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No Woman Is an Island

(x = space)

x

x

No Woman Is an Island

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I exhale a puff of air

Carbon dioxide

And yet that’s all right for kissing

And for lifting the lungs

Of someone who’s in trouble

And not breathing

The kiss of life, we call it

And it is

Both sides of air being good

The oxygen, the CO-2

Both give life all around

Our daily allies on the planet

Are the plants in our

Inhale-exhale

Symbiosis

All is relationship

No one goes alone

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C L Couch

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No Man Is an Island, a poem, a contemplation, a movie, a song

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Photo by Kyle Wagner on Unsplash

Allan Gardens Children’s Conservatory, Toronto, Canada

the greenhouse

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0

Chocolate Milk

(x = space)

x

x

Chocolate Milk

x

I used to like

To mix in Nestle’s Quik

Sold by a rabbit

x

It was powder then,

And I was not good

With the result

x

Little globs of wet

Powder on the surface

Of the milk

x

But I liked the process,

Spinning the Quik around

Making a maelstrom

In the center of it all

x

I don’t know if

I had been in the southern world

Would I have stirred it

The other way

x

I’m drinking coffee

From a glass just now

(it’s customized),

And everything is smoother

x

I’m grown up

x

But the stirring

Just this morning

Reminded me of

Turning galaxies

In my child’s glass

Of milk and Nestle’s Quik

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C L Couch

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Photo by Arnaud Mariat on Unsplash

universe

Far away Andromeda galaxy, or M31, in deep space.

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2

Unbelief

Unbelief

(in Mark, chapter 9)

 

My favorite story from the

Christian New Testament

Isn’t easy

 

A father brings his son

(a parent brings a child)

To Jesus, saying

A demon throws his son into

The fire or the water

Anything destructive, for

The demon wants

To kill the child

 

To the father, Jesus says

That with faith, the boy

Will be cured,

The demon itself thrown out

To which the father says,

I believe

Help my unbelief

 

He had been told what to do

What was pat, even a guarantee

But the father’s honesty

Precluded the code

He bravely and with broken heart

Told Jesus what was real

 

The crowd pressed in

There was no more time for

Conversation, not even for proof

Of faith

But what we know is that

Jesus healed the child

If there was a test

The father passed,

Though there wasn’t

And he didn’t

 

Was Jesus surprised?

Was the father?

What is authentic was not

Surprised

 

Faith will out

And doubt

They both had their turns

And they

 

And theys did well

They made healing

They made good

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Paweł Czerwiński on Unsplash

 

2

Night Study

Night Study

 

I just heard

A study shows

The work of studiers

That trees sleep at night

Circadian life

From the sometime home of the cicadas

And, you know, I don’t think I ever climbed

My treehouse at night,

Which has nothing to do with anything

 

Except that if I had

Disrespect now showing

I might have felt them rest

And had more of my own:

A web of branches overhead

My father’s skill beneath

And the noise of night

Singing as it should

For the child’s ears

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by manu schwendener on Unsplash

Münsterplatz, Basel, Switzerland

Antares lights at the Christmas market in Basel. More here https://manuschwendener.ch/2016/12/04/antares

 

1

Visible and Invisible

Visible and Invisible

 

The Lord sings,

and there’s a world.

The Spirit shimmers, and love

all inspires.

The Child touches one and then another,

and everything is better.

Healing and teaching,

death and resurrection.

 

There are other personages

in other stories.

I like well enough this tale of mine, which

comes from a people I must own.  I am

content mostly to do so.

 

I want to learn more and more:

to hear the single notes

that rise into a melody

of sacred time

for sacred dance.

 

And everything is better.

