When Sunday Is the First
Tridecaphobes beware
This should not
Be your day
A day for black
Cats
Ladders
Broken mirrors
Cracked backs
(awful!)
Bad thirteens
Judas
The thirteenth follower
Somehow
With Christ dying
On a Friday
Too
Though the bad
Day that pegs it is
Just inside
The fourteenth century
When on a Friday the
Thirteenth
A trap was sprung
Upon
The Templars
Arrested
Tortured
Executed
And the king of France
Who started the campaign
No longer
He decided
Had to pay the ruined Templars
Back
Then again
The origin could be African
Or India
Or from the Americas
Ancient Greece
Or Atabia
Where the numbers were invented
So
Good
Day
Inside
Or should you dare outside
Where black
Cats will be set on ladder steps
To sing in fiddled fashion
Of
The hours
C L Couch
Photo by Zhen H on Unsplash
[not unlike “Croatoan” on a certain tree, also a subject of suspicion]
Teaspoonful
(a season’s greeting)
Another
Try at something
Short
And sweet
Which I could say
Would be my sister
Then
She would hit
Me
Like the jokes I made
In church
And she would laugh
And
Hit me
As she should have
Well
To it
Merry season
And
Don’t go crazy for it
Please
C L Couch
Photo by Betty Miyashiro on Unsplash
Brand-Making
Gray day
To say again
Black branches
I could bottle these
Or at least
(for
sense)
Put them on labels
For our brews
The water hisses on
The street outside
While
Car tires are pressed over them
That if
We had a metal bridge in town
Would change the one-note susurration
Into singing
A wet
And dismal-
Looking day that maybe
We find
Interesting
Difficult eyes
Behold it
Well
While nature-muffled expectations
Provide some freedom
Of the mind
For thinking newly
About things
Certain things
Anything
And so I want
To own
The gray day
If you please
My own kind
To bottle
To open
To let breathe
C L Couch
Photo by Davide Cultrera on Unsplash
[I’m thinking it’s David]
Anchoritely
1
Is there a quiet
A place from which
Someone looks out upon
A world
With all it is
And from a place of silence
So that everything
That’s deep inside
Must rise
So that there’s sensing
And there’s understanding
Something
About need
And reconciliation
Even how
Everyone might be fed
And saved to God
And for
Themselves
2
I imagine it of stone
Gray
With snow for a mantle
Along the open
Wintry porch
(outside)
While inside
There is enough technology
To know what’s going on
And to close that off
Quite easily
A place
I guess
For commutation
A place from which to gauge
The daily sky
To know
Leave separate
And bring together
All the seasons of
The Earth
C L Couch
Photo by James Qualtrough 🇮🇲 on Unsplash
What Shall Break Through
1
Unreadiness
Winter quiet
Though it’s weeks
Away
The sky is thinking on it
And the ground becomes more laden
Storing what it needs to store
Welcoming the flora
Fauna
That shall be sleeping there
It looks like snow
And if I were outside
I might say it smells like snow as well
Breathes
The new season
However apprehensively
About extremities
Of ice in breath
And snow
That the insides of our bodies
Will not be ready for
If ever
Like the extremes of summer
I suppose
2
Birth of a Mystic
Still
And still
Like the monk
The hermit
I await
And
Yes
These could be women
And each was
The desert mothers
Julian and cat
(female or male cat
I do not know
or
if there were ever
any kittens)
Hildegard
Teresa
Evelyn for the moderns
And who waits inside the cave
For insight now
Who bears the vision
We shall hear about
That
Shall be approved
A new generation
One of those young persons
Who dreamed dreams
And set them down
Enough
For publication
Or simply hearing here and there
Now and then
Until
The books
With illustrations
Shall appear
And we shall know we have something
Set
And new
3
Dream Dreams
And shall the winter bring them on
The ordinary
And the visionary
Angels adept upon the scene
To work
With mortals
To let grace behind the curtain
Become miracle
Upon the stage
Though none of it is acting
Though it might be staged like
Jacob
Or like Bethlehem
Or the leaping suns
At Fatima
Or like the truce of 1914
That was like
That was
Grace
And miracle as well
Human gifts
No doubt angel-approved
When all could breathe
A moment
Inside heaven
While on the field
The wired
Trenched
And blooded field
There could be such a peace
For a few hours
Even gifts and photographs
To mark
The Christmas season
And now
I am afield
Dealing in ordinary mystics
But they’re there
They’re here
Thank goodness
And with
The names
And books
And famous patroned pets
Shall breathe in each of us beholding
C L Couch
Photo by Karsten Winegeart on Unsplash
The Winter Mind
It’s late
Long shadows
Winter-coming ready
Longer
Sooner into darkness
Though the thing
Take
Just as long
