twelve days a season
Christmas to Epiphany
birth of Christ first day
c l couch
photo by Zephir Brush on Unsplash
snow on one branch to start
snow on a branch
then move closer to the window
to see the snow
is everywhere outside
of course
and this is good
it’s winter
and it doesn’t look severe
most of this will clear away
and the temperature
supposedly
reach fifty
by
midweek
it’s the kind
to look at
and to watch it fall
as if nothing else is pressing
even though it is
calls for a drink
with rising vapor
and to sit
at something
by the window
take it in
and also think
and feel
far away
this is hardly farm show weather
it is so mild
but it’s the first snowfall
to note
in a year
and will have to do
being an untroubled visitation
on the first day
of
the January fair
c l couch
photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
Epiphaneity
Epiphany
Twelfth Night
Also
Orthodox Christmas
Yet in the west
We have the
Magi
Visiting
The child
With the mother
And adoptive father
And since
Liturgy
Respects only its
Chronology
We might mainly note
Today
The baptism
By
The cousin John
Of the child now grown
Now
Authorized by the
Spirit
As a dove
Then the child
Grown
Journeys into
Wilderness
C L Couch
Le Jourdain au site du Baptême, en Jordanie.
By Jean Housen - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11820699
(x = space)
x
x
2 poems about Epiphany (small e, large E) or the epiphanous
Here are two poems about this date, religiously and globally. It is Orthodox Christmas, however (and Happy Christmas!), with Orthodox Epiphany twelve days from today.
x
x
Epiphanies
(track the Es)
x
Merry Christmas
To the Orthodox
Though it is Epiphany
For the west
And west of east
Epiphany is day for
Discovery
In class we might be taught
That epiphany small-e
Denotes a moment when
Things come together
And we realize
Something grand
About life
And living
x
The catalyst isn’t something
Well-known
It’s not the wedding day
Or the trip to Disneyland
Not even
Hiking to the peak
It is washing dishes
Playing with children
(don’t let the moment
get you struck
with a game ball)
Beholding the postal carrier
Who knows
Something for
Each one of us
What we realize
Is that
Life is this
And shall not be the same
x
For an example
You might have missed
In school,
Stephen Daedalus
In Portrait
Espies a woman by the water
No one he knows
And will not see again
Yet he discovers
Realizes
How the world is
And his part to play
While she is not Arthurian
And Excalibur
Is not presented from the water
The scene is ordinary;
No one else could
Tell
And we know
Because we have the story
Only here
Not worthy in a ledger
Or a history
Or an age
Or of a people
x
It might be
That each of an
Arthur
Or a king
Between genders
All of us
And one by one
But that is an essay
To argue a metaphor
For an assignment
As Arthur learns a destiny
For Camelot
So we discover
What we have
In a realm of one
x
Could this be
A partnered thing?
Modernism
Would say no
But now that we are post-,
Why not?
x
Epiphany large-E
Means discovery
As the Magi come upon
The child Jesus,
Understanding all the prophecy
That hinted in a star
And in old narratives
That someone
Would be here
To change the world
x
There is another such
(same day)
Recalling Jesus with
His cousin John
And baptism by the Jordan
Jesus is grown now
And insists
His cousin dedicate
Jesus with water;
John demurs,
But Jesus shall have it in
No other way
And when the water pours
The sky opens
There is a dove descending
And a voice to hear
Announcing
And approving
Jesus to God
And back to Earth
This is the discovery
(large E)
For him
The prophet
And the human world
x
For us beholding
Realizing
Changing us
Perhaps
However evangelism
Falls
Like a descending dove
x
x
The Patrick’s Day Party
x
Today is the sixth
Of January,
A date that could live
In infamy
But won’t
The government is stable
Except for Republicans
And Democrats
Who decided that
Polemics is the better
Form
Of politics
Shall there be a conservative
Democrat?
Shall there be
A liberal Republican?
By no means
Not here
Not now
x
Perhaps it’s time
For other parties
Our parent founders
Did not have in mind
Only two
We could bring back Whigs
I don’t know
What Whigs are
I still imagine them
In wigs
Of a past design
The Know-Nothing party
Is too on-the-nose
For how things
Go today
The Federalists?
The Loyalists?
