How does it begin—why,

I think with wasting time

 

Being still,

At rest and listening

Tempering what I hear with

The community I trust

So many things start right

This way

 

The Pietists had it right

Listen for revelation

It will come

It won’t be crazy

If it is,

Your good friends will tell you

Then listen to them

 

C L Couch

 

 

A clear description of Pietism is found in Understanding Pietism by Dale W. Brown.

 

(image)

http://www.photogen.com/free-photos/free-stock-photo-564/

Photogen.com

 

1

I Touched the Moon Rock, Too

I Touched the Moon Rock, Too

 

Memory is funny

And I know you know that

I saw the Hope Diamond

It was small

Though small is relative to an elephant

Also the Mona Lisa

Small from its perspective, too

I saw Mount Rushmore from a distance

It was better in the movies

I’ve seen two oceans of the seven

Should there be seven seas

(and oceans do the counting)

I’ve visited, how many now,

Maybe four of the Great Lakes

Though two might been at a meeting

Place—and I don’t have to tell you

(do I)

That they are great

 

One day when I was in Washington, D.C., again

I saw the huge flag

And it is enormous

The one with the upside-down V sewn on

Fear of victory?

The shape of something torn that happened?

And there it was, a moon rock

I swear I got to touch it

 

And all this comes to mind

Because I just heard Mister Wildman

Say it was so

 

C L Couch

 

 

note(s)

 

it turns out I’m sending up the Smithsonian Museums, Mysteries at the Museum, and big things elsewhere in the USA

 

Wknight94 talk – Own work

Lunar Olivine Basalt 15555 sample collected from the moon by the Apollo 15 mission, at station 9A on the rim of Hadley Rille. It was formed around 3.3 billion years ago. On display in the National Museum of Natural History.

Olivine basalt collected by the crew of Apollo 15.

(image via) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_rock

 

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The Act of Reading

The Act of Reading

 

It’s amazing how

Letters on the page

Keep us going

How the, which has little

Meaning, is essential

 

I look at the page, and

It matters

You find me there, too

And everyone who

Has meant something to you

And me

 

However it’s configured

Nowadays,

We go to words on pages

And they matter

The secrets of all time and space

Are there

The words wait

Like magic spells

Invocations standing by

 

Turn to them

Whether paper or electrons

Our salvation waits

And other stories

 

C L Couch

 

 

title by Wolgang Iser, The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response

 

image in the public domain

 

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