Pedagogy
(learning for children)
My sister has an allergy
She didn’t have when we were growing up
I have one, too
An allergy
I did not have before
If we return to anything like childhood
I’d rather it were in another way
But nowadays
Now that we’re older, anyway
And just because
She will have to eschew strawberries
As I have to avoid bell peppers
Then invent it on our own
An aspect of joy and unquantified
Curiosity
That without even a nod
Such as children have
C L Couch
Beforenoon
After coffee
From a broken mug
(I broke the handle yesterday)
After texts
With my sister
(if the car is totaled, remove
the EZ Pass transponder, please)
After sleep
Broken like the mug
After anthropomorphizing
The computer
(the broken cup)
And everything
I have this
A modicum of time
To choose an ignorance of
A pressing world
Freedom that’s a cheat
A conceit
Is this the will that’s free?
I think it should be better,
More aware
Not through lidded eyes
Or lidded heart
Or half-closed anything
A mind in fact that tries to trap—
I can say wall—
Unpleasant things away
Discretion
Might be valor on an open field
Before a battle
Honor, claims Falstaff
Is a body slain
But
Fair fat fool
(how I can relate)
What help providence?
A friend in inner mischief
Pushing distractions off
The field or a working table,
Even real and less-real things
So that we might go through it
Later,
Say,
After polishing the lenses
Until clarity
Becomes our friend again
A presence
Help us look not needing eyes
For everything inside,
Once ready
For everything inside,
We take chances
C L Couch
Image by Republica from Pixabay
The Word I Mostly Let Go By
In Glenshaw,
Pennsylvania (USA)
Where Glenshaw Glass now
Hosts the making of the world’s
Finest vodka
(you can look it up)
Where archaeologists one day will
Dig up the roots of Scotty’s Diner
On Route 8,
There is, or was, a rock
Tall and gray and black near
Some water like a pond,
Dug out by someone
Maybe some Baptists claimed
The place
For the words “Jesus Saves” painted
There
What it was to me:
A left turn from the highway,
Taking us uphill toward the ridge
And on the other side where lay our red-
Brick house in our red-brick neighborhood
We went to church (farther down,
the Presbyterians)
And I had come to know
Something about Jesus
Through a storybook that was the Bible
That our Church School teachers
Read to us
I guess I tacitly agreed
With the rock’s big white words
But mostly
I didn’t think about it
It was at our left turn, taking us uphill
Over the ridge
Toward places we knew better
Than the corner
Hosting more
Impromptu, if not wild, faith
C L Couch
Jesus Saves—I Saw This on a Rock Near Some Water
God is love
What does that mean?
The catechist might ask of us
Not to be tricky but because
The Bible assertion’s actual
It means that
Metaphors have power
That words carry meaning,
Even of an overwhelming kind
That God is love
As God is a spirit,
Another claim from
The same source
A claim that God might be corporeal
In Jesus, as Christians say
Also metaphoric
In a human-drawn creed, as
Fully human, full-divine
But God is regardless and always
A spirit
Something that might not need
A body or a well-known shell of divinity
To be present
Do you believe in legends?
I often do
And I think material
The roses in the mantle
Or the cloak,
Red and real
If we had been there
We could have been stung
By thorns
While lost in wondering
Prodding impulsive touches
But the thorn, the flower
They are love, too
As was the Aztec’s faith
That simply took the flowers
In the cloth
To change the bishop’s
Encroaching unbelieving attitude
So faith is love and change for good
And miracle as well
And so God as love might be these, too
While in and with the spirit
We might take part
Right now
Later on
Whenever love might call
Leaving a message
We call back
C L Couch
Image by Светлана Бердник from Pixabay
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Our_Lady_of_Guadalupe
https://www.franciscanmedia.org › our-lady-of-guadalupe
https://www.catholic.org › saints › saint
The Value of a Wall
In the morning, there is quiet
Most of us waking
Few of us on the road
Though that will change
If we had no vehicles,
How insular we would become
And yet we have all these walls
And we need them
Climate, protection, and privacy
Realities and values
Yet we slide against our walls
Inside, on the floor
It could happen outside
Against the street
Knees up
There might not be cries—
They are not civil—
There will be impulsive tears
Falling one way or the other
Depending on
How we’ve been trained
C L Couch
Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash
Proof for Faith, There Isn’t Any
(then Quo vadis?)
Proof
You want proof
There isn’t any
Maybe in the nautilus
Contemplative-minded people
Seem to like the spiral
Turning and arching toward
Infinity
Lately, I’ve been looking at
Where the spiral’s going
When the photograph is stairs and not
A shell
Often, there’s a black space on
The image
Mystery, an unknown place of
Arrival, I imagine
Sometimes, the square is light
But also undefined
Then there are creative renderings
Steps made of windows,
Graphically
Sometimes of stained glass
Where are we going? all the frames
Of any kind seem
To say
Quo vadis?
I suppose there is in indication
Typically
We are traveling up
Though shift a little, maybe
Going down
Perhaps there is no depth or height
And we are moving in
Into something
On to something
Maybe something good
We don’t know
The final patch is indeterminate
The question, then, remains
Not of proof
But of starting
C L Couch
Photo by Sven Read on Unsplash
This is a staircase in a public building in Munich, Germany. It looks quite amazing from the bottom.
And Welcome to It
I wake up half in pain
My neck is sore, my head full
Maybe I simply didn’t sleep
Enough
The car is at the shop
I’m nervous about that
It could be totaled, technically
I’d go without until
Something else could be arranged
Besides, I like my car
I have to park it on the street
Where someone else could hit it
And she did
I say she to be accurate
A he could have hit it just as well
And added male ego to it
I have a nice, new rental in an alley
And took collision out for it
I know, it’s money sucked into a vacuum
Of a service that will go unused
A gimmick of the company
But at the moment I’m gun-shy,
Which is why the new car
And it’s new
Will be at rest a ways away
I’ll take a walk to and fro,
Which been my week so far
I hope yours is easier
I do have food and a water filter
Fall is on the way
And it is trite and true
That things are tough all over
My world of one, as
It’s one, is not singly terrible, while
On a world of nine billion
It is worse
And it is glorious
Elsewhere
C L Couch
Photo by Louis Reed on Unsplash
A 360 panorama stitched and warped to create the tiny planet effect. Image sequence taken by drone above a community field in Wales.
Here, Good Dog—Here, Sport!
(the only pet my mother let my father name)
Thank goodness, people keep dogs
We brought them into
Our caves
They are our responsibility
In turn, they are our sentinels
Our friends
It’s said they can turn wild
So can we
If you’re reading this and you have a dog, then
Thank you
If you are reading and you are a dog,
Then I’d so much like to meet you
C L Couch
Image by martaposemuckel from Pixabay
Universal Export
(story to relate to)
I was involved in an accident
I wasn’t there for
The car was parked, and someone
Drove into it
Drove into other cars as well
I heard the crash, went outside
There were people, soon there were
Flashing lights
Both ends of the block were closed
A frightened person driving plus
Her children there
(all physically unhurt, thank
goodness)
Who wants to press on that,
On them?
If there was a villain, it was
Distraction
And it fled sometime ago
Now we wait and talk and wait
And talk some more
Now all the procedural stuff begins
My car is gone, as in towed away
For anxiety, I contacted friends
And took a pill
It’s morning now, time to call around
Sigh, sigh, sigh
C L Couch
Photo by Seth Doyle on Unsplash
clcouch123 
Recent Comments