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Odd Gratitude

Odd Gratitude

 

The weight is in my eyes

Just over my lungs

Inside the muscles

Pressing on the bones

Everything moves, anyway

Fingers, hands

Knees stretch

I blink, swallow, turn my neck

To see what’s what

 

The day’s ahead, and I’m

Thankful

Surprised?  Shouldn’t be

Life is nearly always worth it

And always, really

There’s torture in the world,

Which must challenge the price

To pay

 

But this is being tired

Really tired

And there’s pain

Though not enough

To wreck the odds

Of there being maybe many

Good things ahead

 

C L Couch

 

 

Gratitude Stones

https://www.firefliesandmudpies.com/gratitude-stones/

http://www.yessafechoices.org/parents/character-education-corner/gratitude

 

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The Start of Day

The Start of Day

 

You give this to me, Lord

These hours and these days

I don’t want to waste them

And I don’t want the world to

Define waste for me

 

It is wasteful and so earns

Skepticism regarding definitions

Careless with money

Food (forty percent in the USA)

Relationships

With nature and each other

 

Yes, I’m of the world, too

And so don’t escape conviction

But there is a conviction

And conviction

We can do better

I can

 

How does it begin—why,

I think with wasting time

 

Being still,

At rest and listening

Tempering what I hear with

The community I trust

So many things start right

This way

 

The Pietists had it right

Listen for revelation

It will come

It won’t be crazy

If it is,

Your good friends will tell you

Then listen to them

 

C L Couch

 

 

A clear description of Pietism is found in Understanding Pietism by Dale W. Brown.

 

(image)

http://www.photogen.com/free-photos/free-stock-photo-564/

Photogen.com

 

1

An Eighth Day

An Eighth Day

 

If we were given

an extra day,

would we play?

 

It if were announced,

a day that wouldn’t count

for acquisition,

a gift of food and air

and water,

a day when no one could

wage war

or victimize another,

would we play?

 

Would some say

not me,

I’m too urgent,

I have to impress,

nature to command,

so many things to hoard

and wielding bellicose conversation,

I will not play.

 

Well, go home, then.  You may

have a room in which to

exist; nothing

will work, and there will be

no toys.

 

Angels will referee, if need be,

though mainly they’ll be waiting

by the fields, near the water,

at the table in the

houses that have

family rooms

 

to help, to pass out balls and

gloves and discs that fly,

to spread out the board, play-cash,

and tokens

while everyone gets the piece

they want to play.

 

Everyone gets chosen

everyone feels first

everyone gets a turn;

agendas are released

and for a change, all genders

and colors are assets like

winning extra turns.

 

The cosmos will keep quiet,

slide over to tomorrow.

When it’s time, we’ll catch up fine.

After our eighth day

for play.

 

C L Couch

 

 

Nyla Moss, an eighth grader at Polaris Charter Academy, plays at Kells Park in Chicago’s West Humboldt Park neighborhood.

Andrew Gill/WBEZ

For West Side Students, Playing Outside Is Protesting Against Gun Violence

Linda Lutton

May 26, 2017

https://www.wbez.org/shows/wbez-news/for-west-side-students-playing-outside-is-protesting-against-gun-violence/3f7a4cb7-ec1c-4cc4-817e-3ee5e5ca865a

 

1

One More Thing

One More Thing

 

It’s what we notice at the time

And then dismiss

The shape of a sleeve inside a cuff

The way a button pushes through

The opening

The sounds made by all the doors we

Open every day

Then close

They’re not important

Part of the texture of the day

I seem to recall George Bailey pulling

Off the stairpost knob, most every

Time

Then once he thought to throw it through

A window, maybe at

The Christmas tree

We have these, too, the moments

When

Nothing satisfies

These we should remember

For any needed reparations

Restoratives, you know,

To get our day back

 

C L Couch

 

 

Peter Falk – Wikipedia

Wikipedia

Columbo Peter Falk 1973.JPG

 

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Half-Shut

Half-Shut

 

It’s Sunday, and I’m tired

Somewhere the Gospel’s being read

And someone’s teaching from it

Good words, I’d like to think

I am here and writing differently about

A story that won’t be read in church

Not to sour-grape it

I don’t mind the anonymity

My story’s sad and uninspiring, unless

One needs to hear about

A mundane struggle, mostly secular

The seeking of good news inside one’s head

Though it’s not there

Not in the neighbor’s heart, either

It’s in the book

It’s in the neighbor’s heart

It’s in my head

(My heart, too)

But I have to hear

With two sets of ears that hear

In case the first set’s not so functional

(If you didn’t know, the deaf tend

To hear better)

 

Until something is opened

Nothing is going to happen

That’s the capacity that’s missing

And the action

 

They are there

It’s simple access, really

Like most things, altruism, sympathy,

Or sacrifice,

It’s made

It happens

With a choice

And on a tired day

When Sunday best is not enough

(It rarely is)

When the soul is split between awakening

Or remain embraced within the monolith

 

Half-shut is still half-open

And sides are being called for

Final play

 

Choose this day

Choose, this day

 

C L Couch

 

 

gospel choir

image courtesy of Charlotte Zoller

https://www.mfa.org/programs/music/millennium-gospel-choir-1

 

2

11, 11 (11)

11, 11 (11)

 

Today is Veterans Day.

Armistice Day in Europe.

Remembrance

Day.  Red poppies to honor

Flanders Field.

 

Recalling that peace,

Even

At great cost, is better.

Better than victory.

 

C L Couch

 

1

Revolution

Revolution

(tracing the season’s sunlight)

 

The day descends

While shadows rise

Late-year days are like this

We notice early darkness

 

C L Couch

0

Psalm 46

Psalm 46

 

A new world comes

And some would say

It’s here

 

By your hand, we might

Live in better days

 

The images we make

For politics or

Entertainment

 

Are wrung through

With shiny fakery

 

I think our new day

Will arrive,

 

Lord,

 

When we learn to say

I love you to the ground

And to the air

 

And to the wind we

Cannot see but truly

Feel and have:

 

When we learn the

Value of unseen things,

 

We can say I love you

To each other

 

Then your new day is

Manifest

5

Red Sky at Night

Red Sky at Night

 

Retiring into the deep

Colors of the day

 

We come to the end

When light must give

Way to night

 

We sigh and with

Misty breath, exhale

 

Into the coming dark

 

No more arguments

To make against the

Day

 

Maybe a farmer’s

Understanding, for

There are evening

Laborers

 

Whose cycle will

Reverse the colors

 

Sorry, perhaps, for

Those who cannot

Read the final

Message in the dusk

Of dying day

 

Well, look to new hues

In the tellings that

Arrive, whenever

 

Daytime and

Nighttime meet, alive

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