The New-Year’s-Eve?
x
I’d go for the
Saint Patrick’s Party
We could all wear green
To treat each other
And our planet green with
Sainthood
x
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Malcolm Lightbody on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
Will What You Will
(2022)
x
It is the last day
Of the Christmas season
Marred last year
By crimes
Twelve drummers drumming
In a drumhead court
For some
x
The rest of us take down
Our trees and lights
Burn the skeletons of trees
In the town square
At least that happened
In my town
x
We sang the last of carols
For a while
The nation need remember
That some gatherings are good
Some spectacles
Modest with intent
And execution
x
Grant us wisdom, Lord,
The meaning of the season
As is said
Not so much sectarian
As loving in and from
The hearts and minds
We have
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Michael Descharles on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
What We Will
(6 January)
x
I don’t have anything
For you, but
There is this:
There is a story
x
It is winter, now;
We have passed Twelfth Night,
The yule log is expiring
In the manor home,
Epiphany will have
Its celebrations;
x
Winter, then, will be
Full upon us
In the north;
x
And it will be, between
Any festivals, such a
Good time for stories
And storytellers
x
Who should be invited
Then blessed on their way
To comfort others in
diverse ways.
x
Should there be no tellers
At hand, then we must
Become them—every group
Has a story,
After all;
And if yours has none to tell,
Then write it
(there will be a text
for now, for later on)
And then tell it:
x
Hear it, everyone!
In the north, it is
Such a good time for this.
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Lance Anderson on Unsplash
x
The Opposite of Magi
(for Epiphany, for any old epiphany)
The gift of the fools
The young who pay too much
For love
The old who believe there is too little
To be paying for at all
The city street is harsh for both
It’s only for transition
But because we feel the wind
Or the heat of summer,
We hope too much there’s something here
Only for us
And there is
The Earth remains a gift
And cities an invention
Not to mention farms
And small towns at crossroads
The roads themselves
The way that can only be felt
Across the desert
Through the forest
Choosing the strand to take
In a web of waterways
All ages have a chance
Must we always give
As in lose
Or in surrender?
Maybe so—if so, let’s make it
Worthwhile
(comes to mind is something about
aphoristic pearls and pigs,
sorry, pigs, a metaphor forwarding
the story)
Money, time, muscles, potential
Whatever it’s going to take
For betterment
One life, two lives, two and a half
A million
Can we count what matters,
Can we take it one by one?
The old response comes to mind
From the teacher trying to teach:
I don’t know if you can,
But you may
C L Couch
“The Gift of the Magi” is a short story by O. Henry first published in 1905. The story tells of a young husband and wife and how they deal … en.wikipedia.org
Photo by Linh Nguyen on Unsplash
Twelfth Night or
(6 January)
What You Will
A modest title
For a late, great play
Did he mean the pun about
His name?
What you will, Will
Will who was not the starving
Artist or
Unknown in his time
It is twelfth night
Or the twelfth day of Christmas
Christmas, in fact, in the east
In may (and maybe your) liturgical
Calendar, Epiphany
In some parts I know, there will be
A boar’s head festival
A Christian way to say
We remember our English
And European roots
Deep down as they might be
Unseen for an age
What is epiphanous today is
What is found and realized in the
Christ story
The magi come to visit with the family
Of Joseph
To leave gifts for the child who
They discover is
The one they were searching for
The sky was writing them about
That was the ink
They were the page
The message now fulfilled
No return to Herod
The last part
There are other matters of
New knowledge in new light
Years after,
He comes to his cousin John
Whose voice speaks to
The wildness in the wilderness
He splits the world in truth
Those who will believe the one
Those who will believe the other
A parable one day applies
Of sheep and goats
Repent
Turn around
Follow his way,
Says he of the one he must baptize
Because deep knowing says they must
Do this
A dove descends
The Spirit is involved
To have a litany of three
Whose echoes elicited the start
Of everything from nothing
What happened to the gifts
Sometimes I wonder
Over-obsessed, they would become a movie
Like the subjects of both arks
And a spear of destiny
Maybe they were covered in a box kept by his mother
As was her way
To have her son and all that followed, after
The season before the season
An ending and beginning
It truly is
A new year
Time for decisions
Whom to follow
In the drama that our forms reflect
The play between all things
The material our due
The cosmos in the universe
Play on
C L Couch
Andrew Atzert from Mesa, AZ, USA – Family of DovesUploaded by Snowmanradio, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11044215
A Mourning Dove parent with two chicks in Mesa, Arizona, USA.
Epiphany
Epiphany. Twelfth Night. The magi come upon the infant Jesus at his family’s home. They are amazed. They give gifts. A tribute.
Epiphany means discovery. An ordinary act that brings new insight to life. The magi, I imagine, were not ordinary people, though what they did was hardly unusual. Many traveled land to land and town to town back when. The caravans were living roads to make trade and civilization possible.
They are not the only ones who had read and studied the stars to find alternative direction. Astrology, astronomy. They were blurred pursuits in this region of the past. There was meaning in the sky. The seasons brought us learning there. We looked for all these.
But when these magic persons, in their learn(ed) wisdom of the world, travel west at last to find this child at home, sameness leaves their lives and all the worlds’. Forever.
What did they discover? What was realized? They beheld a person who meant change.
How so? Two thousand years and some, we still ask.
clcouch123 
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