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Daring

Daring

 

God, I relent

I love you

And I need you

Need your peace

I don’t know how to earn it

My ego efforts garnered

Wrath instead

But simply, keenly through me

I am exhausted

Sin and ranting about sin

Dreams of persecution

Ides of March

The statue of Pompey waits

For blood to paint the base

 

For all the darkness

Turn to judgment day

Wake me, Lord

Rather to a better day

A day with light that’s blue and real

Showing me another way

An approved sun

Love increased by

The breastplate that’s

Around, above, below, behind

Love can do that

 

Invade like an unrelenting force

Or withstand a worldly storm

It can come unbidden, unrelenting

But I’m asking

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Jansen Yang on Unsplash

Saint Patrick’s Breastplate, a Prayer of Protection, also known as The Deer’s Cry, The Lorica of Saint Patrick or Saint Patrick’s Hymn, is a lorica whose original Old Irish lyrics were traditionally attributed to Saint Patrick during his Irish ministry in the 5th century. In 1889 it was adapted into the hymn I Bind Unto Myself Today. A number of other adaptions have been made.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Patrick%27s_Breastplate

 

3

Gatherings

Gatherings

 

There are many thoughts

In the in-between

Waking, prior to rising

But now there’s light and rising

Ablutions, coffee-making

And they’re mostly gone

Damn

There were some good things

There

 

Now I have to work it

Strive to half-express

Not give everything away

Not only because I do not know

But also so that, you know,

There is something

For you

 

It’s all for you at last

I will be absent

This is what you will have

Copyright and other

Social niceties aside

This it’s yours

As anyone who sets these down

Might say

It’s all for you

 

So what do we have?

We are in a circle

(please sit down)

Taking part in great

Ordinary meaning

These circles happening anywhere

Or so they should

To share responses

And like Pietists

To temper revelation

Our event horizon, so to say,

Is now and what’s next

A crisis, maybe

Always an opportunity

Remember to be civil

Give everyone a turn

Don’t let one thing take over

Though everything is bias

 

That’s okay

It has to be

It’s natural

Impulsive

It’s how we were made

And if you don’t go for making

It’s practical, alone

 

Our circle might contract

Better to expand

To divide when a certain number’s reached

Nothing wrong with chapters

We can communicate

We’ll need an index

 

But this will be

Good turning and good living

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Sebastian Schuppik on Unsplash

Berlinka, gallery café & bistro, Slovakia

 

4

Pedagogy

Pedagogy

(learning for children)

 

My sister has an allergy

She didn’t have when we were growing up

I have one, too

An allergy

I did not have before

If we return to anything like childhood

I’d rather it were in another way

But nowadays

Now that we’re older, anyway

And just because

She will have to eschew strawberries

As I have to avoid bell peppers

 

Then invent it on our own

An aspect of joy and unquantified

Curiosity

That without even a nod

Such as children have

 

C L Couch

 

 

Image by Merio from Pixabay

 

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Beforenoon

Beforenoon

 

After coffee

From a broken mug

(I broke the handle yesterday)

After texts

With my sister

(if the car is totaled, remove

the EZ Pass transponder, please)

After sleep

Broken like the mug

After anthropomorphizing

The computer

(the broken cup)

And everything

 

I have this

A modicum of time

To choose an ignorance of

A pressing world

Freedom that’s a cheat

A conceit

Is this the will that’s free?

 

I think it should be better,

More aware

Not through lidded eyes

Or lidded heart

Or half-closed anything

 

A mind in fact that tries to trap—

I can say wall—

Unpleasant things away

 

Discretion

Might be valor on an open field

Before a battle

Honor, claims Falstaff

Is a body slain

But

 

Fair fat fool

(how I can relate)

What help providence?

 

A friend in inner mischief

Pushing distractions off

The field or a working table,

Even real and less-real things

 

So that we might go through it

Later,

Say,

After polishing the lenses

Until clarity

Becomes our friend again

 

A presence

Help us look not needing eyes

For everything inside,

Once ready

 

For everything inside,

We take chances

 

C L Couch

 

 

Image by Republica from Pixabay

 

 

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The Word I Mostly Let Go By

The Word I Mostly Let Go By

 

In Glenshaw,

Pennsylvania (USA)

Where Glenshaw Glass now

Hosts the making of the world’s

Finest vodka

(you can look it up)

Where archaeologists one day will

Dig up the roots of Scotty’s Diner

On Route 8,

There is, or was, a rock

Tall and gray and black near

Some water like a pond,

Dug out by someone

Maybe some Baptists claimed

The place

For the words “Jesus Saves” painted

There

 

What it was to me:

A left turn from the highway,

Taking us uphill toward the ridge

And on the other side where lay our red-

Brick house in our red-brick neighborhood

 

We went to church (farther down,

the Presbyterians)

And I had come to know

Something about Jesus

Through a storybook that was the Bible

That our Church School teachers

Read to us

 

I guess I tacitly agreed

With the rock’s big white words

But mostly

I didn’t think about it

It was at our left turn, taking us uphill

Over the ridge

Toward places we knew better

Than the corner

Hosting more

Impromptu, if not wild, faith

 

C L Couch

 

 

Image by Aaron G from Pixabay

 

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Jesus Saves—I Saw This on a Rock Near Some Water

Jesus Saves—I Saw This on a Rock Near Some Water

 

God is love

What does that mean?

