Heat
(a kind of review)
Fire burns
Which means that for survival
Fire’s good
And yet fire destroys
The fuel we place
But
Everything that gets away
The flames that ruin homes
For animals
For us
And everyone
And everything
Of course
That burns
The spirit of the Lord
We equate with
Fire
And I don’t know what is means
By denotation
To fire as in to separate from
A job
Still
It is ubiquitous
It seems
Like “they”
And though its forms seem drastic
As in warming
As in cooking
So we live
And by heat often through the night
And yet
To take away survival
Too
There being the matter of its
Wildness
That is the problem
That makes the thing hideous to
Destroy
Without fixing as much
As only to build over for
Recourse
Yet there is God
Again
Whose spirit is not wise the way
We think is wise
And is not
Tame
The way we think only in formal matters
Should God
Be relegated
Rather
God is wild
Even in wildness
You know
The wilderness
Which we won’t like for lack
Of building
Compartmentable
Purchasable
Convenience
(and the promoting of a market)
And
Who knows how God might feel but
Uses such heaths and
Pagan places
Anyway
Tame and wild
Which shall we have
Of course
But both
Let God normalize
And let go
If lovingingly
Amok
Like fire
In a frame
And who sets the flame
(out of
lovingly flammable
inflammable materials)
But the tame
The comfort in
The very God while also dwelling
In the zealous flame that both
And must
Love
As well as
And often even as
The heat
And I guess we must mean
The heat of all kinds
C L Couch
Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash
“Bonfire Night”
Negotiating for Green Earth
We had the snow
Walls of white on branches
Black
And while birds
And scittering critters
Went elsewhere or stayed in something
Still
And warm
I hope
By nature’s acumen and skill
Even before it all began
And I’d send the snow out west
To the fires
If I could
Surrendering the romance
So that the practical
Might have more means
Material
With which to end
The blazes
Then start patrolling of
Embers
C L Couch
Photo by Filippos Sdralias on Unsplash
(x = space)
x
x
Await
x
It is a gloomy day
God appears in clouds
And in fire
These were pillars
If the sky had been painted
With clouds
As it is today
Then how could direction
Have been offered?
But they were pillars
They showed the way
For the Israelites
Perhaps the pillars
Moved as
Progress was made
Perhaps they stood still
As if to say,
I’m waiting for you
Your jealous God is waiting for you
With expectation
With transcendence
And with love
x
It you had not sinned
We would be together sooner
But knowing who are you
And loving you, all the same
I am waiting for you
Come to me
Come to my mountain
Come to my clouds
And fire
Come to my blue
Come to my laws
Come to my love
x
C L Couch
x
Exodus 24
x
x
Photo by Ryan Yeaman on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
Crisscross
x
I creak around
The morning
Bending my knees
To write
As if I’m meeting
Someone who sits
On the other
Side of fire
x
A wilderness of
Understanding,
A meeting with a muse or
God whose presence
Is apparent
Is ennobled
In the fire
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Timothy Meinberg on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
Boiling Springs Fire
x
I caught some
Of the story
x
A fire burned
Inside
Above
(fourth floor)
Smoke and water through
All the floors
Of the apartment building
A converted mill
In the town of Boiling Springs
One town away
x
I hear details of the fire
Nothing yet about the people
I’m sure I missed
That part
x
I used to drive by the building
Hoped about living there,
Each time
Now it’s gone
Or at least
Forever changed
Now sorrow for
All displaced
x
The town is small
An unincorporated village
It will be affected
Me, too
And you, too,
As you know about
Such things
x
(after reading)
Everyone got out
One cat
The headlines say
Eleven displaced,
Which includes ten people
And the cat
The Red Cross has been
At the scene
x
There was a fire
In the village
Two years ago
One person was killed
Welcome that person
To another home
x
God bless the town
And all the towns
That gather loss
x
C L Couch
x
x
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/11-displaced-by-cumberland-county-fire/ar-AATiBcL?ocid=uxbndlbing
x
Photo by Daniel Tausis on Unsplash
“Fighting Fire”
not the Boiling Springs fire (the photos of that fire are copyrighted, sigh) but a fire
