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Very Tall Bill

(x = space)

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Very Tall Bill

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My college roommate died

I saw a blurb in a newsletter

Then went to find an article

He was a teacher

A theatrician

William Kennedy, Ph.D.

Known as Bill to most

And to me

He was a good guy

In the way that guys

That people

Can be good

He was ill

How badly I did not know

I guess the illness took him

At the last

His brother is survived

I knew him some

I knew Bill better

And sometimes wondered

What a pair

So oddly matched

His six-foot and a half frame

(I never really knew

the measurement)

My five-nine

Walking somewhere

At school

And the day we dared

Walk on the grass

Against a rule

To play some Frisbee

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I am sad

Through and through,

It seems

So as if to feel numb

For a while, now

God take and keep Bill

Teaching

Writing plays

Making productions for

Heaven’s revue

I trust

There is Dad’s Root Beer there

In the green room

At the cast party

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C L Couch

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Bill taught and wrote, directed plays for decades in his scholarly, professorial career.

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Comedy and Tragedy masks from the Princess Theatre, Decatur, Alabama

image by Marjorie Kaufman

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38298189

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King for a Day

(x = space)

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King for a Day

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King for a day

His day

Our day

Faithful king

Sinful king

Silenced before prophecy

The parable of Nathan

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We want a king

God gave Saul

Maybe for this next time

God chose a favorite

A paradox

Youth against wisdom

Music versus war

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The height of Goliath

(or of Saul)

Against the reach

Of sling and stone

And the power to be favored

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C L Couch

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in response to a prompt from the Canadian Bible Society for a creative expression of David from the Old Testament (https://biblescanada.com/giveaway)

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Photo by Robert Linder on Unsplash

Vintage photo of a soldier during WWII. Photographer: Charles Wilfred Linder

England, UK

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One Morning, Late

(x = space)

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One Morning, Late

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Dry life

No humours

Those fluids that fill

The body

No mercurial

Or saturnine

Temperaments

No temperaments at all

I’m not sure what happened

Overnight

Something

That has dessicated everything

A sponge of dreams

The drying-out of nightmares

The medication measured out

And gone away

Over the hours

The pores remain

So that breathing

With the world is possible

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A dried-out life

Like the old painting on the wall

Cracks in moving

Brittle breathing

It started on the inside

And meets up with

The magma as it’s cooling

Under Earth

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How does it feel?

How do you feel?

It happens everywhere

In the expanding universe

That also ages

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Time for

Childhood’s end

For God to lift us to

The next step on the ladder

The next step

On the stairway

Call it providence

Call if evolution

Call it providential evolution

Childhood’s end

Time to rise

To go up

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The attic

Of creation waits

When we’re all gathered,

The roof comes off

Our house

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C L Couch

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Childhood’s End is a novel by Arthur C. Clarke.

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Triangulum Galaxy

Photo by Guillermo Ferla on Unsplash

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May Polemics

(x = space)

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May Polemics

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The first day of May

Owned by ancients

And Christians,

Soviets

Now socialists

A day entrenched in green

Because in the north

It certainly must

Be spring

An extra day for Joseph

It was a matter of religion

In repression

But doesn’t the dancing

Go back extra ages

Before the cross supplanted?

Well, in some parts

They all go together,

Which might be something

To think about

Except that mainly folk

Simply have the day

Dance out loud

Or in the mind dance

Reason out

Embrace contraries

All the parts

With each other later

If ever

Happy May Day, folks

Of many kinds

And ages

On the field

All sunlit

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C L Couch

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Photo by Yuliia Tretynychenko on Unsplash

Kyiv, Ukraine

Published 3 hours ago [from 8 a.m. EDT]

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note

William Blake is famously (and reasonably) quoted claiming that “without contraries there is no progression.”  Peter Elbow, a writing and teaching practitioner and theorist, takes Blake’s understanding of contraries in application and in titling his work Embracing Contraries: Explorations in Learning and Teaching.  Both writers and their works tend to resonate with me.