The catechist might ask of us

Not to be tricky but because

The Bible assertion’s actual

 

It means that

Metaphors have power

That words carry meaning,

Even of an overwhelming kind

That God is love

As God is a spirit,

Another claim from

The same source

 

A claim that God might be corporeal

In Jesus, as Christians say

Also metaphoric

In a human-drawn creed, as

Fully human, full-divine

But God is regardless and always

A spirit

Something that might not need

A body or a well-known shell of divinity

To be present

 

Do you believe in legends?

I often do

And I think material

The roses in the mantle

Or the cloak,

Red and real

 

If we had been there

We could have been stung

By thorns

While lost in wondering

Prodding impulsive touches

 

But the thorn, the flower

They are love, too

As was the Aztec’s faith

That simply took the flowers

In the cloth

To change the bishop’s

Encroaching unbelieving attitude

 

So faith is love and change for good

And miracle as well

And so God as love might be these, too

While in and with the spirit

We might take part

Right now

Later on

Whenever love might call

Leaving a message

We call back

 

C L Couch

 

 

Image by Светлана Бердник from Pixabay

 

https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Our_Lady_of_Guadalupe

https://www.franciscanmedia.org › our-lady-of-guadalupe

https://www.catholic.org › saints › saint

 

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The Value of a Wall

The Value of a Wall

 

In the morning, there is quiet

Most of us waking

Few of us on the road

Though that will change

 

If we had no vehicles,

How insular we would become

And yet we have all these walls

And we need them

Climate, protection, and privacy

Realities and values

Yet we slide against our walls

Inside, on the floor

It could happen outside

Against the street

 

Knees up

There might not be cries—

They are not civil—

There will be impulsive tears

Falling one way or the other

Depending on

How we’ve been trained

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

 

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Proof for Faith, There Isn’t Any

Proof for Faith, There Isn’t Any

(then Quo vadis?)

 

Proof

You want proof

There isn’t any

Maybe in the nautilus

Contemplative-minded people

Seem to like the spiral

Turning and arching toward

Infinity

Lately, I’ve been looking at

Where the spiral’s going

When the photograph is stairs and not

A shell

Often, there’s a black space on

The image

Mystery, an unknown place of

Arrival, I imagine

Sometimes, the square is light

But also undefined

Then there are creative renderings

Steps made of windows,

Graphically

Sometimes of stained glass

Where are we going? all the frames

Of any kind seem

To say

 

Quo vadis?

I suppose there is in indication

Typically

We are traveling up

Though shift a little, maybe

Going down

Perhaps there is no depth or height

And we are moving in

Into something

On to something

Maybe something good

We don’t know

The final patch is indeterminate

The question, then, remains

Not of proof

But of starting

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Sven Read on Unsplash

Karlsplatz, München, Germany

This is a staircase in a public building in Munich, Germany. It looks quite amazing from the bottom.

 

3

And Welcome to It

And Welcome to It

 

I wake up half in pain

My neck is sore, my head full

Maybe I simply didn’t sleep

Enough

The car is at the shop

I’m nervous about that

It could be totaled, technically

I’d go without until

Something else could be arranged

Besides, I like my car

I have to park it on the street

Where someone else could hit it

And she did

I say she to be accurate

A he could have hit it just as well

And added male ego to it

I have a nice, new rental in an alley

And took collision out for it

I know, it’s money sucked into a vacuum

Of a service that will go unused

A gimmick of the company

But at the moment I’m gun-shy,

Which is why the new car

And it’s new

Will be at rest a ways away

I’ll take a walk to and fro,

Which been my week so far

I hope yours is easier

I do have food and a water filter

Fall is on the way

And it is trite and true

That things are tough all over

My world of one, as

It’s one, is not singly terrible, while

On a world of nine billion

It is worse

And it is glorious

Elsewhere

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Louis Reed on Unsplash

Wales, United Kingdom

A 360 panorama stitched and warped to create the tiny planet effect. Image sequence taken by drone above a community field in Wales.

 

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