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Lent 5

Lent 5

 

Why do we swim

I guess for recreation

Maybe for competition

Sometimes for exploration

We can at least explore our muscles

Get to the depths of us

 

“All asymmetrical

All beautiful”

I just heard someone

Say that into the room

 

And it’s true

In the smallest of ways, we are

Wondrously imbalanced

 

Floating around in freedom

Might free us of

The need to count with calipers

What is not exact

Yet can be so compelling

(not correcting)

In ourselves

In each other

 

Circle-comfortable

Yet more like an amoeba

By grace, unforming

 

C L Couch

 

 

A pod of narwhals. Note the spiral configuration of the single tusk.

Dr. Kristin Laidre, Polar Science Center, UW NOAA/OAR/OER – NOAA Photolib Library

(public domain)

 

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Lent 4

Lent 4

 

Swimming is fine

Be careful not to go so deep

There is no air

Unless you have an aqualung

And a buddy

Yes, God is there

Above, beneath, within

But scuba gear exists for a reason

Even inside a metaphor

Remember the old saw

About the person in a house

Surrounded by a rising flood

Who had a warning from the radio

To leave,

Then offers from neighbors in a boat

And a helicopter pilot who had espied

This captive on the roof

And lowered the machine

And this person, trapped, then was drowned

 

Then was mad at God in heaven

I thought you’d protect me, was the

Complaint—and the response?

I gave a radio warning, a ride with your

Neighbors, a seat in a helicopter:

Why are you here?

 

We can help each other

Share old sayings and

Find a new of saying things

Today

We should let that happen

 

C L Couch

 

 

Hard rain on a roof covered with felt and tar paper in Gåseberg, Lysekil Municipality, Sweden. Original version. The yellowish dots on the roof are lichen.

W.carter – Own work

 

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IWD ‘19

IWD ‘19

 

Today has been (to

announce it)

International Women’s Day,

And in my country

Women have said they

Own the responsibility

For women’s status not only here

But also in the world

 

To me, this is amazing

It’s sisterhood

(you decide how to say this—)

 

Yeah, it is

 

C L Couch

 

 

Public Domain

With nearly 1000 [African-American] women employed as burners, welders, scalers, and in other capacities at the Kaiser Shipyards in Richmond, California, women war workers played an important part in the construction of the Liberty Ship SS George Washington Carver, launched on May 7th, 1943. Welder-trainee Josie Lucille Owens plies her trade on the ship.

 

Huffington Post

Most U.S. women see gender equality around the world as their shared responsibility.

 

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Lent 3

Lent 3

 

Now let’s dive in

The water might not be easy

But it’s time to think

Or swim

What is the season for

It’s for faith

But there are long stretches for

Allowance, I believe

For doubt and all kinds of other

Tugging matters

Pulled up the anchor

Drifting around a while

 

C L Couch

 

 

Artykha / 2 images

(Pixabay)

 

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Lent 2

Lent 2

 

I need to slow down an anxious heart

Place it on the page

Start a new movement,

Lento, lento

 

Love and loss

I just heard those words

Spoken deeply by a woman

Respected deeply

Her low notes offer an easing of

Fast talking

Fast thinking

 

I have a whole season for everything

Take time

Forget or shelve at least

What’s too fast

Or bring it along, if that can’t be helped

But try to enter as fairly as possible

Maybe there will be a restful leavetaking

 

C L Couch

 

 

<a href=”https://pixabay.com/photos/turtle-slowly-large-871285/”>Image</a&gt; by <a href=”https://pixabay.com/users/Pixel-mixer-1197643/”>Pixel-mixer</a&gt; on Pixabay

 

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Living Ashes

Living Ashes

(6 March 2019)

 

Ash Wednesday

Day of ash

Start of Lent

A slowing time

As in lento when the music

Slows

Because it must so that the fullness

Is appreciated

 

Cigar ash

Ash rising from an evening fire

On the hearth inside

Or ‘round a ring in a sponsored place

Where campers meet

To sing

Or tell stories

All of which, like music,

Can lead the pace as well

 

Ashen face

Missing blood and signs

Of lively living,

Ash that’s left of things

Incinerated

Blasted in a furnace of white heat

‘Til blood is dried, marrow has cooked

In bones

And inorganic things released

Of familiar substance

Until only unringed nuclei

Are left

A mystery for spectroscopy

 

Livened ash

We are reminded

Adama

We return to earth

But keep in mind what

We are now

All the substance, all the motion

We can own

 

C L Couch

 

 

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center from Greenbelt, MD, USA – NASA Satellite Captures New Russian Volcanic Eruption, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=51484278

For the first time in 35 years, the Plosky Tolbachik volcano in Russia’s far eastern Kamchatka Peninsula erupted on Nov. 27, 2012, sending clouds of ash to the height of more than 9,800 feet (3,000 meters).

 

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Care Packaging

Care Packaging

 

I want it all again

Not because it wasn’t enough

But because it wasn’t good enough

I want to smell cut grass

Through open lungs

And run down the yard

As night is falling

And the fireflies and children

Stay out to play

Because it’s summer, and there’s time

 

I want to fix

I want to be less open to the world of men

(as has been said)

 

To save some from before and later on

To have the pleasures

Keep some in a pocket

Bring them out when

Other things have clouded over

And too much is not clear

I want to be so much better

In roles, in practice

Satisfying expectations

While keeping something of myself

Small belief

Small hope

 

I can grow well

Find what it is that stalls regret

Laughs and still has modesty

Cries without fear

Loves well or well enough so that

Injuries inside might breathe in open air

 

C L Couch

 

 

Jin Zan – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43789378

 

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How to Say It?

How to Say It?

 

God, it’s Monday

That’s not an interjection

Or some kind of epithet

Though God of Mondays would work

Be a working title,

Certainly

 

It’s simply a morning greeting;

I hope to say tomorrow

With the meaning

(and the morning)

God, it’s Tuesday

 

C L Couch

 

 

By 歌川広重 – 東京都立図書館, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39086057

Morning Glory by Utagawa Hiroshige, 1866 (Japanese Woodblock print)

 

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Paean

Paean

 

I don’t know what time it is

I mean, it’s mid-morning

Not in an hour of

Dramatic dark or anything

The sky outside’s a wash, in fact

Enough light for movement,

Nothing added

 

But I have slept, at last

And feel the thankful fullness

That comes and lives inside

For a while,

When the right kind of unconsciousness

Has happened over hours

 

There are images of nature on TV

Some kind of early-winter story

In March, I can afford

To let it be romantic

All the layers

That they wear

And that nature provides

 

(later on I look;

it’s ten fifty-nine)

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Jaanus Jagomägi on Unsplash

 

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