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Nearing the Solstice, Eastern Pennsylvania

Nearing the Solstice, Eastern Pennsylvania

 

At this time of year,

The sun will set over Main Street

And traveling west will be a challenge

An illusion in dropping the visor

On the driver’s side

(it won’t do much of anything)

The town isn’t an observatory

The angles are not checked

Against the movement of the Earth

Unless Google Earth

Or NASA

Or NOAA

Or the observatories at Dickinson

Or Penn State might do that

Above my little street

In my small town

 

What I know is that the sunlight

Will hurt my eyes and make me

Wish I and all the other cars in motion

Were someplace else

For a little while

 

What I don’t know is the timing of the solstice

Is the road, as it goes east or west,

A Stonehenge kind of needle?

Will the sun on 21 December

Take a Druid turn

To match the light that splits

The altar there?

 

Many of our roads are built upon

Native paths set centuries ago

Maybe they were marking time in an

Old way, and we are

Its surprise

In my age that simply wants to get

To the next town in time for dinner

 

Funny how these layers work

Moderns upon ancients

Unwary of the centuries

That moved upon on the ground

As though we were traversing with

The spirits of creation

 

All to give me trouble with my eyes

Driving to friends’

On a Friday afternoon in December

 

C L Couch

 

 

(at) http://dzhingarov.com/celebrate-winter-solstice/

reminds me of a painting by Bruegel or by Bosch (the life that art imitates)

 

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Ashen

Ashen

 

In a corner of

Winter-quiet

I have borrowed,

Since everything

Is lent from God

Even the words

 

Note what we take with us

Nothing but some spirit

And flesh, which will need renewing

 

I wonder here

In the great gray sky

Or underneath the ashen earth

Or in refugee molecules of

Water, trying to escape

Once the desert rain is done

 

About what quickens everything

Who decides

How and why

 

In what is my hope today

My reason

Validation for my purpose

For anyone’s

Anyone who seeks the truth in light

 

For the darker reasons

Tread another path

They disappear

I do want to go with them

 

My hope must be in

God who has arrived

Bringing a longer day

And promise of green seasons

 

coda

 

I am impatient and unknowing

Unknowing and still impatient

Insight comes in parts

In fits

In gold-hot coals

That want to touch the tongue

 

There is a price for growth

Sometimes only for

Having another day

 

Sad assessing,

There it is

It does not count for grace

And considers nothing of

Another’s mercy

 

We have the day

We have the moment

What shall we do

 

Why not live

Uncertain of the defining

But having it

A spark if not a prophecy

 

Is having life reason enough,

You know, it is

 

C L Couch

 

 

Wikimedia Commons (image)

 

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Old Dachshund

Old Dachshund

(a parting)

 

If I haven’t already told you,

Old Dachshund has died

He lived years beyond

The average for his breed

He was friendly and mischievous

(both, always)

 

He loved the life that rushed

Through his black nose shiny

(not unlike Rudolph’s red)

To the painter’s brush-tip of his tail

Consuming energies of no mean quantity

From his own exuding engine

 

Old Poodle persists

He wandered as if lost for a while

He can still jump a little

With an assist (admittedly)

So that he may join Mom and Dad on the sofa

When it’s time

 

It’s sad about Old Dachshund

We wonder how we will get on

We will

 

It will be long-going for a while

‘Bye for now, Old Dachshund

Co-maker of insistent verse

In

Sniffles, whines, and barks

That might invoke a muse

To bless the space irascibly, too

Around his little

Universe

 

C L Couch

 

 

https://dumielauxepices.net/sites/default/files/sketch-clipart-dachshund-764596-9565772 (png)

Picasso

 

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Revenant

Revenant

(Advent or anytime)

 

This is my country now

We brutalize the families

At the border

And the young who attack them

We can remember what

This did to us in Viet Nam

If we want to

The enemy had wrecked the families

First, and then we had

To finish its work

It was strategy

What is this?

What child is this?

 

For every war we cause with someone

Small,

We make it harder for the Christ child

Or any child

Any family

To come here

 

C L Couch

 

 

Reuters

This photograph by @Reuters shows the United States of America firing tear gas at women and children.

 

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Silent Mortal Flesh

Silent Mortal Flesh

(Advent or any beginning)

 

It’s a mystery

A season

Then eternity

Each day feels eternal, doesn’t it?

The hours move, and we are here

Sometimes there is pleasure

Sometimes there is a burden

They are a gift, though it can be hard

To feel that,

That show a part of what’s to come

But there’s so little to know

For sure

 

What can we be sure of?