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Witches Night Out

(x = space)

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Witches Night Out

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Tonight is

Walpurgisnacht

Witches night out

We need good witches

We need the magic

And the healing

That come from

Spells and herbs,

Fire over earth

And managed wood

All sharing stories from a sky

Of past and present

Drifting toward a future

Not quite writ

Or conjured

Not yet

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C L Couch

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Walpurgisnacht 2022

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introduced by Doctor Hilda Kring in my (our) college class Folklore and Folk Literature

Walpurgisnacht is celebrated ironically—as a Christian festival and observation and as an occult celebration, too; some take it to be a Christianized, pre-Christian holiday

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Photo by Ashwini Chaudhary(Monty) on Unsplash

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Next Sunday

(x = space)

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Next Sunday

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I am nearly asleep

I can hear the voice

On the machine

Thanks to Vimeo and Livestream

And presettings

It’s a message about Thomas

And doubting resurrection

What we see

What we unsee

And believe in other ways

Don’t be afraid to doubt

The pastor says

He’s preaching about Thomas

Don’t hide the doubt

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That sounds

Savvy

We’re on an adventure,

After all

Before discovery, often there

Is disappointment

If not disbelief

Then we come upon the X

Not that we have to doubt

There are those who believe

From just off the map

‘Til X

x

I thought

I was gone on walkabout

But he’s started talking

About treasure

An old coin

What to believe in

For faith

Doubt is real

Maybe necessary

On the way to faith

(or maybe having left,

walking back again)

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Liberty is a theme,

I think,

In that we are free to doubt

On our own mortal terms

And to believe

With the same set

Of qualities and variables

A search for faith in love

An end to war

Peace talks

At our table

x

The singers rise up

The sermon’s over

Captions appear

Soon I’ll have to turn it off

Get on with my distant day

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C L Couch

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Photo by Jiroe (Matia Rengel) on Unsplash

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Rick o’ the Wisp

(x = space)

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Rick o’ the Wisp

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Even so quickly may one catch the plague?

Olivia in Twelfth Night

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Happy Birthday, Master Shakespeare

Squire Shakespeare

William

Will

Will o’ the Wisp

I’m visiting my brother today

He has cancer

I’ll be you knew of cancer

Even called it that

(unlike in a later age consumption for

tuberculosis)

I can’t recall it from a play

Or poem

But then I hardly know them all

And as it is,

I’m tired and not thinking

Did Lear get sick with something?

Lady Macbeth?

Or the thane?

Was there a balm for the queen

In Merry Wives of Windsor?

Did all of us feel better

In the panoply of spirits

That concludes The Tempest?

Or were we simply reminded

Of a world that isn’t ours

Regretting

Or remaining

Chastely distant,

Keeping to our own?

Well, a

Happy birthday to you, anyway

I’m visiting my brother today

He has cancer

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C L Couch

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Photo by Enrique Alarcon on Unsplash

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Temporary Beautiful

(x = space)

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Temporary Beautiful

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I don’t know

We walk in snow today

If we want to

It fell when nighttime degrees

Encountered would-be rain

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There is wind

To keep it down

For a while

Though the temperatures

Won’t keep it long

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Without worry,

We can hear the muffled sounds

Or spring and morning

Watch the white

Most of which will disappear

Before it’s trodden

Everywhere

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No slush

No pushing it

This way or that

Simply have it

Behold the art

That won’t outlast the Grecian urn

Except by hours

Give credit to

The artist of the

Temporary beautiful

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C L Couch

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“The Artist of the Beautiful” is a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne.  “Ode to a Grecian Urn” is a poem by John Keats.

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Photo by Nadiia Ploshchenko on Unsplash

snowfall January 13th 2021

Ukraine

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4

Flesh, Spirit, and Everything that Matters

(x = space)

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Flesh, Spirit, and Everything that Matters

(for Easter)

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Good Friday becomes Easter

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Good becomes better

Good becomes goodest

Abandonment is over

The teacher has returned

And the homeowner

And we each have a place in that home

It is so large

And always adding

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The wounds are healed

There are reminders;

Mainly (surely),

He is alive

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There was no question that he died

We wept, we keened

We buried

There was a stone

There was a guard

There was no doubt in this

The emperors

And would-be emperors

Clinked their glasses

And sat back,

Sighed

That’s done

The conspiracy is over

Plot succeeded

And we can blame other people

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God and people are

Reconciled

Through life and death

And life again

The absurdity of the final miracle

Over death inexorable

Unavoidable

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And NOT forever

What?

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This is what we know

And now through resurrection

We must believe that

Death is not all

It is not inexorable

It is avoidable

We may die

We might sleep

If so,

We will awake again

How does this happen?

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It is God

Who has a part in us

Who made us

Who is spirit

And flesh

And everything that makes up

A creator

And a lover

And a savior

Immanuel from Hebrew

God with us

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We walk a bridge

That wasn’t there

God is on the other side:

In fact,

We can find out

God is on both sides

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C L Couch

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Photo by Joshua Sortino on Unsplash

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