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Conjuration

(x = space)

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Conjuration

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By the pricking of my thumbs,

Something wicked this way comes

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Was it

A curse

Or a conjuring?

Did she invoke

The wicked thing

Of was she

Foretelling

Simply telling

Sisters

And us all

What would happen

Next?

Are they

Prophets,

Soothsayers

Commenters

Like the chorus?

Or worse,

Are they

Seed-planters

Giving Macbeth ideas

That were unformed,

Half-formed,

Fully-formed

Ideas as

Ambitions?

Who made the heroes

And the foils

In context

Of the story?

Who is our

Storymaker,

Storyteller?

Glamis, Cawdor

King

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We who can

Who are allowed

To rise in thought

Have plans

From our ambitions;

Pray we do not meet

The made-up

Or implanted

Witches in the mind

But choose to walk

In other parts,

Another way

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C L Couch

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Macbeth Act 4, Scene 1

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Photo by Marc Schaefer on Unsplash

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The Second Story Mountain

(x = space)

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The Second Story Mountain

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Merton wrote

The Seven Storey Mountain

About his journey to faith

And affiliation

David Brooks has written

The Second Mountain

About the search for a moral

Life that also

Has in it

Brooks’s journey into faith

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There are many such stories

(John Henry Newman, Anne Lamott

Karen Armstrong—I give these folk

in order of reading them),

And high places

Are often an association

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Once we climb, once we achieve

The phenomenal

The numinous,

We end up

On a mountain top

There is, in fact, the mountain-top

Experience,

A trope of faith

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On my way back recently,

I skirted a tunnel torn up for construction

And drove over two mountains

As an unmarked detour,

Taking roads who edges were too near,

Too sharp, too narrow

I was scared

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And wondered among things while driving

How folk could live on either side,

Having these as ways

To take a normal day

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I don’t like heights

I don’t like driving off the road, either

It’s all done now, and if I’m smart

I’ll never take that way again

There was a mountaintop, I guess

There were two such tops

I only noted a change in incline

Down from up

There was not a park or anything

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A pullover,

A bench with an inscription in huge letters

Come and have your mountaintop here

Rather the only words I got

Were my own

That said, don’t look down so much

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I’ll live in the valleys,

I suppose,

And have my faith life there

Or at the oceanside from time to time

It’s not stormy weather

That I mind

Though someday it should take

Me home

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I’m sorry, this is more a story

Than a poem much cleverer,

Not much more

Than talking

In the room

Over coffee or some such,

Should we be meeting

At a table

Or in comfy chairs

Or with both

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I have my life of faith, such as it

Might be

I hope, I even pray, that

You have yours

In a healthy sect or tradition

That suits you and

Creator and

Creation

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Fits you like a story to

Which you return

Time and again

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C L Couch

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The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton

The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life by David Brooks

Route 641

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Photo by Fabrizio Lunardi on Unsplash

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Alternatives

(x = space)

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Alternatives

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We get messages

From the front

It’s not our front

We read about Ebola outbreaks

That are not ours

Unsafe water

Not in our country

Well, there’s Flint

And all the systems that

Are going bad

But we have plastic bottles

And filters to shove under

Our faucets

Until our systems

Are repaired

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We hear of civil wars

In other countries

But they don’t happen here

Except for hate

Two parties at each other’s throats

And so much violence

On the streets

In schools

In homes

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We see, it happens everywhere

The devil’s stratagems

And our own

Inside us

Once we’ve stultified the good

And the alternatives

That the buzz inside our ears

Behind our eyes

Wherever

Telling us it’s too crazy

To imagine

To start

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C L Couch

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Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

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Earthy

(x = space)

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Earthy

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These are the scents,

what I smelled as I was

driving back from Pittsburgh:

coal and tar and asphalt

as if mixed together, a

smell I can recall from childhood when

in the city;

manure, may times, because

it’s planting time;

plant-life already grown and

emanating from blooms in trees,

perennials along the road;

whatever smell

a clear, cold sky possesses

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C L Couch

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City of Angles and Approaches

(x = space)

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City of Angles and Approaches

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Steel city

Iron city

City of bridges

Renaissance city

First gateway

To the west

City of immigrants

City of technology,

Once heavy manufacturing

Collapsed

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City of

Corporate headquarters

Three wide rivers merge

The Allegheny and the Monongahela

Meet to form

The Ohio

Cargo moves from Pittsburgh

Down the Ohio

To meet the Mississippi

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City of

Great universities

And hospitals

Expensive housing

While expanding

City of neighborhoods

Old

Entrenched in the best way

And changing

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City of

Triangular streets

(those three rivers)

