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in pandemic time

Diagnostics

(x = space)

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Because heart disease and the pandemic aren’t enough, I’ve been diagnosed with something more.  Not the worst, certainly not the best.  More medicine and alternatives to try.

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Diagnostics

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I’m tired

And I’m sorry

And I didn’t get

A good diagnosis

Not that the pandemic

Cares

It’s not awake

It doesn’t vote

It’s doesn’t laugh

In the irony

Of being sick from something else

This is my day, I guess,

To deal

To move around precautions

While I take them

Looking for

I don’t know

New ways, new things

To try

To live new life

Mollified, uncoddled

Looking from inside

As if the world

For good or ill

Is new

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C L Couch

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Photo by Kai Dahms on Unsplash

Blood

cell

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Sun on Sunday

(x = space)

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Sun on Sunday

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It’s dim outside

And raining

I hear wet tires

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A gloomy day

I do not mind

The Addams genes at play,

I suppose,

The kind that make

A lark of dark days

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I’m a day into

The new shot

Feels like the flu shot

And every vaccine that

I’ve had since

Childhood

The site is sore

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I don’t mean to comment

I want to respect

The courtesies of others

That are challenged

Only in

Contagious situations,

Where they make

The issues grim

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Like guns, I guess

We know what we know

And I might be wrong

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But let’s not make it politics

But practicalities

There is an epidemic

I’ve lost people to it,

Which gives me added rights

To nothing

But my sadness

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C L Couch

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Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

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Protocol

(x = space)

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Protocol

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Sorry that this must be news

This should be ordinary

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There will be a shot today

Not heard ‘round the world

Simply a needle into skin

With the release of

New chemicals inside

The body

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Then another shot, as is the

Protocol, in a while

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C L Couch

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Image by Markus Distelrath from Pixabay

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Mything Thursday

(x = space)

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Mything Thursday

(in pandemic time)

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There are few untouched

Places on Earth

For when we see the,

We have touched them

They are changed

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I wonder if the virus

Might be made of plastic,

A natural invention

And response to our touch

We needed plastic

In the war,

Then its convenience took over

Making things

And we blew it into the sky

From our factories

We could wish for coal

And dirt and rust and oil

In the air

Though they have needed

Cleaning, too

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To places needing cleaning,

There seem to be two

Options: clean them

Or ignore them

Throw a carpet over it

Go to another room

And finally another place

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Or do a half-done job

A sloppy job

Of making do

Because there is no profit in

Cleaning up

Except for cleaning companies

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So let’s have cleaning companies!

People who know how

To fix a world

Rearrange it, replace broken

Parts, dust everything

So we might move again

Into timeworn places

Inhabitable again

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Know how to rebuild

And build new

So we don’t poison ourselves

So much, again

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C L Couch

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Photo by Antoine GIRET on Unsplash

Albanie

Mountain of rubbish and garbage on the beach by the sea[.]

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Woden’s Day

(x = space)

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Woden’s Day

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Sometimes I sits and thinks,

and sometimes I just sits

—Satchel Paige

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Maybe a half-blind god

Is what we need

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It’s been a quiet

Afternoon, mostly

I mean, the cars have

To go by, though

There haven’t been so

Many and somehow

A blue sky with white

Clouds tampers everything

If only in the mind

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I’m trying to write,

And it’s not going badly

(though much of that

is left up to you at last)

Though I’ve said that

I’m not sure what

To put down next

It is a process, isn’t it?

A balance between casting

‘Round and thinking

Considering what breaks

The heart with enough

Reason so that

Someone else might understand

Maybe not so much with mind

But with the other

Sensing parts, the ones that

Must interpret the world

Around, deciding how to act

Right before its time

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Take a breath

The sky remains blue, even

Though the afternoon

Light is slanting a little more

Toward twilight

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We haven’t looked

The other way

God is still with us with

One eyes or two eyes

With who knows

How many fingers

To make or toes to walk

Among us;

We’ve taken a few specs

Of time to be somewhere

Else for a while,

A place where we don’t

Have to count

With the nation and the world

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C L Couch

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Photo by Will Paterson on Unsplash

DL8 2PS, Bedale, United Kingdom

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Frozen Yellow Rose

(x = space)

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Frozen Yellow Rose

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Is this a prose-poem or an essay or a Sunday homily (the text would be the Good Samaritan)?  I don’t know, but here it is.  Something I heard at church from those who were there.  I mean, were there in Houston.