That we are here and we were made

We got here somehow, even if it

Seems sensible to call it random

Random is

Part of the mystery, too

 

So many days

So many people

How can Earth bear it all?

But it does

Time, too, that seems to

Draw the seasons out

And give them passage

Through channels of sameness

And difference

 

Someday we’ll know

A mystery like dye removed

From food or fabric

But maybe in a still and quiet hour

In an empty room

 

Let this season start

It’s what we’ve had

It will be new

 

Ponder what is here

And what is descending

Not like something falling

An apple dropped from a tower

But like a bird

Fast or slow

Surely to the ground

 

Begin transacting with the Earth

Whose vibrations in return

Will resonate with who we are

And what we have.

Like mystery,

And, like

Mystery, letting the new season change us

 

C L Couch

 

 

Uploaded by: marabu

http://absfreepic.com/free-photos/download/candlestick-on-the-wood-4000x3000_40197.html

 

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Gilgamesh

Gilgamesh

(in memoriam of Enkidu)

 

There is no justice

The gods cannot reveal

Who deserves to live

And who must die

They are not strong

Their fickle weakness

One way the wind blows, now the other

There is nothing to rely on

No mercy

No respect

No consideration

 

Rank and merit have no meaning

I am king

And hero

And I could not save my friend

The one I found and fought

And from whom I learned

That to be a god

One should be human, first

Then with both natures

Understand the world, at last

 

My heart is severed from the rest

My mind burns

With fire:

Regret, loss, shame

Lack of understanding

With nothing

Nothing

I may do

Though I would cleave infinity

Face the worst beast I have yet to meet

More so than the Beast of Heaven

With no sword

But with my soul, alone

For my friend’s return

 

C L Couch

 

 

By Anonymous (Mesopotamia) – Walters Art Museum: Home page  Info about artwork, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18784557

Early Middle Assyrian cylinder seal impression dating between 1400 and 1200 BC, showing a man with bird wings and a scorpion tail firing an arrow at a griffin on a hillock. A scorpion man is among the creatures Gilgamesh encounters on his journey to the homeland of Utnapishtim.

(Wikipedia text, “Gilgamesh”)

 

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T Time

T Time

 

Broken leaves are on the way

To atomized

The shield of fall is broken in with

Winter

It’s always a time of change

Don’t we know that?

 

I like my rituals

And of one kind or another

Know we need them

 

But retrograde is for the Earth

In winter’s northern

Declination

We can’t live angling back

We’ll only know eternity ahead

It’s our way

Don’t like it, take it up with God

If, tremulous, you can ask about the manners

In creation

 

Motion lives

Rest, that’s important

Forward, then, is not that way

But this

 

C L Couch

 

 

By 松岡明芳 – 松岡明芳, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11701874

 

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Sky-Song

If only

If only

The stars weren’t so lonely

They wander in grace

And season of space

 

Sky-Song

(for Camden)

 

We have what’s good

Using it, should

A beach and a wave

And all of it save

 

Earth-songs we’ll sing

Seasons we’ll bring

We’ll have the nights

Gifts into rights

 

Peace ends the war

We come so far

Foes into friends

Newly-won ends

 

Aspects of grace

Seeing God’s face

Hearing the voice

From which we learn choice

 

Woman, man, child

Glory in wild

When fed the least

When we serve the feast

 

Finally, yes

Faith our best guess

All of it right

And we’ll have the night

 

C L Couch

 

 

(image)

NASA, NASA TV

 

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Process-Serving

Process-Serving

 

The morning is enlivened

Mister Coffee’s gurgling

Hot water’s running for the dishes

I wouldn’t call this a quickening

But the day feels

More official, now

 

The typing here is quiet

No touch-typing, certainly no

Banging on a manual

Keyboards are largely quiet

Except when many clack together

The monkeys writing War and Peace

Why is it War and Peace

That’s cited in the hypothetical—

Why not Origin of Species?

 

Maybe we should write “War and Peace”

A hundred times on a blackboard

To value the former, keep the latter

And then

 

Write something new

Something with words that

Anyone might apprehend,

Which elevates the need for language

 

First steps taken by Cyril and Methodius

When evangelizing on the steppes

The factions understood

Not them, not one another

So the mission’s gift of love was

Words to hear

For those who would

 

But back behind a half a world

I have coffee

And a program loaded

Time to listen to the birds outside

And scratch black tracks of claw marks here

The solution

To an ancient riddle

Letters across the page

 

Pauses and diacriticals

Maybe to make meaning

Form a message

Then to send it

 

C L Couch

 

 

Public Domain (Pixabay)

 

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