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All Souls’ Day

The Glass No Longer Darkly

(x = space)

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The Glass No Longer Darkly

(for All Souls’ Day)

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I’ve been too busy

With the living,

Not to praise that

Habit

x

The dead have frightened me

When they are active

With the living

Like the Twilight Zone episode

That used to scare me,

The one with the telephone line

Fallen against the grave

And the dead calling

A living relative

Or the one in the Old West

With the peddler selling

Magic to bring back

The family members

To the living

In a town

And then charged more

To keep the dead, dead

And they return,

Anyway

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That sounds comic, I suppose

But the dead used to scare me

Not so much now

Experience, I guess

And a constructive belief

In afterlife

And the agenda of their own;

They will be busy,

After

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The sacred and the secular

All Saints’ comes ‘round

It doesn’t have to be so somber

In fact, there will be picnics

By the graves

In Mexico

And elsewhere

Commemoration

Remembrance

By the families

Who know how to love

On either side

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C L Couch

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Fotografía de una calavera de azúcar, típica en México.

By Pedro Moga – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22536159

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The Storyist

(x = space)

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The Storyist

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Today is

After Hallowe’en

Liturgically, it’s All Saints’

And we sang a song

About the saints

At church,

Which is pretty much

What I knew

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Tomorrow is the liturgy

For those who died

To this life

And that is what I know

x

But that for the intimately acquainted

There will be

Costumes and posadas

Special food

Meals in families

At gravesides,

The beauty of illumination

In the formal way we say it

An idiom

Half-euphemistic

The quick and the dead

x

No, the dead

Are not so fast

And so we have to go to them

Except when they’re supernal—then

They’re the fastest

They might not heed

Friction,

They’re so fast

Faster than Earth turning

(a thousand miles an hour)

Or the thrumming of moth wings

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Who knows?

Maybe light speed

So fast, then,

As candlelight

And, too,

So easy

As wings

To those having wings

Now fast and easy

Visit us,

Love us

In older

And in newer ways

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The living and the dead

All mooshed together

In new minutes

In new ministries

Of grace and understanding

Could be without the understanding

For those who simply love

Who illuminate

The graveside

From all sides

With love

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And in the families

Of two or three or many more

Quick and dead

In all conditions

Hear and tell

Old and new stories

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C L Couch

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I came across a novel called The Last Cuentista.  It was only the cover—I don’t yet have the book.  And so I don’t know its own story (yet) but thought about an Anglo word in translation (for this Anglo) that might be Storyist.  Don’t worry, spell-check doesn’t like it.  (Or Cuentista.)

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The Last Cuentista by Donna  Barba Higuera, published by Piccadilly Press

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Photo by Camellia Yang on Unsplash

Edinburgh, 英国

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with apologies for what I do not understand but write about, anyway

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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

 

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Leaving Church

Leaving Church

(all souls day)

 

The living church remembered

Now in the season

Hallowtide

We can recall who’s gone ahead

Who maybe holds a door

For the rest

Whatever our next jobs might be

 

I’ve lost too many

Witnesses

Pillars

Walking prayers for me

While mostly they were they

More than an idea of a person

Or a symbol

Or an inspiration

 

Beyond living day to day

Flawed

Moody

Qualifying me for our companionship

Until one gone

And then another

 

C L Couch

 

 

By Klearchos Kapoutsis from Santorini, Greece – Zaduszki, uploaded by Yarl, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25289705

The Catholic church celebrates Zaduszki (“All Souls Day”) one day after the All Saints Day. Photo from the Polish cemetery of Osobowice in Wroclaw.

 

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For All Souls

For All Souls

(2 November)

 

Rosemary for remembrance

But it will be in Spain and Mexico

USA and other places, as

 

Candy shaped into skulls,

Bright-color picnics set out at night

With our dead—and many

Kindred flames of candlelight

 

Yesterday the living church

 

Today the predeceased who will

Stay a little closer

 

Families gather ‘round the stones

De abuelos, tíos, quizás los niños

 

All whose loss is lessened for a

Time as an altogether family

For the feast

 

C L Couch

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