As any other orbiting of
Earth
It is a winter mind
And winter body
And the
Spirit
We’d like to think
Ready
Always adaptable
But
There is
SAD
And something older
Something eldritch
In the residence
Of spirit
The reason for the bonfire
And the special words
The dancing
After
Knowing that our planet must
Turn the other way
For melting
Seeds
And more
Come spring
Don’t abrogate our lights
The gifts
Of artificial power
Any more than wood and oil
Have shown our way
At night
And yet
Remember we are
Evening people
Too
Affected by the twilight
As it ebbs
And flows
The seasons
Of our kind
And with so many
Sibling species of
The world
C L Couch
Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash
Which Life Will
It is a day for remembrance
The ships are sinking deeper
Parts of other things
Relevant
Are found below
Now and then
A surprise attack isn’t good
Not for defenders
And all our planes and ships in tows
Exploded one after another
And the people
The people mattered more
And the loss of them was grand in scale
And awful
Enemies to allies
Plans
To rebuild the world
Maybe we learn from these great wars
That great is relative
(like grand)
That loss is terrible
In the unnatural aspect of the thing
In which we kill our siblings
And our parents
And our children
The nations’ lines that
Might come back
Rearranged
While those who live within
Might not be caring more
Than the chance
To live on either side
Though lines may
Determine policies
Sometimes
Ways to live
Perhaps
Challenges to
Pride
A pride I doubt those
Gone
Might feel
Anymore
Though we don’t know the afterlife that well
As for this life
Well
There is that learning
Before we add more numbers to
The world at war
C L Couch
Photo by Luke Scarpino on Unsplash
a study in ambition
(working on it)
a study
in ambition
because I think it is
a one-by-one thing
and not a group
thing
except by change
now and then
the space race
a national ambition
and was it
I was a child
I don’t recall contributing
except with attitude
and I was
child
someone spent a bunch of money
making things
sacrificing
lives
so we could
go to the moon
and I was there
before the television
for the launch
then on the day
to see
the landing
then the steps
and would say
that was great
and was it
even then
as
I wondered
about people starving
wherever
trick-or-treating
for UNICEF
and all
the smaller things
good for the economy
the space race
microwaves
ballpoint pens
tin foil
(well
aluminum)
okay
and now it’s easier to see
that vanity
is pushing us
back to the moon
and higher
on to Mars
wanting
to respect that
and then wondering
again
about the starving people
and maybe we won’t have
any safe water
or a safe Earth
with no space on the moon
or Mars
for all of us
I do think
Pangloss is wrong
and that it’s good when we
consider things
together
but the dreams must be owned
and we must have them
one by one
and study us
each one
learning
growing
getting
each thing owned
by one
and then we can think about
negotiation
and a kind
of communion
maybe
if we
simply had a planet
whole
each one satisfied
to live
and to consider
as it is
we will go
we will do anything
beyond the one
for money
for politics to win
for
another one
claiming to be a party
let alone a nation
or a national
ambition
ambition is good
not the way
that fictively we say
that greed
is good
because it’s not
but in the way
that use of us
by one
by one
and then we’ll see
is good
that energy is good
and its
expenditure
even a joy
sometimes
that use is good
and better when
compelled by good
dreams
virtues
and such
but that what is Earth
is finite
and each one
in our systems
and so there’s saving
even caution
to employ
so feed us
end our thirst
let each one work
and also
dream
envision something real
for a dream
c l couch
energy is eternal delight (William Blake)
who also wrote of embracing contradictions
photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash
Good God
Good morning
God
I remembered this time
I was praying for a friend
On waking
Then remembered
I should simply
Say
Good morning
To my Lord
That’s all
I could
Confess
And I did resume
Petitioning
But what’s wrong
With simply and first saying
Good morning
To God
Which I hope God approves
God likes
And if so
Then maybe more should say this
Before asking things
First thing
A frame
In which
To have
All other works progress
C L Couch
(a sequel to something posted earlier)
Photo by Johnny McClung on Unsplash
My wife’s extended family lives in the hills of Pennsylvania, north of Pittsburgh. This is a beautiful scene I captured looking NW of the Allegheny River. [photographer's caption]
(I’m from the region.)
clcouch123 
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