long season
(means lengthen)
day of ash
season of thought
also season of service
and of
sacrifice
though all seasons behoove
today
ash on foreheads
ash made
from last year’s palms
and might look like a cross
for a while
then those who say
sorry
you have dirt
on your face
I thought you’d want
to know
c l couch
photo by Randy Laybourne on Unsplash
(x = space)
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On the First Day
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Ash Wednesday
Let’s have ash
Upon our foreheads
Crosses that will smudge
And that’s all right
Throughout
The day into
The evening
For the season
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We say it’s for remembrance
Of death
And our mortality
But our foreheads are warm
There’s temperature beneath
And all the little crosses
Bearing small,
Smudged,
And living
Testimony
Everywhere
x
Not bad for evangelism
Contraindicated for a show
Rather a story of
Black, loving humility
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C L Couch
x
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Photo by Taylor Flowe on Unsplash
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(x = space)
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Ash
(11 September 2020)
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Today is bright with gray
In my part
A good, sad color for remembering
Thousands lost, then hundreds
More in first-responding
And millions to the nation for
The grieving
A holocaust must happen now and then,
It seems
Babel, Rome to the Goths
Constantinople to the Christians
Germany to the Jews
Lockerbie
And all the despotisms that have set
Fire to nations
And for a time burned ours,
Though we have to speak to freedom, now
x
We have to know
The idea matters
Of democracy
Over agenda
The vote over manipulations
Free-to-choose over robbing choices
From us
And then there are the harder notions
Love over hate
Forgiveness over condemnation
Though I struggle with that last shade, too,
Wishing wanton killers
All to hell
While me and mine
And victims
Go to paradise
x
The good Muslim wasn’t there
To kill the Christians, Jews, Muslims
Hindus, Buddhists, Jainists, and all who take the
Way
Agnostics and atheists
Belief or lack thereof was not a standard
Everyone was worthy
To be killed
The only thing of value to the killers
A notion of terror
Destroy the enemy
Without a real plan for what is next
Since the aim has no success
With which to deal
x
The main thing for us now
Is knowing the dead
To take those on the wrong side
Of anger
To place them inside good, quiet parts
Of Earth
In New York, Pennsylvania
Washington, D.C.
And all the family and the military plots
Required in so many places
To read words over these
And offer prayers
x
Terrorism is its own failure
We are free to think on better things
A purer world
Filtered like our water
And our better thoughts
With restraint, awareness,
And love, all love
In stronger, wiser forms
Certainly than they
Who went without
Picked up the devil’s way
With unearthly explosions
Without a thought
The brain shellacked with scorn
And counting people
Like matchsticks,
Too ready to burn
x
Though death is complicated
Murder, more so
And those of us in sunshine
Have to learn
Yes, certainly remember
Be smarter for the future
That arrives each day
Becomes the present
In which we clump the ash
Plant it, hope for
Fine returns
In crops and beauty
Sustenance that will destroy
Sin’s purpose
Hate’s agenda
Turn over like the soil
On which we stand
And where those of us
Still here—and we are here—
Must grow
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coda
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There have fires elsewhere
Many parts burn now
Inside the head
And through our hearts
Piercing the abdomen
On which our other organs sit
We should not forget
The hungry and the powerless
Who have food and will withheld
All the rescuing required
God and our better parts
Bless them and keep them
All the rescuers
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C L Couch
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9/11 Memorial, New York City, USA
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We’ll Burn the Palms for Next Year’s Ash
Today is Palm Sunday. I recall this because I saw,
just now, an image with two pieces of wood, tied and
at an angle. I suppose many are celebrating—feasting,
in fact, since it is the end of Lent—the way I am but
with honest hearts.
Lent is done, although the days of ash continue. Nothing
new for planet Earth and the people of it. What do we
know of ash but that it’s final in remembrance?
We might take the stuff and try to rework it, but what it means
remains the same. We are of ash. We’ve tasted it.
We try to contain it, though it’s mischievous in
blowing around. Where does that wind come from?
“Dust in the wind.” “Turn, turn, turn.” Every generation asks
the question, needs an answer, doesn’t get one.
There is ash. It’s everywhere. We think it’s dust, though we’ll never
clear it out. We can’t. As I say with all the singers,
it is us. We are ash.
C L Couch
Photo by Niklas Tidbury on Unsplash
This was a picture I took just for fun. One of those “that would look cool”-moments. I only realised the contrast between the new, fresh, ready-to-burn wood and the spent ashes of a campfire, like the wood was ready to meet its maker. Kinda sad actually.
This begins a week-long devotional, “Holey Week.” The title is intentionally spelled.
Lent 7
A week from Mardi Gras
(fat Tuesday, )Shrove Tuesday,
Fastnacht that in
Pennsylvania (USA) is a doughnut
And the observance
What did we shrive,
We shrove the house of fat
Of everything extravagant that might
Distract us
From the discipline
Of remembrance and devotion
For the coming days
Okay, so what did we really do:
We might have had our fun on Tuesday
But who’s to say the next day was
Somber
It should have been, I guess
A mood for taking ashes if for nothing else
Though there was something,
Something not to miss
The start of a new season
Not as fun as Advent
Without the fire that comes with
Pentecost
Let alone the triumph that is
Easter
There is an odd coupling as well
Since spring is starting now in northern climes
There are signs
Today there has been sudden warmth outside
There are springs of a green kind
Winter-washed
There are signs
Of nascent life
What shall we own, then
Of dust or seedlings?
Maybe we take both
To have a time of stillness and of energy
A quiet dynamo
Fueled for the change by fragrant remembrances
In growth
C L Couch
DeFacto – Own work
Warwick Castle water-powered generator house, used for the generation of electricity for the castle from 1894 until 1940
Easter Saturday 2017
Grey house near a sodden hilltop
Under a sky of ashes
We all live there from time to time
One by one
Our own Golgotha
Gehenna, Calvary
Our own ordinary crucifixions
Bereft of hope
And faith
Waiting for life
C L Couch
Brain Burn
Or the Quixote syndrome
(unofficial, made it up)
Idealism cannot last
But in my mind, it’s cauterized
After the fires, it’s clear
The windmill’s won
I ride away on my pink horse
Thankful Sancho Panza
Hadn’t seen
Or heard or felt or touched or savored
Any of this,
Flame or ash
C L Couch
Ashen Wednesday
(liturgical need)
You have dirt on your
Forehead, the student says
I wanted you to know so you
Don’t walk around all day
That way
But I had just come from
Church (an early mass), and
Wearing the dirt (the ash)
All day would be our routine
If I had to guess, I’d say the
Room is mostly learner-
Populated with evangelicals
With maybe an honest
Agnostic or two,
In which (for all) formal
Understanding, knowing of
Old church practices would
Not be prominent among or
Within
But any church that survives
In turn gains its own
Orthodoxy,
And we spend time after
Noticing the dirt, talking
About spiritual habits plus
Other rituals
My church is trying this,
Someone observes
Yeah, my church, too, another
Notes
And so together in discovery
It appears—newer evangelical,
Independent communities
Reviving treasured actions
Of the first church,
The one ablaze at Pentecost
Reviving in the church is good:
There is great precedence for
That
And for all of us on this new
Day, we find new ways into
(To share outside)
A faithful, ancient season
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