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here’s what happened in Houston (Texas, USA) yesterday:

most homes do not have fireplaces and instead rely on electricity to power furnaces for heat and appliances for cooking and computers, but the power grid is out, it’s blank in Houston;

in grills or in makeshift places, Duralogs were burned and any wood that could be found or any charcoal left from summer or, indeed in a deep Southern place, the last time there was a barbecue;

the feeling was post-apocalyptic

there was a certain grocery store that powered up enough generators to preserve food and to allow people inside safely, though the numbers who could enter at a time were severely limited (because there is a pandemic raging ‘round the world and through Houston); this meant that there were thousands outside the store in line, waiting for their turn;

keep in mind it’s extra winter there just now, the temperature having gone into the teens during the day;

the manager of this grocery store or maybe it was the owner, walked up and down the line outside and said to folks, if you can’t pay for your groceries just now, don’t worry—get what your family needs, bread and baby food and such;

according to those who were there, this kind of thing was happening all over the city

coda

this does not account or provide sustenance for those assailed by the crisis of collapsing glacial ice in India that has stolen the lives of scores of people; this does not take care of COVID-19 or provide vaccine, something that the world sorely needs; this does not answer all the problems and frankly all the disasters that we suffer with here and there on planet Earth; it is a single story, and maybe we could let it have the power of a single story, which like creation stories or apocalypses or “The Gift of the Magi” or “The Artist of the Beautiful,” can be, well, pretty powerful

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C L Couch

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Power Failure: How a Winter Storm Pushed Texas into Crisis

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/article/Power-failure-How-a-winter-storm-pushed-Texas-15967411.php

Around 2 a.m. Monday, the full measure of the crisis Texas faced began to be apparent. Cold and ice had set in the day before, leading to spreading power outages across the state.

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Photo by Vlad Busuioc on Unsplash

Downtown, Houston, Texas, United States

drone view of a city

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The Book of Numbers

(x = space)

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The Book of Numbers

(in pandemic time)

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Lots of twos and ones

Tomorrow

And a zero,

And there could be church:

I think I’d cherish

Learning someone else’s

Story

If in a cyber way

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To understand

How a narrative fits

Into the weaving,

The puzzle

Of the one great story

In which we each

Have a page

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Monochrome

Or colorful

Burnt along the edges,

Gilded for the saints

After all the torn-up

Parts have been

Repaired

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Not a book of judgment

Not a cache of

Clever evidence;

Rather the story of us

In part

And all the rest of us

And God inside, above

With tired angels

Tirelessly binding

Fixing binding

All the time

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C L Couch

(for 2/21/2021)

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Photo by Paulius Dragunas on Unsplash

Antelope Canyon, United States

Ladder to Nowhere

(reasonable skeptic)

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Indiana Bible Study

(x = space)

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Indiana Bible Study

(a neophyte in pandemic time)

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I was an interloper

Not really

I had been invited

But I knew no one else

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It was a discussion

Of Saint Paul’s mission

To a group

In a letter to

Another group

See, I was late

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This was on Zoom

And I cannot work it out

Sometimes I was

A black square

Sometimes an image

That was true

(I brushed my hair,

beforehand)

Sometimes I got to write

I was never heard,

Which probably

Was just as well

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I was welcomed

(thank you)

And got to hear

(thank you)

The stories of others

Shared as insight

And later prayer requests

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My friend and I

Talked afterward

(over the phone, which

I can manage)

With a promise to

Rehearse the technology

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But here was a group

To join

That has a life beyond

This meeting

‘Til the next one

And I was invited,

Which is evangelism

In itself

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C L Couch

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Photo by Fré Sonneveld on Unsplash

Power Line Grids

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Something on a Shelf

(x = space)

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Something on a Shelf

(for anyone feeling alone)

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I don’t want to steep

In bitterness

The tea that’s made

Isn’t worth the drinking

Perhaps not even with

The sugar of

Someone else’s kindness

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Try again

From the start

Set aside that substance

(trash it later)

There is an old jar or a new one;

If you remember,

There was savor

In the substance

In the memory

Now a promise of renewal

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Try it now

Reach, if possible

Remember what’s worth remembering

Almost a guarantee of renewal

In the trying

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C L Couch

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Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash

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