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clcouch123

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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.

Get Well Soon

Get Well Soon

 

I thought the pain would go away

Once there was treatment

But I can’t tell any difference

Is there a waiting time involved

Or did nothing take

Am I so used to having this disease

That it’s come to stay

 

Or is this something I don’t know regarding

How this is done (that

Would not be hard to believe)

 

We get better as we do

And outside cures will only go so far

The rest of us needs kindness of a different

Sort

 

I lose my way

I have to find it back up to the

Surface of my life

For, like Rich, I have been diving

In the ruins

 

Rise away from the crusty, false part that

Gravity

Will take away in time

 

Rather

I mean the part that touches upon Earth

And twirls inside the sky

That breathes in and then enjoys some healthy

Exhalation

 

C L Couch

 

(Adrienne Rich, “Diving into the Wreck”)

 

 

Trinity United Methodist Church, Ballard’s Saturday Soup: Every month a team from QAUMC heads up to Ballard to make a meal in support of Trinity UMC’s Saturday Soup; sometimes serving just a couple of dozen people, sometimes feeding well over 100.

http://qaumc.org/compassion-justice/

http://qaumc.org/spiritual-formation/

 

3

Planet Nine from Outer Space

Planet Nine from Outer Space

(the sequel)

 

It’s out there

Will we see it

Will we be looking back

Before it hits us from behind

I have a name for it

Minerva

Because more wisdom should not hurt

Unless a planet can wage judgment

On another

 

It’s relative, I guess

If not ironic

When

We look for something new

In outer space

While on the inside

Do we hear the cry for

Something more

On Earth

 

A cousin to our planet

A source of helps and agencies

If willing

Maybe not,

To make us glad we’re not the only ones

Who can say

We’re here

 

C L Couch

 

 

By Tomruen, nagualdesign; background taken from File:ESO – Milky Way.jpg – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47105354

 

3

Spheres

Spheres

 

1

I like music of all kinds

Which is not to say I like all songs

Especially the ones that yell at me

I can do without

 

It’s better to be in the room, I guess

Certainly for jazz

But either way I hear

Barber’s Adagio for Strings

I want to weep

 

2

Listening to gospel music on the radio

I can get two stations

One I think is broadcast from the fifties

One is from my time but

Comes in fuzzy

I think I’ll go with fuzzy to

 

Listen (fuzzily) to

Contemporary Christian

Except when it yells at me

Then I’m not sure it’s

Anybody’s Christian

 

3

Party on

Garth

 

Brooks

Worlds

 

C L Couch

 

 

a close-up of a Time-coded vinyl record by Jason Ruck

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10513194

 

5

in a hurry now

in a hurry now

does this happen unemployed

sunny day it does

 

C L Couch

 

 

https://usjapancouncilstories.wordpress.com/tag/haiku/

Poetry’s Consoling Touch

 

0

Override

Override

 

I feel old and useless

Too much pain inside and

From the world

Like the Quixote, then,

I might read too many romances

Find a pink horse

And ride off into windmills

Any Panzas wishing to apply

Will have ‘til my departure

For an interview

 

C L Couch

 

 

photograph by Cathy Birdsong Dutchak

(gratefully) used with kind permission

https://wanderessence.com/, where she is blogging now

https://catbirdineurope.wordpress.com/2013/07/06/a-morning-with-the-windmills-in-consuegra/, attribution (link) for the windmill image

in search of a thousand cafés (her blog title that grabbed me)

 

5

Destiny of Manifests

Destiny of Manifests

 

How we can disperse all hope

Or think we should

Why we think we are the best when,

Point by point, we’re not

Several are more literate, many

More able with math

Many with armed forces

That train and guard more than

They have to fight

 

May peace prevail, the pole proclaims

In many languages

What language do we use

When talking with our neighbors

May implies condition and will

What do we condition

What do we will

 

It is a wonderful statue

So many monuments are

And nearly all espouse a cause

With some nobility

I can drive down to Devil’s Den, now

A reminder of

The awful cost of slaying a

Brother in the split of war

 

And what war does not take a sibling

What part of Earth is not destroyed

What town, what hold for families

Is gone from the roster

Of the world

We all are charged to keep

 

Independence Day is on the way

Many nations have one

They speak to freedom

Of the mind, the will

The charge to make the planet whole

Especially

When we ruin something of it

 

C L Couch

 

 

image

assembling the Statue of Liberty in Paris

 

 

 

3

Try to Be Still

Try to Be Still

 

Try to be still,

Try to be still

To hear the small voice;

 

That would be fine

Or maybe not to hear anything

For a while,

 

To nestle in the darkness of

The mind

To listen for the voice before the voice:

 

The whispering commands

That the angel receives,

 

The assignment

From God’s ear to mine

 

C L Couch

 

 

www.flickr.com/photos/joshcon/4450007889/in/photostream/

 

2

Near-Dead Reckoning

Near-Dead Reckoning

 

If I had children

To rear (that used to be the proper

Word), I’ve little doubt

I’d treasure some time apart, now

And then

There’s a story of the mother of my

Namesake

 

She was going to walk

Around the hundred-acre wood

Her son asked to go

And she said no

But when I return

Welcome me

As if I had been gone far

Away for a long time

 

Nowadays what guilt the mom or dad

Must feel to know

That children are taken from their

Parents with no returning

Promised

 

The parents now are criminals, they’ll say

Trying to enter by

Liberty’s calling

 

The children are caged, too

 

Everyone is guilty, by the way

Not one of us gets off

Unless we’re trying

 

God will accept a prayer

To bring entire families

Along with sanity

To what has been happening

 

My father’s people were

Here to tie

Up the ships of all the rest

My mother’s people, there’s a problem

Only a few generations here

So I’ll

Have to take my chances

 

Warming up to say

That without family

Without the value placed

Up on the shelf in pride of place

 

That what have we of home

A nation of all promises

Is dust collecting

In an empty place

 

I don’t have all the answers

I don’t know all the rest

But I think impracticality also

Becomes illicit

When we break the bond

That promises compound reckoning

The nuclei destroyed

Hostility left to orbit like

Errant electrons

 

Preachy

And sing-songy

Yes, I know

 

But there it is, I’ll ‘fess up,

And if you’ve come this far

We can go farther

 

C L Couch

 

 

http://www.expatsinvallarta.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Nogales-Tuscon-sign (/jpg)

 

3

Ascendant

Ascendant

(believe it or not, for J K Rowling)

 

Suddenly the steam from

The coffee rises in an eldritch way

Because the cup is now a cauldron and

The liquid is the matter of a

Spell,

Not the dangerous kind

The easy, adolescent kind that only

Causes sit-com harm,

The kind that must be resolved in

A half-hour

And hadn’t hurt that much, to begin with

 

But rain is coming on

Humidity is high

There is wind high in the trees

The branches dance to universal motion

And I wonder who

Casts such a summer day

As this

 

C L Couch

 

 

http://novedadesdetabasco.com.mx/2017/04/08/se-preven-tormentas-fuertes-en-zonas-de-puebla-oaxaca-veracruz-tabasco-chiapas-campeche-y-quintana-roo/

 

4

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