Long Earth
Thinking
About day and night
In the spring surprise of
Noting
Blue light persisting
Layered
And
Dissolving in to dark
And yet the longer time
As Earth considers turning
Back
Leaning to favor
Days of planting in the northern
Half
While the southern part
Has winter
A cycle of
Waking
Hibernation
Still for a billion years
Two billions or so
Until a final pressing
To go away
To land upon another world
With the surprise
Discovery
Of its own planetary cycles
And its seasons become
Our own
C L Couch
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
two fresh-baked works from ridiculous to personally at least sort-of maybe/maybe not sublime
Ides of March Eve
(or Pie with a Protractor)
3.14
Forget the year
Pi Day
Have some pie
A tasty metaphor
The circumference of
Which
Requires pi
To be determined
All our work in circles
Determined by a number
A function
That’s unsolvable
And yet
We build our arches
We have all our round things
The math might be frustrated
And sorry to
Computers
But our stone tools
Might have worked just fine
Without it
Without pi
Though it’s Pi Day
So let’s have a slice
That has a
Radius
With somehow
A part
Of the arc around
And maybe not get started
On the spheric calculation
Of
Each blueberry
The Morning Rush
Somedays
I wake
And try to make everything
Fit
Starting in my head
Into a style
If not a way
Simply
A few things to like
Some
Favorite flavors
A few items of clothing
Shoes
That fit easily
A car that might need work
No doubt from
Time
To time
But that gets around
From here to there and back
Again
While I may listen to my books
While on the road
A place to live
That’s quiet enough
Normal noise
Allowed
Even preferred
To gravestone silence
A thought
To work
That I can do
Beyond the blogging
Or maybe learn
A dollar
Two dollars
More
From the daily work
With any decent accomplishment
From the crafting and the
Posting
Though I don’t know
It seems skittish on many glassy surfaces
Inside
To consider
More exercise
Less weight
The national pastime that isn’t
Baseball
And with more study
And some interaction with
Like-
Minded people
Too
A church that I might stand
And might stand me
A life with God
That’s
Wel
Not palpable
For now
But authentically affirmed
And stretched out through the hours
Like
Taffy
Or an impossible balloon
Something with taste
(even savor)
Something to enjoy
Even remarkably
And
You know
It will not happen
There’s not enough allowance
Or belief
From the world
Not simply to help
But to permit
Because our life
Force
Is worked on by so many propositions
That become
Well
Impositions
What
To buy
How to vote
What
To believe as coded by
The pundits some of whom
Get elected
And
I’ll keep my faith
Of course
My discomfit with the world
Hoping for a purer
Uncultish Earth
Fitzgerald
This
Side of paradise
Sigh
Keep waking
And keep dreaming after
Waking
C L Couch
Photo by Kura Tregenza on Unsplash
rest in God
(the habit)
rest
in God
and what does that mean
to rest
and sleep a little more
a little more in depth
and
to have dreams
and to dream well
or to dream of true struggles
that by
daylight
we must live through
and
where’s the resting
maybe it’s to nearly nap
to lie down
or lie
back
think easy
find the divine though easy
almost
fall asleep to thank
and then go down
in safety
for a while
or maybe
it’s
an attitude
for decision-making
to be at peace
even
in this meeting
of a board
or with a family
one person
two
or twenty
and in the situation to have
still-thinking
thinking through in an allied way
not
alone
but with others
who might not all
in the room
yet still
still
we know are present
rest might mean embrace
an arm around
and how can God do that
though
the maker of embrace
without doubt
has a way
to make it
think
make it feel
make it hope
and make it love
(also the inventor
of
love)
so rest in God
and maybe in each other
rest in God
c l couch
photo by Squids Z on Unsplash
“Lotus”
Jiediaosha, Shenzhen, China
Prayer in Search of a Liturgist
And if we pray
Should we find a service
Or something
A box
As it were
In which to keep it
Give it
A liturgical home
A formal place
To live
Like a tabernacle or
A reliquary
Or may our prayer
Rise to the trees
And that’s
Enough
Not even to find a nest
But leave the tree’s tendrils
To aim
Even for soaring
Blue then white
Then to the black of space
Or
Un-Claudius like
Might it be helpful
For a prayer
To descend
Into the ground
To talk with
Seeds
Or to the ocean floor
For octopi-like things or
Expulsive vents
Or to go down
To a kind of nothingness
That you are Lord of
Too
Directionful
Directionless
Might prayer go where it needs to be
Where it un-needs to be
For your approval
And
Somehow
For application
Even without much more
Than itself
By itself
To consider
By us
By tree
By space
By Earth
By depth
By you
C L Couch
Photo by Bogomil Mihaylov on Unsplash
(Claudius in Hamlet declares “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below;/Words without thoughts never to heaven go.”)
