this is Owl Awareness Day


North American freedom

250 years ago
count
further back to Plymouth
to
Columbus
to Lief Erickson

and others still to discover since
not
everyone can leave a home behind
for
evidence

and Rome a thousand years
half as a more-honest
republic
with occasional tyrannies assigned
to lead
local forces against foes
then anything like dictatorship
resigns
returns to farming

and this isn’t
to describe usual elections but when
the weapons clash
blade
against sheld and armor
so close
the threat
as we don’t know these days
in
a supremacy
that’s voted in
in
order to remain

self-styled demagogues
who
aren’t so good at demagoguery and yet
we let them
in and
should know better
and
we do

we know that emperors have new clothes
and what the raiment’s made
of
while honest work’s unnoticed
and
there’s building only on
fragile clay
no virtue to congeal

without doubt
to fall


the school in heaven

philosophy must fail

as all analogies unravel

as
schools let out for life and though we must be something
on the inside
we
never are done deals
in spite of all the arguments

and heaven is philosophy
I guess
all done
and giving over
the last class
and
sorry
if you were otherwise so glad
never
to have to learn in rows again

and yet the brain
the mind
the learning
goes
goes on

this
side as well as maybe
and I think over
there


coz

at the zoo
I said
hi
cousin
to the monkey
simply to upset you

yet
I prize our species closeness with
the animals
and don’t know except
by adaptation
over
generations
evolution’s proven

and so our God is
God of
that
as with all creation miracles

and as for missing links between ourselves
and branched-off
primates
or
to have it that we are branches broken
from the tree
well

I wonder sometimes
if
the link is the intrusion of the Spirit
to move us on and especially
to
know
and to bear wisdom in the keeping
of the rest


c l couch


photo by Jeremy Hynes on Unsplash
“Great horned owl Please tag @hyneseyes on Instagram for credit, thank you :)”
Ontario, Canada