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Doctrine Inside a Mask

(x = space)

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Doctrine Inside a Mask

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Grace is sufficient

It is miracle

It is salvation

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It is surprise

Totally untimed

Kairos, never chronos

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So what shall we have?

Salvation’s disguise

They seek it here

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They seek it there

We have a

Pimpernel

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A small, red flower

Maybe a Z against the wall

A bag of gold

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Tossed through

My window by

Valentine or Robin Hood

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Or with Meg

Atop the seeing stone

After cosmos-saving

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Or while the saving

Happens (I doubt that

grace is averse to

en media res)

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Stories for our souls,

Enough awareness

For our

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Noticing in time

To say thank you

And our hero’s

Gone,

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Because

Another rescue’s

Needed there

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C L Couch

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the Wrinkle in Time series by Madeleine L’Engle

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image by fabrice Verrier – originally posted to Flickr as Mouron rouge Anagallis arvensis, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11333678

anagallis arvensis mouron rouge Seine-Port avec racines jardin

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…Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is perfected in weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly in my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest on me. That is why, for the sake of Christ, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.…

Berean Study Bible · Download

(Second Corinthians 8-10)

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Hard-Going

(x = space)

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Hard-Going

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The metaphors

Should be everywhere

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The land should be

Replete with them,

North and south

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Here is the quiet earth,

There the earth is passionate

With green,

The seasons are alive

Either with slumber or with

Breaking through

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Both are organic states,

Necessary,

And beautiful

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In the human world,

There should be holidays

And there are:

Hanukkah enjoys a full menorah,

Christmas is but days away

So all is anticipation,

And the colors of

Kwanzaa adorn

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Not to mention, anciently,

The solstice is tilting toward us

More and more;

There will be festivals

Set on stone

Or rather around them

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The planet

With or without our help

In counting

Shall split into seasons

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What is compelling?

I don’t know

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The virus,

The ugliness of politics

In the USA,

Danger in so many other

Places

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There’s room for verse,

The call is clarion

But heavy goes the craft:

Can you feel it?

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Questions deserve answers,

Most of them;

Brittle is the monolith

The keeps on moving

To allow a phallic message

To be realized

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Brittle yet taking

Many hits until it has a

Home or many homes,

Leaving scooped-out earth

So that the

Female has a say

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Though one has to ask

Why the say is always second,

And there are more options

In the day

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It is difficult;

Next time might be typical,

Greeting cards make

Silly sense again;

And the metaphors that

Make the text

And move the world be

Open from the cupboard

Of the Lord

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C L Couch

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Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash

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Snow Living

(x = space)

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Snow Living

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The snow fell several times

in the night.

Now the sun is out on

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ground that is too white,

under blue that is

relief

for clouds innocuous.

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Trucks with blades

but already parts of roads

are closed

because of accidents,

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no doubt caused

by those who think

the weather makes no

difference.

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Stay inside if you can—

advice cast

through

the air and over wires. Yet

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we know how to

live inside,

thanks to

our mutual situation.

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Turn away, perhaps,

from uncurtained

windows.  At least wait

‘til dusk.

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Look inside (instead) to

think about

holidays, vaccines.

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C L Couch

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Photo by Bogdan Cheșa on Unsplash

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2 poems about the snow

2 poems about the snow that’s on its way

(and now is falling)

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Happy Weather People

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The sky is full

Nothing surprising there

It should be snowing soon

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I don’t like where

The car is parked,

Though I suppose anywhere

Along the street

It’s going to be plowed against

When the trucks with the

Big blades go by

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Records will be broken,

So they say;

The forecasters actually are

Excited on the TV screen

With big maps projected behind

Them—well, sure things

Probably don’t

Come their way so often,

Lucky them

For now

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New Testament

(December, MidAtlantic USA)

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Yes, it’s cold

For now, I’m not worried

Should I lose the electricity,

I might die

But I’m inside

Not everyone gets to be

And some are inside hospitals

Too many, in fact

Because the disease

Is moving toward a spike, again

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There is a better message

Still to be sworn in

And better methods in the offing

We’ll all get our shots,

Eventually

And deal with side effects

The chart will have point

And then slide down

The other side

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At least, that’s the plan

Many people

Even when silenced

Or at least shouted down

Have worked on this

And we need

To trust their skill,

Attested by the numbers

Going down

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And we can say

This was

Our generation’s 1918 influenza

To count

To bury

And to weep

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C L Couch

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Photo by Andrew Ridley on Unsplash

Cairngorms National Park, Ballater, United Kingdom

National Park, Ballater, United Kingdom

Pile of Leaves

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Fear of Visigoths

(x = space)

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Fear of Visigoths

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Now is the penultimate:

The warning

On a moving map,

Digitized attesting to

The storm that’s on its way.