The Riddle of the Day
My eyes aren’t fully open
Neither
Is my heart
With all the feelings
Either
While
Of course
Fuzzyheaded
And the day starts
Anyway
You know that this is so
Up for hours
Many
While third-shift people
Earned the right
To sleep
Just now
Yet in
As in yet in thy dark streets shineth
In the last half-moments
Everything
Seems a little
Gold
As if to say
That we pass through every day
A screen
Made particulate gold
You barely feel
Yet
Sets your heart toward me
Then you wake up to me
And then
Decide
How to feel the gold
If at all
To ignore
Or
Behold
The everlasting light
C L Couch
(as with the ancient form, the solution to the riddle speaks
and cited, not as riddling but referencing, is “O Little Town of Bethlehem”)
Photo by N I on Unsplash
Typing Calvinist
Relationships
I’m not good with these
At these
Look at me
Alone
While typing
Word of Earth and faith
As if
I know
At least I have good sources
To go to
And
Yes
This is a solitary act
Traditionally and
Typically
Insofar as that is an operable excuse
But what
Do I know
Whom
Do I
Know
And I don’t know and this
Is doubt
Or course or sometimes when
I refuse to listen
To God
Or you
Or anyone
Too busy with that log in my eye
To see
The virtues of
My sibling people
(who are
all
people)
And while the log means a good challenge
It can be excess
Self-preoccupation
Too
But
Finally to set this down
To set anything on an electron page
Nonetheless
To be
Picked up in an archetypal way
To read
And to respond
This must for you
For all of you
And all for you
There is no reason
Other
Self-expression
Sure
But not enough as we might say
That we are good
And that
Is not enough
C L Couch
(Protestants like work and Calvin liked grace and also Mary; I don’t know enough of Hobbes to say (hah), though I do think most good things go together--say, spirit and flesh; faith and work; readers and writers (when both are good or trying good); voice and text
and with apologies for abstruseness)
Photo by Daniel Lloyd Blunk-Fernández on Unsplash
the familiar way we used to speak
God
you’re here
but there is such a dullness
between you and me
could be an unmoving field
I put there myself
even
unknowing
then to wake to it
and wonder how the barrier
got there
maybe it’s mortality
maybe it’s greed
I’m not sure I know
maybe it’s difference
as in
I’ll come over to you when it’s easy
when the way is lit
thy word
is a lamp
I’ve heard
and are the thees and thous allowed
the ironic use of you
we have let go
the intimate
the way one would say
and has
said
how do I love thee
thou dost prepare
and I should let thee
love
allowing that thou
loves
for creation’s thine
and love's
and so is
mine
c l couch
it used to be that thee was the close way to say you, which is why thee was used in making the Authorized Version and in language overall; ironically, we think of thee and thou and thine as a formal way if at all, and we really don’t, to write and talk and such
references to the Old Testament, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Shakespeare allusion in the photo
photo by Landon Parenteau on Unsplash
Aspen Trees Growing in Saskatchewan Summer [given title]
In the House
I hate the tension in
The house
Do you ever feel it
Does it matter to you
And
Because we never speak of it
I or we
Shall never know
C L Couch
Photo by Bernard Hermant on Unsplash
Maybe at Mizpah
In other
Words
Why don’t we favorably dine over unity
Uniqueness
Feast
The sameness and the differences
If
For interest
Curiosity alone
While we are together
And with
A Mizpah kind of pledge
On parting
If we
Could
To regard each other well
And
Not steal
Or
Swindle
Or politick against each other while apart
Join
Know
Negotiate
Celebrate
Who we
Are
Who we’re
Not
With each other
Risky
Business
Maybe
But the only business really
Whose profit comes in lives and which might
Have
God approving
Waiting
C L Couch
Photo by Paul Blenkhorn on Unsplash
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