Good Will
The world is crazy now
Because it’s captured Christmas
But in quiet streets from houses simply lit
Against all garishness and harshness,
It is released again
And is
More so
The ransom of the wise
Of love,
Having been paid
By those who pray and help so much
Illuminating life
Nearly
In secret
C L Couch
https://www.flickr.com/photos/etolane/349044647/
Hear My Cry
A featureless sky that nonetheless tries to speak of snow
An unremarkable day in which the world
Might be saved through
A sky-sound,
A child’s word, or an animal’s cry
Something to break the kind of silence strangled
From an utterance of need and hope
C L Couch
Stops
I was waiting
Under the roof of our bus stop,
A structure built of brick
And heavily painted many times
A weekday afternoon, after school
The PAT bus arrived and I got
On
The bus moved on the winding
Way that was Mount Royal Boulevard
Downhill through Etna
Onto the Ohio River road
Crossing the Allegheny on
The George Washington Bridge
Downtown in Pittsburgh
I left the bus through folding
Doors near
Mellon Center
Walked to the Alcoa Building then inside
To find my father in
His office on an upper floor
We had dinner somewhere in
The city
Then walked to the Stanley Theatre
For
A showing of Kubrick’s 2001
Seventy m-m on a screen
That was maybe silver
I was thirteen; it was my birthday
The movie plot was long
And deliberately enigmatic
I liked the
Sci-fi scenes
And then it was all over
All of it
There would never be another day like that
I suppose
Suburban adventures
Don’t happen
Like this anymore
Too far, too dangerous
Too much for one child to negotiate
But on that day
Nothing bad took place
And my year turned
Just the same
C L Couch
I’m facing another surgery for my heart. I can’t say I’ve been feeling well, because I haven’t. I’m sorry for not being more interactive. I do enjoy reading your works.
Christopher
Destination
God’s plan
We don’t know it
Shouldn’t try
We have a code for life
It’s about sheep and goats
And a golden mean
Commandments and a wheel
And the
Way
This is enough
Certainly, our records show
We’re hardly successful
In these
Our actions tell too much
Failure by choice (so)
Dare we know
All the plan
When we reveal such small willingness
About
The instructions
C L Couch
All Fall Down
Horses caught
In California wildfires
I want to care about
The rest
Humans hurt and houses lost
Land that will not recover
Easily if at all
But I wonder if they were freed
Or caught on the wrong
Sides of fences
Were they kept in barns or stables
Or were they let free
Could they run from
Terror
Irony
It’s in their veins, the capillaries, the
Marrow of their bones and nuclei
Goading
Their extraordinary muscles
Gifted by Apollo to
Own the sky
Then what is left
When hair and flesh
Are burned, and bone at last
Fails and falls into ash
Will all unbound furies merge
As all mortalities
Risie into heaven where
Animal innocence cleanses all,
Teaching human souls
To gallop, how to dance
In resurrection
C L Couch
Gubbio
Brother wolf,
Please do not kill our livestock
And we will feed you
From our doorsteps
The wolf complied
And was, in fact, much loved
Before he died
When he was mourned and remembered,
Bits of glory
And this story
C L Couch
From “The Little Flowers of St. Francis of Assisi,” 1476
https://www.fisheaters.com/animals6.html
The Parable of Nathan
(2 Samuel 12)
David was the king
Nathan in the court
Prophet, one of what had once been
The ruling group
Nathan told David about
Someone rich with money, lands,
And livestock
Who stole the one sheep of
His neighborhood to have
A feast of mutton
Who is this thief and murderer of
Law and goodness,
The monarch demanded
Nathan taught
He prophesied a lesson
Timeless truth to borrowed power
(Which is all the power there
Is)
This thief of God’s provision
Nathan said to David,
It is you
C L Couch
Fascinatin’ Rhythm
My room is like the cenobite’s cell
Because I must stay here
Though it is the hermit’s joy
Less and less to move
I want my car outside the door—nothing
Much, it simply gets me there
That’s the promise I want:
That I can leave, find faster air outside
Enjoy a slight change in dimension
A single shift in the horizon of my own events
Only enough for this, yes, this is how well I
Want to be
Today
C L Couch
(title borrowed from the Gershwins, Ella Fitzgerald, Eleanor Powell)
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