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Weathering

Weathering

 

Storms, fire

Firestorms

 

That’s in California

 

Floods, tornadoes

Water-sheets

And other means

Of rain to strike

At us

 

Texas and in Florida

Where sand is

Bagged by convict

Volunteers—on

North through

Eastern USA

 

River-rise in Paris

Art treasures

Moved toward

More-protected

Ground

 

Certain seasons

Start all over (as

In again and

Everywhere)

 

In nature’s timing

And all storms’

Discretion

 

Selfishly, I am

Well above brick

Walkways and

Macadam streets

 

I have electric

In safe measure—

Mostly, though

Not always:

A tree smashed

Into the house

Not so long ago

 

A favorite book,

The Mighty Acts

Of God, a

Faithful book

 

Nature is God’s,

And the Christian

Claim is God is

Love

 

So what is the

Love here?  It

Id that God loves

Us and leaves

Us the means—even

In, and as, a fallen

World

 

Our part to start

Redress is to resolve

To do so

 

That’s it: resolve

 

(The rest follows)

 

5

Low-Flying

Low-Flying

 

Slowly the manta ray

Unfolds and undulates

Descending, like an eagle

 

Of the air, through

Updrafts of ocean water

 

What it seeks I cannot

See, because its urgencies

Are defined so differently

 

Fill hunger?  Slake thirst

That, in water, I cannot

Apprehend?

 

Or fly for delight in flight,

Ripping, tearing through

Sea currents, even while

 

Negotiating their fury

 

Can I fly as slowly as the

Ray?  Must I?

 

Two ways of asking this,

I know: Must I not?  Must

I not?

 

May I?  And, if so,

 

Will I?

 

How much of creatures’

Movements, I wonder,

Depend on will

11

Scribbling Sensations

Scribbling Sensations

 

When I turn other things off,

I hear the air-conditioner hum with tiny teeth

 

I hear assurance from the fan beside my bed

 

I see the vertical textures in the lampshade of

The lamp that doesn’t work

 

I see a hat, purchased for walking, set cockeyed upon

The corner of a vintage-mirror frame

 

I feel soft touches as I type;

I hear the tapping of the keys upon the board,

Like Poe’s raven upon my chamber door

 

While my nose is in it, I smell and taste the coffee,

Hot enough for its vapor mildly to campaign

With warmth through my sinuses

 

I feel pain—more intense without distraction

 

I blink: I cannot hear it, though I know the upper lid

Has fallen on the lower (which will give a little)

and will rise and fall again

 

While other things are off,

I sense the world anew;

 

And, largely—like Genesis and Weldon Johnson’s

Work—I think it’s good

6

Toll-Taking

Toll-Taking

 

Death at UCLA, teacher

And then shooter, then

 

Spouse found, murdered

Before

 

Death-number increases

Of soldiers lost to flood

At Fort Hood in Texas

 

Migrants’ lives lost

Beyond counting, since

Too many die unknown

 

In Mediterranean waters

Or on western Asian

Battlefields

 

Nigerian school children

Lives erased, such is the

The plan of those who

Took them

 

And these are in the

Process of becoming old

Well-worn news, such is

Our way

 

Though beyond blame

Is the stress of bearing

Our world, a planet of

Dying

 

And of sorrow

 

Atlas shrugged, the novel

Claims?  Atlas should

Have wept

 

Charon demands gold

For passage, though the

Real currency is life

8

Sunset Ramadan

Sunset Ramadan

(5 June 2016)

 

I have memories

Of a Ramadan, a

Rosh Hashanah, too

 

I like the Christian

Holidays, but others

From these faiths

Invited me

 

To ritual and cuisine

And, best of all,

Community

 

Love permeates

Actions when they

Are in spirit

Inch’Allah

 

And our God is

Pleased when we

Are one

Shalom

14

Here’s News (and a Haibun)

Here’s News (and a Haibun)

 

(1)

 

Here are three news leads from The Guardian:

The United Nations has for the first time signalled its “human rights obligation” over the deadly cholera outbreak in Haiti that has claimed the lives of at least 30,000 people.

‘It’s only working for the white kids’: American soccer’s diversity problem [headline]

Yesterday, a report came out that said more than 1,000 migrants and refugees have died just in the last week while crossing the Mediterranean.

 

(2)

 

Everyone on all sides of things is falling down.  UN peacekeeping.  Soccer, the world’s sport.  Migrants we don’t count who die.  Doesn’t help my own precarious feelings about stability or sanity in the world.  Doesn’t help the fragility in me or mine.  On this side of apocalypse (only frightening for some), what might we save?  In order to retain poetics, I’ve refrained from news of politics today.  I doubt anymore the answer’s there.