 

C L Couch

 

 

CC BY-SA 2.0 fr, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=125333

English: Coptic crosses in Philae Temple of Isis. Aswan, Egypt.
Français : Autel chrétien dans à l’intérieur du temple d’Isis à Philaé. Assouan, Égypte
Image taken by Gilles RENAULT
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The Sacrifice of Isaac

The Sacrifice of Isaac

 

What is remarkable is the presence of the angel

Who stayed the hand of Abraham, bearing

The knife or whatever would be taking away

 

Isaac from his life

And is it remarkable

The surrender of the spirit of the son

To be carried away from the promise not of prophecy

But of parenthood

 

It happened

It would never be forgotten

My father took me to a place and set me down

To steal my life

Rams could not do this time

I must be the sacrifice

 

He is the offering to God

For what

Sorrow of the people

Plea for repentance

Future abundance in the land

 

Is it enough

To give up himself,

The words promised his father and his mother,

The dealing out of Ishmael,

His mother

 

Once sacrificed, always gone

Even spared, what should be left

Of hopes and dreams

And a father’s guard

If not affection

 

What is left for Isaac:

Was he blinded by the presence of the angel

Suffuse with the strength and majesty

Of God’s own following,

Will he live in love and faith and

Aspiration for a lifetime?

 

So much later, David weeps for Absalom

We might also wonder about the tears

Of Abraham

Relief, sorrow, the temerity of

Surrendering all sides to

Barter with the future

Of a parent

Of a people

Of a child

 

C L Couch

 

 

(caption) The sixth-century C.E. floor mosaic from the Beth Alpha synagogue, in Israel’s Jezreel Valley. The mosaic lay near the door, so that anyone who entered was confronted by the scene. Walking from here to the apse, visitors crossed a large mosaic zodiac and then a panel depicting a lulav (palm branch) and etrog (citron), menorahs, and the Ark of the Law—the same objects that accompanied the Akedah image at Dura-Europos 300 years earlier.

(from) https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/bible-interpretation/binding-sacrifice-isaac/?mqsc=E3987540&utm_source=WhatCountsEmail&utm_medium=BHDDaily%20Newsletter&utm_campaign=ZE8A9JZ80

 

3

Trees

Trees

(for an October prompt)

 

Tolkien liked trees

Robin Hood, too;

Tinkerbell and Tiger Lily,

I imagine,

Providing shelter

And playing fields

For lost boys

 

I like trees

 

Two of these peaked

High like towers from

The wide suburban plain

Of the backyard,

 

Splindly reaching toward

A clouded sky on

A Pittsburgh summer day

 

There was wind

At night, and upon the

Morning in the yard

One tree had fallen

 

Large across the lawn,

Tall on the ground

Sibling standing over

As if to demonstrate their

Name,

Weeping willow

 

For many days

I had climbed into the

Guard now dying,

Onto a lumbered platform

That my father built

 

That lay square among

Round branches

Inside uprooted, plodding

Blocks

Of grass

 

First time for me

With something monstrous

So close, so wrong

 

C L Couch

9

Mother and Father

Mother and Father

(on hearing five of the Solomons

have sunk due to rising sea water)

 

Once and once again

There was a child

The child is Earth

And we are her protectors

 

We are the parents

Of the Earth (earth and

Air and water)

 

For our children

Whom we leave

The planet of our future

10

Notebook Poems with Psalms 34 and 35

Notebook Poems (while downstairs)

with Psalms 34 and 35

 

Three O’Clock or Thereabout

 

train sounds out back

from the first floor

bells

deep, uneven thrumming

circles of wheels

train sirens cry and split the local sky

nostalgically, we might still call that

a whistle

 

after time, train finishes with us

our cars may go

ebb and flow returns to town

until Moses-like the tide of trains

halves us again

 

(haiku)

 

child at table works

lead pencil scratches paper

timely task now done

 

Psalm 34

a song of tears

 

Lord

hear my cry

and when I’m through

hear my chafed whispering

 

Psalm 35

song with a question

 

Lord, are you there

it’s not Margaret of the book

it’s simply unwritten me

 

Machine-Less Listening

 

I hear a trumpet call

shave-and-a-haircut-two-bits

(two bits a quarter from

pieces of eight)

Gabriel’s apprentice practices

for the final fanfare

at the end of school in June

 

Still-Listening

 

at table round I write

who knew Arthur should meet here

liege folk

talking of charity

T. H. White’s “Might for Right”

until Mordred and Lancelot

ruin everything

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