names
Our Lady has a day
Juan Diego anglo named
she gave him roses
(12 December, Our Lady of Guadalupe)
I am Christopher
bearer of Christ and walking
hundred-acre woods
your name is your name
assigned you for a reason
there is a story
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(a series, I suppose, though I think each poem stands on its own)
there are good stories [a line while drafting that I thought I’d let stay on the page]
photo by Aida Batres on Unsplash
'round
I have to leave today
if only
for a while
like
his mother leaving for a walk
around the Hundred Acre Wood
and he asking before
would you like
me
to go with you with her replying
no
but when I return
greet me as if
I had been away
a long time
no mother or
another
to whom to say
that
to
or hear that from
though
needing to leave
also
to return
in a later hour
of this day
having gone around
c(hristopher robin) l couch
Christopher Milne tells the story of the walk and the question in The Enchanted Places. This Christopher better known as Christopher Robin. (And I nearly forgot mentioning that his name was how I got my own. Christopher, not Robin but for him, anyway, my mom really liking the stories.)
photograph by Lukasz Szmigiel on Unsplash
gray time
it’s gray
as if the lightest fog in front
so
light’s ironic
without evidence
but
knowing that it’s time
Earth knows
while
it’s whole around the sun
fractured
since making and
in time
shall have the splinters going through
the core
and
all of us
gray like these days
shall hopefully have left
gone
to
another world that has
tectonically
so far to go
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photo by NASA Hubble Space Telescope on Unsplash
church time December 7
moonlight was used
against
its use
as there was preparation
near
sunlight
to betray as well
on
early Sunday morning
when order
and white uniforms
were torn
apart
and life a tissue by attack
and
everything exploded
while ripped-up men and women
with
children close by
tried to shoot back and
also
run
to stations
and to homes
the attack upon our useful soil
and beautiful
while
we thought
to live there and none
should
bother us by might
and
arrangement
and yet
and yet
empire and
democracy
too much to reconcile
too
divergent for our values
so we fought
with destruction
as the theme and total
the result
so
the agenda
and the strategy
the chaos of attacking
on all
sides
and so the President and Congress
said
this is officially declared
and so to the west
and east
and so many points on Earth
to
call the war
world
second Sunday in Advent
when
the candle’s lit for
peace
and on that Sunday
eighty-four
years the count
the awful
lively
living and the dying there
and then
and how might all politics and factions
reconcile
only
by tragedy
and where there is alliance
or
appreciation
now
new fronts are drawn
between
within
and these days
the radical
it seems
to keep value in the sacrifice
done
and remembered
and to apply
as we tend to think in reverse
reminding
and if owning
of
the greatest sacrifice
become
the saving doctrine
remembered by the seasons
then
and now
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photo by Graddes on Unsplash
Saint Nicholas gold
in secret by night windows
chimneys correlate
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for Saint Nicholas Day, 6 December (19 east of west)
photo by American Jael on Unsplash
Wichita
(somehow the magic)
seasoning scene-setting dark gray passed over by the wind that pushes through some texture in the sky the merest hint of blue between uncertain banks of white before the short day leans a near western horizon closer until the solstice fires might invoke or simply ask for change c l couch photo by Vadim Sadovski on Unsplash
the shining
the sun is
shining
on the snow
the dance
of heat and cold commenced
and should the fun in that
not
be enough then add
wind
all only in hours on short days
thus
to realize
endurance
more than victory
to play
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(while the car is snow-covered and medical directives won’t allow me to shovel or to brush)
photo by Kristina Kutleša on Unsplash
sun angles through glass
by the panes make frames of light
inspiring our art
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photo by Alin Gavriliuc on Unsplash
two poems for Thanksgiving narratology
[narratology = dealing in story (sorry)]
this Thanksgiving
(mutuality)
say
find something to be thankful for
still here
a body
with a spirit inside
a mind
if the high point of that arc
was a long time ago
and everything’s been gradual
since
then
the bandage from last blood test
fell off
somewhere
hopefully not
to create a gross moment for someone
for me
the continuation of a series
gross
if bloody
that began with the first heart attack
or with
fall off the sofa when I was
four or so
and
there was a pool on the hardwood floor
that I could see
this is the past
highlights
or
lowlights
and how do you remember things
your own time
with time
nature
others
your own inventions on your own
and when dealing in
perception based on how others
treated you
that part of the play
when
Eliza says she is a duchess
because Pickering treats him
that way
and
there is
how we treat ourselves
now add the theme of thanks
for the day
Pygmalion/My Fair Lady (cited)
starspeak
and where is God in this
and sad
if not tragic
to
have to ask
maybe it’s because there are no easy
answers on the planet
except the gift
of
itself
in the cosmos
either
except to look with whatever combination
of our senses
to wonder
to measure
too
if there are no numbers for the wonder
we say
in certain liturgies
that
a star is coming
though they’re not supposed to be
loosed from their places
there’s that
wonder
the exercise to call it something else
by which it’s easier
or
to admit there is no knowing
and so let it unbound
unidentify its place
except it flies
and
also famously arrives
with a doctrinal purpose
but that we also leave it
simply as
astounding
also passage in an
extraordinary
narrative
that might beg belief
while
not insisting on its truth
on
what it represents
like the fictive guess
in “The Sentinel”
in which
Arthur Clarke invents a dying star
with
sentient civilization ‘round it
its last explosion
seen over the skies by
magi
of western Asia
and we could write our stories
too
as well as listen to what’s
set
and shared each season though off-season
makes your guesses
takes your chances
give
other versions a chance
allow imagination
serving
as an ironic stretching as a building-up
of credibility
“The Sentinel” is a short story by Arthur C. Clarke. The story is said to be the inspiration for his and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001. (Clarke having written that novel for and from the film.)
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Happy Thanksgiving! which should be a day of thanks for all, everywhere—or of hope for such with those in unthanking situations. (Sorry, need to bring up both.)
clcouch123 
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