[haiku of the funeral]
common the remains
of by world and word a pope
framed in love to earth
c l couch
photo by Nicolas Weldingh on Unsplash
(x = space)
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An Angel Visits Francis
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I speak to God today
God is quiet
Not uninvolved
With nothing noisy
To contribute
Beyond the rain outside
The singing tires
The occasional movement
Inside
From a neighbor
Or from me
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I wonder when an angel
Visits Francis
How it goes
No, don’t get up
Relax the hand with the ring
No doubt you lift the office
With an instinct
Anymore
I’m here to rest with you
For a moment
To be still
You know the issues
And the crises in the world
One of us will tell you
When there are
Awful surprises
You are doing well
We are
I am
Sorry when you’re sick
The age and job
Do take it out of you
You could retire
Like your peer
Sometimes I think
He has the better part
But I don’t think you’ll give up
‘Til you have the sense
You’re done
Remember I am here
We are here
We fly around you
Dance with happiness
Or grief
You know we are not
The round things of the Renaissance
But are might beings
Wide in span
And awful
As in full of awe
To know us
And carry power
You know whose
And are ready
Should you wish us to defend
Evil forefend
Should you wish to rest with us around
And when you’re ready
To be escorted
Even carried
Home
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We are will
And we love you
x
Back to me
And God is ready for your voice
When you wish to speak
Or keep it in your mind
The better things
Are in your heart
We’re told,
Which means your spirit
The spirit of the Lord
Is with you, too,
Waking or sleeping
Like the song
Agents of God
Angels and nature
Sing around you
Sometimes difficult
Impossible, it seems,
To hear
But singing nonetheless
The music of the spheres
The song that’s in your sphere
Of hope
And love
To resonate with good things
To navigate the bad
There is help
In that
In both
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C L Couch
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(x = space)
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Sermons on Leaves
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One bird makes a small song
Unless a condor
Or a million of its own,
Whatever kind
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I’m not thinking of Hitchcock
But of Francis
Who preached to birds
Because humans wouldn’t listen
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In response,
A little bit invested
From each one
Raises the songs of saints,
Reinvesting into land
Then
Traversing through the sky
And now orbiting
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A song to welcome
Visitors,
Aliens or angels,
To Earth
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A hybrid song
Is and shows
The way
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C L Couch
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Photo by Paul Teysen on Unsplash
Nachtegalenhof, Antwerpen, België
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Sister Moon
(song by Francis, metaphor by Zeffirelli)
I cannot fathom Clare
Understand her depths
I do not have to
I’ll readily admit
She is beyond me
Companion to Francis except
Well, except it was boy and girl
(convicted young)
And in communities
Established one gender from the other,
I’m not sure how much
They could be together
Though I imagine them working
Side by side with nascent followers
And I want to think of them
Playing games as well
Between bouts
Of growing things
(vegetables and campaigns)
Washing the poor
Wishing the church into a better place
For service and to any
Could she have gone with him to meet the
Sultan as
A missionary team
In hardship, danger
Doctrinal snares
And opportunities as well
For the sultan (as was the pope)
Was powerful and smart
Well, too much is binary
I should not define one by the other
She was her own
She has it
Who chose to become God’s and his,
The moon in canticle
So sing to the sun
Brother, we are here
We dress the sky above the earth
In dreams
In daylight, we work hard
Harder than our flesh can bear
Than flesh can bear all orders of our calling
At night and for all times
All things
We pray
Be with me, brother, as at Mizpah
When we are apart
Consider the stars at night
I the clouds by day
We are in each other
Inside God’s creation
And the same calling,
The announcement of redemption
While working to save mortal lives
Upon the ground
C L Couch
Detail depicting Saint Clare from a fresco (c. 1320) by Simone Martini in the Lower basilica of San Francesco, Assisi
Simone Martini – The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. ISBN: 3936122202., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=154878
first World Day of the Poor
(day late, no dollar short)
Francis says to us
Blessed are the hands that reach beyond
Every hindrance of creed or culture
That in a profane way keeps us
Apart
The physician quotes
Blessed are the poor—
In spirit or
In flesh—
For yours is the realm of God
In this love is not a democracy but
Obeisance to a royal decree
From the one who
Rules perfectly with justice
And unerring care
This is not the kind of mystery that’s hard
To resolve
Who made the poor? we did, and
We keep ours down in a fallen world
That drives them, drives us
Deeper
The answer to all questions is, Who cares?
Acceptable question this time to
A question
To those in front of us, a catechesis, a
Secular investigation doesn’t
Serve;
The poor are here,
A monarchy for them and us;
That’s far off
The open hand is empty, and sometimes it’s
Clenched in pain
The challenge in the giving is
Courage to unclose, to press into the soul
The bravery, tenacity
The food and water
And more
And better
For the living
And the dying
In the right time for each
For the change
When all are blessed
C L Couch
first World Day of the Poor
We cannot remain passive. Blessed are the hands that reach beyond every barrier of culture, religion, and nationality, and pour the balm of consolation over the wounds of humanity. Blessed are the open hands that ask nothing in exchange, with no “ifs” or “buts” or “maybes”: they are hands that call down God’s blessing upon their brothers and sisters.
Pope Francis (who proclaimed the day)
First World Day of the Poor, 2017: Let us love, not with words but with …
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