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Burkina Faso, West Africa

Burkina Faso, West Africa

 

Six were killed there

It should have been a weekend

Free for church

We want to think of Sundays that way

 

We should learn in school

About the capital

Exports, imports

The crops

The official languages spoken there

 

There should be geography of land

Not forensics after

Execution

Sometime some of us might want to go there

Twenty million of us want to live there now

 

C L Couch

 

 

By darrylkeith, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57456988

Dust storm @ Inata Gold Mine

 

The End Is Near

The End Is Near

 

The Earth has four billion years already

Only one billion remains

Our star will expand one day

(well, over an eon)

And finally we will lose the light

 

Some say it’s tomorrow

Or later on today

(after tea, I hope)

Some engender crime and madness

Pray for it, vote for it in others

If we make it bad enough

The Lord will come to sort it out

After all, aren’t we right

To invoke a

God?

 

God might have other plans

We know God does

God gave us the notion in the first place

Of the notion

That a plan sometimes is good

But don’t program the

Spirit of the

Lord

The

Savior’s not for turning

Not for the to-do list of some kind

Of faithful

 

We should do well

We should do good

Is that so hard?

Evil done for good is, well,

You know

And that’s crazy thinking

More so to enact

 

Thomas Becket knew

Joan d’Arc, too

Listening for God

To follow through

Is mad enough

For virtue

The end is near for valorous

Much better

 

C L Couch

 

 

The Passion of Joan of Arc, 1928

 

 

walkabout

walkabout

 

bildungsroman

coming of age

if this happen later,

we call it a midlife crisis

three score and ten

we want more time for

the journey

we’ve been on, anyway

 

but differently—

might we walk this together?

we are barriered by language

and the need for utterance

but on the inside, there is distance, too

what is willed

what’s autonomic

the bits of meaning that become

our thoughts

we are alone and alone

 

parts everywhere

like a hardware store

(no, won’t say a junkyard

though I like the yard’s aesthetic)

I could say garden

or department store:

the idea is that everything’s in pieces

and there are connectors

 

bolts

screws

boxes in rows

fertilizer

(mulch)

ligaments

and neurons

so everything is disparate

and it’s not

 

if you take my hand when I pray,

the praying’s shared

we can share over distances as well

and when we say we die alone

I wonder

you may wonder, too

everything might go together

so much more than we know

 

c l couch

 

 

Alto del Perdón (or Sierra del Perdón) on Saint James way

Loutre1980 – Own Work

 

God Loves Ewe

There are harsher things to write about today.  Maybe tomorrow.

As I was working, the song came to mind “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.”  I imagine the song will be with me for a while.

 

 

God Loves Ewe

 

God loves the lamb, the ram, the llama, and alpaca

All the cats and dogs

Chickens, too

The duck-billed platypus (is there another kind of platypus?)

Angel Falls

And the Panama Canal

New York City, Moscow, Beijing

Alice Springs, Nazca, Tecate, and Palikir on the island of Pohnpei

Midway Island

Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania

 

God loved the dinosaurs

And maybe somewhere loves them still

God loves everyone who’s come before

Who will arrive today

And go home tomorrow

 

God loves the ewe

And God loves you

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Om Prakash Sethia on Unsplash

Bhubaneswar, India

“Her life lines.”

 

Junior Classic, Illustrated

Junior Classic, Illustrated

 

I saw an image of a dhow

First time in a comic book when

I was young

Good place to find it—

Looks and words of far-off places

Among them those that don’t exist

For that’s what

Comic bookx are for

And for the youth

In any age

 

A small, Egyptian ship

To carry color, set a story

Spark something in the head

And all longing internal parts that

Want the story

To be real

 

Then, I read slowly

I read slowly now

And for my sins became a teacher

Of all kinds of text

But the text that draws me in

Is

 

Once this happened

 

C L Couch

 

 

Dhow in the Indian Ocean near Zanzibar

Muhammad Mahdi Karim – Own work, GFDL 1.2, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13092508

 

 

Solacing

Solacing

 

I’m tired, but it’s the kind

Of tired that comes from sleeping for

A while,

Waking up and wondering what time it is

The clouds and unspring-cool help

This along

But it’s not unpleasant disorientation

I know I’ll rise

And this day will happen

 

Coffee and toast,

The closest thing to routine

It seems allowed

A normal day, what’s that?

I couldn’t tell you

I don’t fear boredom but

I fear being dull

Like the poor boy Jack

 

Life should have sharp edges not

For cutting but for

Carving toward brilliance

As if whittling wood could

Somehow make a diamond

 

Nature says hello

Me, too

I hope we both cooperate

I’d like you to have this day as well

 

C L Couch

 

 

(smoky diamond, public domain)

 

Rainy-Brained

Rainy-Brained

 

I don’t know what to say today

As our flood waters rise

The water’s in the wall so tall

I see the damage with my eyes

 

But I unlike the waif am safe

Though here or there’s a crack

I will not risk my life (a knife)

Here I’ll be should you come back

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Herrmann Stamm on Unsplash

 

A Hop Among the Tombstones

A Hop Among the Tombstones

 

Stayed there while I wrote

The graves go back to colonial times

One of the graves is under the church,

Which makes it a crypt, I guess

 

There is a low, stone wall

Everything is gray except

The grass in sunlight

And the robin

 

Brown and red

And still for now

So I might know it better

And, oh, so alive

You are now

I’m thankful

 

C L Couch

 

 

Not the robin I saw, this is a chick.  I like its attitude, if personified (maybe not).

Galawebdesign – photographer (Wikimedia Commons)

 

Invocation in a Parking Lot on a Saturday in Spring

Invocation in a Parking Lot on a Saturday in Spring

 

I’m here

You’re here

You’re where I was

 

Even when I don’t know

Or might choose otherwise

Such is sin

You do better than the

French

And the Pimpernel

You don’t hide

It was Adam and Eve who hid

For vanity and shame

Pointing everywhere

But to the heart

 

Wake my heart, O God

Goad me to love, as you must

Because I won’t have it any other way

 

C L Couch

(drafted there)

 

 

Photo by Hendrik Morkel on Unsplash

Gelnhausen, Germany

 

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