Search

clcouch123

I talk you talk we'll talk

Open Search
Category

Uncategorized

The Ordinaries

The Ordinaries

 

The dog is old and that concerns me

It should concern me for me, too

But I am inside and have some idea of

What’s going on

What’s going on with you?

 

It is in ordinary time

Running long between Pentecost and

Advent

With special days in between, such as

All Saints’ and All Souls’

It is our time

As Sean Astin’s character in The Goonies

Says

Down here, this is our time

 

Down here, we are ordinary

I have little idea how time in heaven goes

There was a war there, so we think

Our lore recalls a third of heaven fell

Maybe Eden was

A strategy for getting back

 

What we know is

We have this day

For our old dogs

An aging Earth that sometimes

In whirlwinds

Acts as if it knows no limits

And will live forever

In wildness

Without rules or counting,

Which is amazing

And is dangerous

 

Down south where I am now,

Folk really like their porches

They sit on special outside chairs

They rock, they glide

They tell stories

Sometimes it’s only the weather

 

But tell me there isn’t gospel in this

Good news that after storms

We will recover

And we will meet each other at least twice

Here and in extraordinary living

There

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Jason Chen on Unsplash
3

Every Time I Feel

Every Time I Feel

 

Every time I write

I might mean to do the spiritual

Thing, idea, icon

Proposition

(I know it’s okay if I don’t)

Not to moralize

Though I suppose there is that, too

Not question training, either

 

But to say the numinous is here

Real as a knife

Diaphanous as insect wings

Forever as gravity

(there are fields in space)

Earth itself a lesson for

Eternity

And the need for choice

To have it

 

I think God is present

In the grocery store

Between the dog’s shoulders where

I rub

Riding on the new back bumper

Installed after the accident

 

God is inside the mosquito

Next to the disease

Maybe to apologize

As if to say, you chose this way

Back in the garden

Though maybe you hate me for it

Maybe you want to know I want everyone

To be well

Maybe you don’t

 

There is the book, the letters on a page

The mountaintop, the solid roots

Beneath

God is not these things

But is with them all

And with us in the shallow or the deep

In something no one knows

And the everything under the sun

That no one’s ever overlooked

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Chen YiChun on Unsplash

 

3

Here, Here

Here, Here

 

I’m in another state

Will Microsoft updates find me here?

I suppose if I were atop Curiosity

It were working

They would find me there

Its waves or whatever mingling with

The dust of Mars

 

As an electric refugee,

I’m feeling pretty good

Wide rivers and a mountain range between

Us

Everything I wade through for

And as the troubles of the day

Appointments I can’t keep

Should I have remembered them

Dishes in the drainer

They can relax

Empty icebox shelves

What’s left will have to rot, though slowly

A fine for me for having been

Forgotten

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Patrick Hendry on Unsplash

Goblin Valley State Park, Green River, United States

 

0

Temporary Good Life

Temporary Good Life

(All Souls’)

 

Temporary good life

Big, empty house

Dog by my side, having been fed

Now ready to snooze

The program that he likes

On television

Good coffee for me, the

Human

It is All Souls’

To go with along with Saints’ the

Day before

And the eve before elaborate

With costumes and with chocolate,

Led by carved pumpkins lit

From inside

Or turnips in old Ireland

 

All Souls’ to say that after

Saints (big-S) whose litany

We sang and patronage remembered—

Saint Brendan for the navigators,

Saint Nicholas for

Children and for hookers

(who surprises innocence)—

The rest of us

Should have a chance

For remembrance

 

Maybe the veil

Thinned for Hallowe’en

Remains diaphanous enough

For discourse with those made

Of clay and ash

Now mingled with eternity

Whose memory is not miracle

So much as simply having been alive,

Which is something,

After all

 

We take our pleasures to the graveyard:

Children, candies, and stories

In picnic-style we reminisce

And hope that in repose

All might be well, as

Saint Julian reminds us

In the world that is a hazelnut

(Blake’s piece of sand)

Small, complete, and loved

 

For me, the gravestones have been set

Too far apart,

And I cannot visit

No candied skulls, no fires,

And no proper memories

But those I can have here

With coffee and the dog

Inside in

A borrowed home with dawn

(outside)

Thinking about rising

 

C L Couch

 

 

Image by Susanne Jutzeler, suju-foto from Pixabay

 

3

Broken Pathing

Broken Pathing

 

‘Round here, I guess it’s sinkholes

In other parts, it might be from

An I.E.D.

