diversity

Poor Evangelist

(x = space)

Poor Evangelist

I am a Christian

I hope anyone who

Needs to know

For good or ill

Knows that

The things is

I don’t mind if you are not

In fact, if you are from

Another faith

I’ll find that interesting

And want

To know

Something of your story

It’s bad evangelism

I know

And I’ll be glad

Typically

To tell you more about my faith

But I am entrenched

(without the trenches)

With respect

I want

To respect your tradition

Or your lack of one

Or somewhere in between

I think this is what we need

In the world just now

With respect,

We might withhold our fingers

From the buttons

We might shut up our cant

Or rant

Instead to listen

Stories are personal

And of a people

After and while happening,

Most stories deserve

To be heard

Shut down the hate

To hear

And have your circle of perspective

And acceptance widened

Hope to be treated

The same way

And that the Earth will hold

Together

From our destructive devices

Not only military

While we listen

And by impulse,

The way we are constructed,

Learn

To say

To welcome

And to hear

C L Couch

Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

January 21, 2023 3

(x = space)

The Agenda in the Storm

(having gathered)

New York was hit

Awfully bad

It’s moving north and east

The fires out west are also

Famously terrible

And there are storms

And floods and fires

Elsewhere

It is bad in Kabul,

Too,

The President asking for

More planes from non-military

Sources

And we can’t compare

This to Saigon, because

The fighting isn’t over

There’s a force ready

To fight the Taliban

Will North America and Europe

Recognize this group

To send them aid,

If an irony of aid

And there are other groups

In prisons and dealing

With worse persecution

(another irony)

On the outside

These groups are in Myanmar

And China

And northeastern Africa

And in North America,

Native Americans

And First Families

And do we want to keep the

Border nonporous to the south

Because we want to contain

Mexicans for being

Mexican?

And blacks and whites

Where are we now?

These are the ethnic

Fires and the flood of hate

And fear;

In the USA, we once liked

The melting pot

Though now it seems a crucible

To separate us and to test us

Then we might go back

To melting

In that first, patriotic pot

There’s climate

And still too much unchecking

You know, there’s a town

In Ohio that found natural gas

In a parochial way

And burned it all,

Frankly, excessively

Until there was none left

I don’t want to blame them

For excitement

Or working out technologies

At large, we need to do that,

Too

But I suppose there’s a lesson

In there, somewhere

And we have so much to learn

And do

To stop the fires,

Contain the floods

Mine in every way

Our minerals well

Maintain both poles

Step in, step out

So there might be

Peace in western Asia

And elsewhere

And then there’s hate

And fear behind the hate

That’s for our dealing,

Too,

To have a planet that we’re

Fond of and it shows

It breathes, it smells,

It tastes, it sounds, it feels,

It looks

Grand as canyons,

Vast as deserts,

Cold as frozen,

Hot as eruptions,

Living as oceans,

Deep as thought

C L Couch

The Gathering Storm by Winston Churchill is alluded to, above.

Photo by Kevin Grieve on Unsplash

Trafalgar Square, London, UK

Here’s News (and a Haibun)

Here’s News (and a Haibun)

(1)

Here are three news leads from The Guardian:

The United Nations has for the first time signalled its “human rights obligation” over the deadly cholera outbreak in Haiti that has claimed the lives of at least 30,000 people.

‘It’s only working for the white kids’: American soccer’s diversity problem [headline]

Yesterday, a report came out that said more than 1,000 migrants and refugees have died just in the last week while crossing the Mediterranean.

(2)

Everyone on all sides of things is falling down. UN peacekeeping. Soccer, the world’s sport. Migrants we don’t count who die. Doesn’t help my own precarious feelings about stability or sanity in the world. Doesn’t help the fragility in me or mine. On this side of apocalypse (only frightening for some), what might we save? In order to retain poetics, I’ve refrained from news of politics today. I doubt anymore the answer’s there.

(3)

Black box of the plane

Black box of refugee’s boat

Black box of sea’s depths

June 3, 2016 4