bad Friday


1

it’s pain
pain everywhere
though it’s localized
but
feels everywhere to overwhelm
normalcy with a wish that
it would all
go away
and how much all

new limbs
new organs
new
life
or to end this life
which is extreme
of course
except as another wish
this one doctrinal
promise
of paradise
in time

Job persisted over
all
the losses
the agonies far away
and closer in
even
to the body

but
the spirit persisted
and that matters more
over matter
as
the seat of will
from which to rise
for
faith

curse God
and
die
how awful a direction
and I’m thinking how
pathetic
a moment funny
grim
for
what was left

what had been there
from the start
affirming
prosperity
and now affirming poverty
as if
to wonder
as Job wonders in a scouring of soul
yet
stays where he has been
if
for no good reason by the mind
or body
but the thread to embrace
slender when tried
yet
invulnerable somehow
and to hold

maybe in thinking
that another thread
that of hope
shall
be restored
to help both hands

not out of reward
for
anything that had been good is gone
but for remaining
Job
believing God
even when the last thread is tried

and was the offer to
let  go

and is it an
allegory
a lesson in curriculum
how
to hold on
no matter what

when all the reasons in the world have
failed
along with one’s own predetermined sense
of things

as
a new kind of faith if called for
if tacitly
since we don’t know that God or anyone celestial
spoke with Job
for
explanation or
for comfort

a faith that lives regardless
that
is chosen
and keeps one going through everything adverse
not
to judge but have extraordinary love
persisting
oh
persisting

in camps
in whatever prison might be made of life
in war
and whatever’s left after
the missiles
launched by sin
have done their work

2

pain
too much
a prayer for healing
or
the prayer for telling
as
the rational fails
while the telling drama must go on
and
we might question motives and
with reason of our own
but
have to hang on
anyway
so it goes in our own book
of loss
and faith
not in loss but in what might come next
to aid
and at last
to resolve

now
a new day of broken land
fabric torn as if to judge
or mourn
and
yet a curtain that is
torn
to challenge what had been
worldly
religiously decided

as one died who
had
taught life
for learning God is close and God’s
realm
now

Earth splits and by a guessed-at storm cries
while darkness forms or
furnishes
the question

and
faith might be done
for most
with that one
nailed
planted on a heap
announcing death the moment
before

signs
not determined yet
beyond tragedy
and irony
for
who rules now
and where is hope on Earth

maybe in space where the intrepid
might conceive

whereas the instinct here
to cover
and to hide
and
yet in love
to bury first

and moan
and keen
with Earth’s
screams of fracture
for
a while
now


c l couch



Job 2:9


photo by Maksym Tymchyk 🇺🇦 on Unsplash 
Kyiv, Ukraine