Or maybe lava turned to magma when

Nature groans upheaval

 

If I were walking, and an unformed line

Broke open before me,

Whether in the moment or who knows

How many hours before,

I’d wonder not only what to do

But also how it happened in the first place

Forming foreboding words,

Don’t cross here, not at this place

Not here

Walk around, if you can

Walk around

If I’m still here by nighttime

I might not tell one darkness

From the other

 

For all we say of woods and bread crumbs

(now ash),

Treasure might be on the other side

Or

A new way home

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash

Yellowstone National Park, WY, USA

The Big Trip | Moody Morning at Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone National Park — Explore more at explorehuper.com/the-big-trip.

 

0

Witchening Hour

Witchening Hour

 

When it’s the midnight hour

On Hallowe’en

Nothing, it’s simply the start of

Another hour

I want witches to appear

And magic manifest

Strange lights and an open doorway

Never there before

An hour for the ghosts to dance

While all of us in costume now

Unmask

The thinness torn

Between two worlds

Maybe mortal folk can

Sashay with the eldritch

 

The thing is that

It might not be terrifying

Simply extraordinary

Occult as in unknown alone

Conjuring an honest gathering

For all of us

To bear an hour

 

C L Couch

 

 

Image by joseph_Berardi from Pixabay

 

0

A Small-S Saint to Guide Me

A Small-S Saint to Guide Me

(still on dashboards everywhere)

 

I’m going on a trip

I’m not sure I know the way

When I arrive, there will be family

To make it all worthwhile

 

It might rain

There will be mountains and

The valleys in between

I hope there will be a cloudy sky

Not enough to rain,

Rather to keep the bright rays off of me

Or, on another hand, a benevolent

Kind of sun

 

A little traveling music, please

The car is old

Not connected

No blue teeth

Still smarter than its owner is, I’m sure

And I have CDs

Like records, only small and shinier

Audiobooks, in fact

Thanks to my friend who swears by them

Now I am an acolyte as well

 

A word before I go

Once done, I’ll have to turn around

To do it all again

Back to small towns and hobbit-holes

There

And, you know,

Back again

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Tabea Damm on Unsplash

Hvalfjarðarsveit, Iceland

Go on a trip. Make an adventure.

 

0

A Call to Worship

A Call to Worship

(could be read antiphonally)

 

We might not have thanked you

Recently for capillaries,

For all the things we cannot see

That keep us going, anyway:

 

The roots of trees

Underneath;

The tunnels through which

Things creep, which break

Up the land

To keep it porous

 

The ozone layer,

Hard to breathe;

The relationship between the

Earth and moon;

The soles of our feet,

When we’re wearing shoes

 

For what gratitude might look like,

If we could hold it in our hands

Like cupped water from

A faucet;

For the pipes set to reach the source

And for the source

 

For hydrogen and oxygen

That come together,

Making a miracle

Of molecules

 

Thank you for the easy and the difficult,

For everything that mixes up

To make our lives

And what we’re gifted with

Today

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Lorenzo Spoleti on Unsplash

Patmos, Greece

 

0

Processional

Processional

 

Color is falling from the leaves

I hear wet tires pressing on the street outside

I have coffee bubbling in a machine

The toaster’s thinking about making me rye toast

(I have to put the bread in

two times)

It’s early, not so early

I have an artificial breeze, cooling me and

Inciting an illusion of faraway and underneath, say,

An Arabian archway on the clean edge of a

Desert

Early in the day

It’s cool there, too

 

Could I ask for more?

Of course, I could

I’m human

But this is pretty good

And I have the keyboard

With electricity

Senses sharp enough to take in more than one perspective

Pretty well,

All things considered

 

A song is playing

Turn around, look at me

Can you see me?

Can you hear me?

Touch me, taste me, too?

Sniff out the wet day with me?

Certainly, you can

And as far as will is concerned,

You might join me in the senses, too

 

I have the coffee, now

First sip (more like a slurp) is promising

Soon, there will be toast

I hear the springs just now

Launching the bread

I will put it in a bowl so I can break

It up and let the crumbs (the

bread ash)

Fall

Like the season

 

I wonder if the bowl was, how it was

Attached to one’s medieval belt

And taken town to town;

Put down money on the bar

To have the bowl filled

With soup or beer

One, then the other

(which first?)

Some work, then on to the next place—a

Forest for the night, maybe near some water

A spire over trees on the next morning’s walking

Signing something built, arising

On the way

 

One piece of bread was enthused,

Leaping halfway out of the slot

As if to say (Las-Vegas style)

This one’s a winner

 

So I guess we have computers, now

And carry on with screens

We don’t hand-write our way;

For most of us

Fingertips touching electrons

Cameras that work in that way, too

Numbers so many beyond the f-stop and

The film speed

 

Well, past time to start my day

I hope you’ll let me think

Of you,

Muse, and all companions

Present and future tense

There you are

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Ahmad Odeh on Unsplash

Dyptik Company – France Dans L’engrenage. Ramallah Contemporary Dance Festival – Sareyyet Ramallah/Palestine.

 

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