Midwest

Meets Appalachia

Mines and mills

Mostly closed

With careers and lives

Changing or still

Like statues without hearts

As well as movement

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Life must move

This great city moves

My childhood home

I leave and return

Come back, it says

Drive through the tunnels

And behold me

Take the funiculars

Again

Gaze at me from

Mount Washington

I am here

For so many people

I’m here for you

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C L Couch

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(on the last day while visiting with family)

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Photo by Meriç Dağlı on Unsplash

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1

Demons in the Corners

(x = space)

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Demons in the Corners

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Sometimes

Sometimes it seems

Too hard

There is too much that’s

Jagged like or as

Broken glass

Pieces that penetrate

That draw bright blood

Of one kind

Or another

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The world hurts

Because some people

Want it to hurt,

The cost

Of doing business

Raking prophet

Winning war

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In these strategies,

Theology is far away

There is no discussion of

Depravity,

Nearly original sin

Or otherwise

This is not a point of doctrine

We are mean in every way

Because we want to be

We want to wield something

As if it’s ours

And if it’s yours

At cost and sacrifice

So much the better:

I keep my things

And don’t care

If I lose yours

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This is mining Earth

(of any kind

of any kind)

For money

For tremendous feeling

Mortal glory

Fame or infamy

Two sides of

A silver coin

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In judgment, counted with

The other coins that paid

For Earth

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Conviction, sentence from betrayal

But that is sometime

Not today

At least is doesn’t feel that way

And we have plans

Today

We the profiteers

Are winning

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C L Couch

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Photo by Ricardo Gomez Angel on Unsplash

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The Second Day

(x = space)

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The Second Day

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The day

After resurrection

Jesus appears to many

There is work to do

After the great miracle,

It seems

Affirming what Mary

Has said

Showing marks of wounds

To Thomas

Teaching, still

Cooking fish beside a fire

Talking about metaphors

Of sheep

Hoping Peter understands

Then after many days

Of words and signs

A leavetaking

Leaving instructions

Until he should come back

Having left a promise, too,

Of help

Like his

In fact, him still

This person will indwell

Like blood, like bone,

Like organs

Like thoughts and feelings

That’s pretty close

Inside

A guide

Someone to speak to worth

 A presence, bearing

Through the times

Of pleasure and of pain

The ease of life

The things we never think

To get through

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It’s a busy time

After Easter Day

There will be letters

Words

Greetings, admonishments

Compassion

Affirming of directions

These all will last

In the book through Revelation

Until, in fact,

Parousia

And the obvious way to do it

Spirit inside, outside

All partners now

Treading the new fields

Of new Earth

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C L Couch

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Interested Bunny waiting for food.

photo by Stefan Fluck on Unsplash

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Breastplate of Not-Saint Christopher

(x = space)

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Breastplate of Not-Saint Christopher

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God of love,

Hear us

God of glory,

Call us

God of peace,

Correct us

God of provision,

Guide us

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God of heaven,

Bear us

God of story,

Teach us

God of origins,

Remind us

God of chemistry,

Shield us

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God of mercy,

Heal us

God of joy,

Thrill us

God of anger,

Love us

God of light,

Care for us

God of darkness,

Guide us

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C L Couch

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Equestrian statue of Joan of Arc by Paul Dubois, Saint-Augustin Square, Paris.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16872826

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heat shield

(x = space)

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heat shield

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the bottom part of spaceships

burning through the atmosphere

like the bush

without consumption

(hopeful)

saving those inside

to land

and tell the story

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frost over winter’s

sleeping seeds

the surface or the ocean’s

skin of condensation

human skin that

tries to keep intact

all that’s coursing beneath

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shields

under which

we live

and move

and have our being

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and faith in these

like faith in God

forgotten in the moments

of the living

calculating rescue

modulating pleasure

coming home

when tired

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created

put-up

somehow provided

the ozone that we shake

the atoms that we split

inside lead-and-concrete structures

while we are cognizant

and hopeful

for what’s happening inside

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we need these

we forget them

sometimes late

we recall the need

for maintenance

small

seasonal

or cosmic

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sometimes

like a cloud

to touch

should one be

unprepared

one thing covers another

a parent’s arm or

a friend’s for a friend’s

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whether cloud

or branch

or wing

or human flesh

don’t doubt

there’s love in there

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c l couch

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photo by Frank Zhang on Unsplash

(caption presumably by Frank) This is the bottom of the space shuttle Endeavour, which currently sits at the California Science Center in Los Angeles. I noticed the patterning on the bottom of the shuttle, probably the heat shield.

(note by me—looks like its own via dolorosa)

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