yesterday was Holocaust Remembrance Day, and so the following is for this day and any day we remember something larger than ourselves that still involves our responsibility in happiness or sadness to enact
day of remembrance
yesterday was for remembrance
each day is for remembrance
and recall
together
with poppies
or monuments of angles
the ceremonies we create
over what has happened
so we might remember
and not
as Santayana says
doom ourselves
to repetition
of the dire
and destructive
take it slowly on these days
don’t rush to something else
the prophet margin
will remain
in the margins
a call of justice
that is heard
might mediate
with all the other worldly matters
all our loves
the good things
the distracting things
that sometimes we must order
like new things
especially through
our days of remembrance
c l couch
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all saints day
saints small s
every day is their
followers
of God
who try
both to believe
and to act
patronage
of nothing in particular
no groups
claim our own
but the
relative
ease and simplicity
without notoriety
or beads
or rituals
simply leave it
to faith and action
anyone
believing
anyone who tries
a life of faith
with flaws
the Holy Spirit
will provide
kintsugi
c l couch
photo by Motoki Tonn on Unsplash
In the Day of the Lord
Well
God
What shall you give
Today
There is the day
There will be daylight
Well-
Insinuated
In an hour or so
There will be more
Time
In hours
Time to choose
For those
Who may choose
Who aren’t
Conscripted otherwise
Drafting
Oneself
For cause
But then
The cause
Might be a wonder
How about family
About
The partner
Who works out
In
Intimacy
As well as
What is profound
When about one’s nation
Call it people
Call it country
Group
Tribe
State
Region
Everything that has a name
Maybe a living
Constitution
For a document
For walks
The simple
And sublime
Which faces our distraction
And decisions
All the time
And certainly
Today
And God
There is more than patriotism
There is the reason for it
And the rest
That is
Well
You
And what you say
You make
What you say and make
That is creation
Whose pages form
A scripture
Every day
And then the book itself
Shelved
We take down
Perhaps
We hear someone else
Reading
And from which
Some teaching
Though the hour
Is a sermon
Too
This hour
Then the next
Should we have the next
Odds say
We’ll have
Inside our complex bodies
Have a day that’s plain
Landing here or there
Pleine aire
Or chez lui
And should one
Ask oneself
About salvation
Or get the question
From another
Answer
We hope so
C L Couch
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[photographer’s caption] In New York, in a little shop, those watches where there, hanging in front of me!
(x = space)
x
x
but choose any day
x
and it’s Friday
how are you
really well
I hope
(well and more
that is)
here the sun’s out
and it’s cool
the best of both
heat and cold
for a while
and when it changes
as it must
the sun and sky
wind and air
decide
choose any day
there are its merits
good parts
that don’t need the bad
for understanding
but take us through
until we’re back
to just
or mostly
good for a while
x
the bugs
prefer the sun
when it’s gray
they tend to stay away
meaning
I think
that sometimes bugs are smart
and I mean to say
they might augur
how we might be
today
and further equipped
depending on
and if
we read the signs
x
new days
should follow
and I hope this one
knows you well
or gets you better
with its attributes
and gifts
some might say
miracle and grace
I’ll say that
for you
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Mikhail Vasilyev on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
First Frost
x
1
Last night
x
It kills some things
Blankets others for the night
That is the final season
x
Nature knows
What we try to control
Knowing that relenting is
The final lesson
x
2
Ally ourselves
Withal
The nature of our lives
With the nature
Steadfast all around
Whose
Perturbations are
A part of all of it
x
Rhythms
Cycles
Seasons
Storms and quakes
Floods and eruptions
Take too many
Should have their own
Rhythms
Cycles
Seasons
x
Try to dance
Like skaters
Swimmers
Climbers
They all fall
And rise again
x
We could take care
Of all of us
This way
And let us grow
Into work as play
And play as work
(if we take in both parts)
Into retirement
What comes next after
Seed and bloom
Trunk and ever after
Life again
Life ever after
Goes the story
x
Join with the movement
Of the seasons
Of the spheres
While together
Work it out
For better times
Reasoned
Lives today
Living ahead
The generations of the forest
x
We are the forest
Too
x
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x
x
(the briefest of bibliographies)
x
The Word for World Is Forest
Ursula K. Le Guin
x
Let all things now living a song of thanksgiving
To God the Creator triumphantly raise,
Who fashioned and made us, protected and stayed us,
Who guideth us on to the end of our days.