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There is an open sun

Just now

Belying all aggression in

A strategy of sky—thank goodness

That we know

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We have a day

To run through all

Remaining shelves

That might have inventory.

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Barbarian invasions

Of the nervous system—what

The virus doesn’t take,

White digits

Of snow warning will.

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C L Couch

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Photo by Scott Walsh on Unsplash

Toronto, Canada

Night Job

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Introductions

(x = space)

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Introductions

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Snow on my small town in

The MidAtlantic of

The USA,

Nothing dramatic—

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It falls and stays

On quiet places

Such as grass

And parked cars,

While on the things that

Sponsor movement

There is only wetness,

Dark and clean:

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On streets and sidewalks,

Moving cars,

And such

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From the waist up,

It seems November

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Today we’re met

With winter

(here and now)

Not in discontent,

A week before it’s due by

The saint’s calendar

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We should take it

A decency

In an indecent year

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C L Couch

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Photo by Aditya Vyas on Unsplash

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Signed, Shakespeare

(x = space)

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Signed, Shakespeare

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It never happened

Maybe for some real estate

Or for companion ownership

In buildings,

In a theatre

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The printing press came ‘round

At last

And with it the first suits

For plagiarizing

But his world

Her world

Dealt in manuscripts

Of which we don’t have any

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For who would want them

When the players

And producers

Are all done with them

And we’ve moved on

In the production season?

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So who was he

Or she?

Shakespeare was

As in existence

And we fight over that

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What’s in an origin?

Ask mothers: they can

Tell you

In love and in labor,

There is a person

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We have the plays as progeny

Thirty-eight or thirty-nine

And all the poetry

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Was the name a pun—with a

Shaky hand, a quill (a spear) to write?

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Maybe it’s to say

I do not care;

How much do you?

I think he was

And is through text

And liveliest

Performances,

Recitations,

Reservations,

Happy box offices

And officers

Plus venues and listeners

For poetry

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Signed, Shakespeare

Has not happened for us

Yet or will

(or Will)

But when the flag is flying

And the gun has sounded,

We go in

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Maybe there will be oranges

To eat

Because they do not rhyme

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C L Couch

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Photo by Mathew MacQuarrie on Unsplash

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Chargers

(x = space)

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Chargers

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Yesterday the car

Broke down, because

There haven’t been

Enough complications

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We could have had

Trains, but we chose

Cars, and I enjoy driving

My small colleague

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That is now sleeping at

The garage where I

Take it, when I have to

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Long-suffering it’s been:

It doesn’t have a name,

I clean it when it rains,

I fill it with supplies

As if it were a buckboard

Brought into town on

Saturday and I for a shave

Above the saloon

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And now and then a horse

For a hero

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C L Couch

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Photo by gaspar manuel zaldo on Unsplash

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Fate Unravels

Fate Unravels

(for Rosema in pandemic time)

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I don’t know what to say

Today, it’s Friday

Hanukkah

Christmastime

Specifically, the Advent

Season

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Who is coming to my house?

No one, for above the

First floor, we are not friends

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We’re good as strangers

And a little worse

It’s so pretty outside

In a pastel way

It’s not as cold

As December should be

Around here

But it’s within the comfort zone

Generally,

Forties to seventies,

And I should not complain

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A murder mystery

And if there’s no one to admire

Or a hero garnering

My admiration,

Then I’m not sure how much

I’ll care,

Since it isn’t real death, after all

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So I’ll close the book and choose another

I’ll choose another day

Simply by waiting,

Persisting through this one

Not that it’s bad

But it’s the same

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Under the aegis of pandemic

An aegis that’s a weight

Upon the mind, the heart, the soul

That we’re supposed to love God with,

All three

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As for festivities,

It’s all right to have them quietly

Under a cellular radar

And should,

Like Penelope or fate,

We have to unloom the loom

Each night,

We’ll have another day

To reweave

With what we have

To raise our masks

Like players on an ancient

Stage,

To love close up

And as current love requires

From far away

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CLC

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https://areadingwritr.wordpress.com/

read her great and open work

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Photo by Josh Redd on Unsplash

Kansas, USA

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