x
(x = space)
x
x
Gambia
x
Most of the victims
Came from Gambia,
Which is in
Africa
So if you’re not in the Bronx
Or hip to Africa
Or a citizen of the world,
You might think
Nothing to do with me
(with you)
But like the car tracks
In a race,
The threads around a badge,
The scuffs on any old thing
That’s round,
Well,
There is connection
The relationships go on
The consequences
Shared
The human race enlivened
Or withered
By what we do
What we think
You and me
Right now
x
Let’s look up Gambia
And follow news about
The fire in the Bronx
That killed
So many
New Yorkers
x
God take them home
While we mourn and
Work it out here
x
C L Couch
x
x
New York Bronx fire a ‘shock in our country’ Gambia ambassador says
x
Fire on the river coast, Autumn
Photo by Egor Vikhrev on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
Good Machines
(for Earthly terrors)
x
Perhaps we could have cosmic-
Earth machines,
x
Could the floods
Be sucked up here—say,
In Germany and China—then
Taken and dropped there
Where the land
Is dry
And ablaze as the land
In California,
x
Then we’d have a system
Perhaps in harmony with nature,
x
Technocracy that favors life
In joy and praise
Of what machines can do
x
With pay and gratitude
The human operators
Deserve
x
C L Couch
x
x
Every spring the Mississippi River floods, but the downtown area of Davenport Iowa refuses to build a levee system to hold the waters back. It would block the river view. Some years the waters come several blocks up the banks and flood out local businesses.
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
How We May Live
x
It’s all right
We don’t have to agree
To have a family
Or a nation
The world is filled with
Variance of thought,
And opinions bleed
And stay still
Like colors
And affiliations
Of the rainbow
x
Democratic theory says
That you and I
May argue toward no
Solution or a change
Today or ever
x
And democratic practice is
Even better,
For you and I may feed the hungry
And encourage those
In all kinds of trouble, all
The same
x
We both and together
May fill bags
With sand along
The growling, killing river
As we (after washing) may
Dispense soup
To the rescued
x
This is how to live
With variation
And to live with variation
Active in
Needs that are subsuming—those
Of the hungry or the flooded or,
After fire, the singed
x
Arguing the other situations
When we may breathe
Again with clarity
x
Happy days
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by David Clode on Unsplash
Olive oil on water. “Immiscible 1”. The photo is called immiscible because oil and water don’t mix. The background colours come from a painting behind which is titled “Joy” and is itself bubble shapes like balloons of cheerful colours, where I have tried to express the emotion of joy in a painting, much like Mark Rothko.
x
(x = space)
x
x
Petition
x
God is good
(it’s how we start
a certain prayer)
And God must bear
What’s evil
Not for lack of love
But for the gift of will
That was
A gift of love
x
We think angels
Don’t have it
Yet there was a war
In heaven
They will match up
At Armageddon,
The last ranks
And those who last
Will join us in
New heaven
x
Creation is broken
We have stories
We can mend it now
Imperfectly
But make a circle
Others know how
And would show us
If we bring down
The barriers
Yes, the real walls
x
There is legacy
In circles
Protection, celebration
The will to live
Because there’s love
Unashamed
Enduring
Persisting when
That’s all there is
Because the rest
Feels on fire
If only for a time
x
Wait as in be patient
Wait as in attend
But we have one gift to give
Give it now
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Buzz Andersen on Unsplash
I was visiting the Big Island of Hawaii with some friends and family, and my brother convinced the group to take a lava tour by boat. I always kind of balk a little bit at overtly touristy stuff like that, but I think everyone was a pretty shocked when we got our first look at the Kalapana Lava Flow after about a half hour boat trip down the coast. It’s such an awesome, phantasmagorical sight and, since they actually get surprisingly close to the spots where the rivers of lava meet the ocean and throw up sulfurous steam clouds, also a pretty visceral sensory experience.
x
clcouch123 
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