Katherine Davis
x
x
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
Sizable Gratitude for Small
x
That’s it
I guess
I have something to share
Maybe kind of usual
For trope
If not cliché
I even mention weather
x
Well
I’m sipping
And I feel kind of easy
I know God is here
And maybe
My near angel
x
The hall is quiet
For a change
Our small humanity
Easy
Too
Or absent
x
I’m breathing easier
Might be the new
Medication
Or-and
The added rest
I got this morning
After waking up
The first time
x
I don’t know
I’m drinking water
When I cough
I hope that’s smart enough
Because I want
To feel grateful
For the smallest
Better changes
In this day
x
coda
x
And
Yes
I know
This is not the day
That others have the day
x
Wounded by so many
Things that wound
x
There’s even terror
Too much
In too many places
Great
Or small
Letting the first page show
The way
x
For our remembrance
Supplication
Specific
Book-driven
Petitioning
To love our neighbors
And ourselves
When either needs a dire prayer
For safety
And for healing
For reckoning
Still decency
Still
In the world
Great or
In spite of intimate abdications
The smaller things we lose
In wider things
x
As some have tried
Aberrantly
To move the world
Another way
In spite of natural paths
Natural gains and losses
We must expect
Along the way
x
Pray for the world
Frankly
Lord
That we snap-to like soldiers
Even minutely
x
Only immediately
Waking up
To start to change
The errors
In certain plans
To raise up
And take care of
Real need instead
x
C L Couch
x
x
x
(x = space)
x
x
The Garden of Scheherazade
x
Imagine
An Arabian portico
A ceiling to the side
Under which is
Furniture with pillows
It is day
Then it is night
And in another place
Deeper inside
She meets with the husband
She volunteered to take
Even though
He is a maniac
Who kills after one night
To secure fidelity
x
And so you tell a story
Recalling all the things you studied
Texts
Everything told you
By your father the vizier
By his advisors
Students
The servants of the house
And when allowed to wander
(covered up)
Making stories out of comments made
Along the streets
Of a desert country
With oases
And mountains
As well
x
Legends
Narratives from
Math and philosophy
The history of men
(mostly men
aware of audience)
Through the ages
Sinbad
Aladdin
Ali Baba
So many more
Nearly three years’ worth
x
Though it was the first night
That mattered
And the day that followed
Keeping life
By keeping the killer
Entertained
And then the second night
Made all the difference
And the third
x
While you stood
Or sat
Or walked
The garden outside
The blood-filled palace
Deciding
Crafting
Revising
Each narrative
For the night
Aiming for salvation
For another day
x
coda
x
I don’t know why I think of this
x
It
She
Came to me yesterday
Probably because
I was thinking about story
On its own
Not so much the content
But the abstract
And the purpose
The importance
The reality
A telling makes
x
Maybe not
To life and limb
Bur all the stories she got to tell
We got to hear
That were in context
So much fighting
For her life
x
C L Couch
x
x
A Thousand and One Arabian Nights is a collection framed by the telling of stories by Scheherazade, the daughter of the vizier. She volunteered against her father’s wish, naturally enough, to marry the king as a defensive measure for the women of the realm—and because the realm was losing all its women, at least those suitable for a king to marry. Whatever suitable means, especially given the circumstances. And as an overarching cause because the king whose first wife cheated on him and was summarily executed made in the king an attitude of mania regarding fidelity. And so each day he would marry a virgin and then each night have her killed. Scheherazade, who was not only skilled in storytelling but in story content, went to the king, married him, and entertained him on the first night with a story and then, because he wanted more, on the second night and so on. The king found good stories more enticing than slaying wives, which I guess is some kind of virtue even in one we can’t overall admire. Finally, the king’s madness broke or something like that happened; and he thought to keep Scheherazade as his one (and lasting) wife.
Well, it’s a story within stories. Or I should say without. But it adds an edge in the telling and our hearing. An added edge like that of a sword, perhaps that of an executioner.
x
Photo by Arsalan Rad on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
Greetings from Earth with All Things Earthly
x
So what’s new
The day is new
It’s re-creation
Isn’t it
x
Some would say
The day’s the day
It’s yesterday’s day
Redone
And nothing new
Same sets of compounds
To have earth and sea
And sky
And we are nothing new
x
But cells are sloughed
There is room for change
There is age
There might be new growth
From where our cells
Land
Like the sower’s seeds
Some on good soil
x
There is a thought
That built on yesterday’s
And does that count
As old or new
x
How shall we measure
Ongoing
Something old
Something new
Something borrowed
Something blue
Here meaning
Blue for calm
Thankful for
The return of sky
x
And as for borrowed
It’s all borrowed
After all
We own our souls
We should own our skins
On Earth
Our thoughts
And our discoveries
To have
To share
x
Should be no fear
Rather with impunity
Or the fear of loss
Unrecompensed
x
So here’s
To a new day
It is founded
It is its own
It is tomorrow realized
It archives yesterday
As for what’s new to argue
Let’s first be
Thankful for the having
Then appreciate the cells
That change
The thoughts that build
That what we thought as next
Is now
x
C L Couch
x
x
Dancers
x
(x = space)
x
x
Bad Day at Third Rock
x
Today there is a war
People try to live
Without attention
To or from
The state
x
There is a wildfire
Eruptions from volcanos
Storms rage
Earth splits
As if on revenging
Or indifference
x
There is
Addiction
Other ways we live
As if to self-destruct
Like the tapes
That were for our
Entertainment
About
Impossible missions
x
Jobs are taken out
They were useful
Now they’re gone
We get divorced
From each other
As if the vows
Were not thought out the first time
And now we know
x
And there is everything
We know is inexorable
It comes on
They come on
x
All these things
All these sad things
Most of which
Destroy
And all wound
x
The apologist might be right
To say
We live in land overrun
And occupied by the enemy
x
Princes of this world
Maybe princesses
Though give credit to the
Insight
When some women lead
Thinking of Deborah
And Judith
And the chairs
Of my departments
x
The world must be more
Than all the burning
And explosiveness
Literal to Earth
Or invoked too much by hell
Inside the human heart
x
Live more
Legislate, perhaps
Consider how extreme
The campaigns
Or the intimacy
In destruction
x
Renew
Repair
Like people
Learn to know
How we are likable
‘Cause we are
x
Give Earth a chance
And when it fails
Negotiate
Again
And do the same
For humankind
Fix things
And then
Consider less addition
For the second changes
Barring
You know
Those commandments
And redemption
Even so
Give us a chance
And the cosmos
In turn
Might welcome us
x
C L Couch
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x
(citations)
C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
1 Corinthians 2:6,8
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Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash
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