 

(3)

 

Black box of the plane

Black box of refugee’s boat

Black box of sea’s depths

4

EpicalAward4EpicAwesomeness

My recommender!

https://mandibelle16.wordpress.com/

https://mandibelle16.wordpress.com/2016/05/31/award-epically-awesome-award/#comment-10341

 

Rules:

Display the Award in your post, mention your nominator [above], link back to them [link-post above], answer five questions, and nominate five to ten others.

Questions [my replies beneath my nominations]:

  1. What made you choose WP as your blogging platform?
  2. Introduce yourself and tell us about your blog.
  3. Are you a once in a while blogger or a daily one?
  4. Do you wish to publish and if so, what type of book?
  5. What is your favorite thing to do besides write?

 

Nominees

[feel free to respond to the nominations with writing; feel free not to; feel free simply to bask]:

Stray Coffee Breaks (who manages a cuppa with two puppies afoot), https://straycoffee.wordpress.com/

A Reading Writer (who’s been writing about coffee and love, too), https://areadingwritr.wordpress.com/

Invisible World (read Hashna!), https://invisibleworldd.wordpress.com/

Moonskittles (start by simply enjoying the name), https://moonskittles.wordpress.com/

Only 100 Words (for narratives and challenges), https://only100words.xyz/author/sonyca/

Sabethville (for limericks and important translations), https://sabethville.wordpress.com/

AngieInspired (like Archimedes, moving the world), https://angieinspired.wordpress.com/

 

Question Replies:

  1. I don’t remember.
  2. Christopher Leo Couch. Christopher for Christopher Robin.  Leo for my father’s name.  Couch because a thousand years members of my clan made cushions for uncomfortable medieval furniture (otherwise) made of wood and stone.  My blog is about poetry.  I got to know the blogosphere through the Blogging University’s poetry class.  I’ve been writing for years and taught writing, too.
  3. I blog daily now. For maybe half a year by now.  I started the blog while recovering from surgery.  I found writing was one of the few things I could so with relative ease.  I journaled daily (instead of haphazardly) and then moved to the blog.  I continue both daily.
  4. I would like to publish a small book of poetry, hardbound. When going to a bookstore, I go to the poetry section (often having to hunt for it), and it’s a treat when I find a small hardbound (I guess a better work is clothbound) book of poetry.  For instance, Mary Oliver’s poems tend to appear this way.  So my writing dream is this.
  5. Spend time in the world. Be in touch—visit, when possible—with family, friends, and neighbors.  Go to stores and enjoy the strangers I encounter there.  Take drives to nowhere in particular.  Track the world’s events through various media.  Then spend time away from the world.  Have relative quiet.    Read.  Write, often nothing in particular.  Think probably like Pooh-bear.  Enjoy honey definitely as does Pooh-bear.

 

I responded to the questions given, though I imagine others could re-work the questions to suit themselves or to put forth to others.  There’s seems to be good precedence for this in the blogging world.

Thanks, Mandi!

Thanks, blogging community!

 

award icon

11

Harambe

Harambe

 

Hold anger around

Visit with the silverbacks

To promise mourning

6

Sanctuary

Sanctuary

 

Because one is still

 

Does not mean that one is safe—

Life in one cell is open to

Mutation, loss of parts, disease;

 

Life within a prison cell

Suffers from same dangers

 

In detention and in

Isolation

(Even with others in proximity),

 

Under death-order and maybe death-

Watch;

 

How,

 

Fixed under a demon’s yoke

Whose cause is politics,

Who for an idea

 

Has been taken out

Of actual existence?

 

Toward the Southern Pole

(Closer than most of us will

Get), there is a Russian Orthodox

Church—

 

Ten bodies with ten souls within

May worship;

 

The rest know that the church is

There:

 

Triptychs of spirit and of hope

Inside

At the end of the world,

 

Where there is likelihood

Of living through oppression

 

Wrought by nature or assignment.

 

What sanctuary in the prison cell,

Where trapped mind and abandoned

Spirit are closed maybe for a

Final time,

 

Where fear

The only inner company?

 

Andy awaits

Release of one kind or

Another.

 

 

http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/23100

Kidnapped Briton spends 700th day in illegal detention

A British man who is held under sentence of death in Ethiopia has spent his 700th day in unlawful detention, after he was kidnapped and rendered to the country by Ethiopian forces in 2014.

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