courses


courses

my abdomen
hurts
maybe from pressing on it
to be seated
maybe from gas
maybe
due to medication

maybe from stress of
maybe
something
existential

how is the day
and how’s the world
and how
much
should I care

and how shall my problems
go away
while this
side of
eternal matters

shall justice roll
my tiny stream
down to
a universal
sea

and shall that sea
move
indifference
to my causes

and
of course
it shall

it has its own concerns
with mortal storms
and all

and yet
the molecules of God
are with me
in mine

maybe a neutrino
or a quark

while the greater hand
might move with waves
to stir
or calm
that sea I think
cannot consider me

and the whole body
moved from forming Earth
into managing
the stars
as we say
in their courses
enforcing orbits
exacting
something like
cosmic obedience

though allowing for
the unpredictable
the errant comet
rascal
asteroid
as part of
divine predictability

contraries
embraced by
opposites uplifted
so that a little chaos
be allowable in
order

than back to you
and back to me
and how do we count
by God
and yet
we do

our bodies
on our bits of land
which is to say we
occupy
not own
and by the water
moving our concerns
toward that ocean
of collectiveness in which
it seems
impossibly
our matter
matters
too

everything we are
our cells
our abstract notions
with the uncounting qualities
of thinking
all emotions
of our loves

we may realize at any time
how remarkable
the small
however might be small
while larger things go
obviously from
that start of
things

day and night
Earth and all
and all in all
with each bit owned
if
maybe tallied
by beneficence

which is to say
God knows
and judges
and whose greater bias
as God
is to note all things
and love
all things

a refrain

the sea is so large
while
my boat so small
the merest of God’s breathing
for my sails
and shall I cross
and shall I transact
and then
shall I return
by the light that someone made for
home

(it would be proper if you thought of the Breton prayer upon reading what I'm calling "a refrain”)

C L Couch


Photo by Osman Rana on Unsplash

Once and Future

Camelot has fallen

The last knight rides
Away
Into the sunrise
Of the first day of the year

So Tennyson decided
Maybe based on information
Or more by
Insight
That had moved the poet
Through
Construction
And destruction
The rising
And the falling

Raised by music
Like cathedrals
Or said the poet’s peers
By the command of
Merlin
While depicting in
What must have seemed
Indomitable stone
All ascent and descent
In
Human ages
By
The wizard’s art
At its command

Now fallen also
The unearthly being
Sealed away
For now

And we are left
To ride away with Bedivere
Into our uncertain year
As
A matter of courses

When this hearing is done
And in our case
Unready for the courts

Ideals
By betrayals
Story-slain
As if by Mordred
Also
Guinevere
And Lancelot

All exposed
As our
Baser impulses toward
Ruination

Wrecking the foundation
Into rubble
That can
Support nothing like
The comely towers
Anymore

What kind of year
Is this

Where is the refuge
For the refugees

Shall Camelot be rebuilt
If only by words
In songs
Until we have the might
For right
To try again
With mortar in
Our stanzas

For now
On this first day
The sounds of riding
Harsh
Like our discourse
Now concluded

‘Til we open up
The pages of our lives
Again

While in a distant place
Already to be set
In camouflage by nature
The final
Burning
Broken stones of the last battle
Settle into
What had been
A part of Earth
More glorious
Somehow
By us

C L Couch

. . .
Or thought he saw, the speck that bare the King,
Down that long water opening on the deep
Somewhere far off, pass on and on, and go
From less to less and vanish into light.
And the new sun rose bringing the new year.

from “The Passing of Arthur,” concluding Idylls of the King by Arthur, Lord Tennyson

Photo by Jigar Panchal on Unsplash