The Ascent
Creation
Foundation
Re-creation
What remains the same
What changes
We cycle through
We break the cycles
Or they’re broken
For us
Inventions all around
Adaptations
Also what is newly made
With materials of Earth
Sometimes of us
The controversy
What might we interject
Though we haven’t changed a generation
On our own
Except in that
We have more things
Sometimes for more time
And then fill the time with
Pursuits
Playful
Progressive
Or vainglorious
Are we stages
Phases
Headed toward a final place
A seeing place
A hearing place
A place to touch
And on
Which could be battlefield
Or a launching platform
To meet divinity’s wider hand
As we are
Able
Having chosen virtues
Carefully
And as a better planet’s people
A world
That we made better
Also
Maybe first
In
And of ourselves
C L Couch
Photo by Michael Dziedzic on Unsplash
Wondrous
I love you
Says the Lord
Which is
Why
I made you a world
With stars around it
And isn’t it
Grand
The starlight
To give you something
Wonderful
To dream
C L Couch
Photo by Tengyart on Unsplash
Kind Brief Invocation
O God
Be our Tuesday help
Forgive us our
Mistakes
Our other-side-of
Edenness
‘Cause
Sometimes
We let fall
Or we forget
Without malice
But our flaws
Pervade
There is
The Kintsugi of wisdom
Help us fix
And even beautify
The scars
By
Gold understanding
C L Couch
Photo by Brian Pappel on Unsplash
[sun and dew transform—goldify, as it were]
2 poems about presence
Quantum Theory
God
You are around
Visiting nuclei
Somehow
Also gliding with
The quanta
Inside
Colliders
In the air
Presentable
In earth and sea
All the igneous
Layers
Of creation
Riding the rings
And showing where they meet
Between
Well
Galaxies
Connected by comets
As Hermes runners
With
You know
Cosmic messages
We’re still
Trying
To interpret
So that one day
We might message back
Words that Rise
I am alive
So are you
You might be reading on my shoulder
Waiting for the final words
To calculate
And then
More importantly
Go outside to play
Then later on
More words
Inexorable
For you
Inexorable
A readership
A friend
A nemesis
When
Necessary in revision
Or keep it
To yourself
And we’ll discuss
The other things
Inside
Or outside
Should it be
A fall day
Accommodating
Certain kinds
Of ease
Enough
Between us
C L Couch
Photo by NASA on Unsplash
Jupiter as Seen from the Hubble Space Telescope
Love’s Labors
I rock
While cross-legged
On the bed
I think it helps
To stretch out small parts
Of my lower back
I think
I breathe
Like thinking
I am quiet
Letting the world go around me
While I think about
The very thing
The world
All its troubles
All the better possibilities
With
Faith
Hope
And love
Sorry if that’s trite
As I should sound cleverer
Uniquer
In a poem
But these are the answers
Have been for two thousand years
Reflecting older teaching
And the laws
From Deuteronomy
That now
You don’t have to read
Though it wouldn’t hurt you
(much)
To know that love has come from God
And was the goodness in creation
And the reason
For first promises
Even for provisions when
We were cast out of Eden
Though the sweat of labor
For the man
And the real sweat of labor
For the woman
Wasn’t fun
And maybe still within the garden
We’d have worked
We’d have birthed
Without all the sweat
And all the pain
That we’ve learned to make
Philosophy
And a marketplace
To say that sweat and pain are actually
Good things
And you should buy our
Reasoning
Along with our products
And our memberships
But then
As far as relegation
Goes
Why not accept
And make the most of things
We must work
We must bear children
As we do
And while the process hurts
The product of pay
Is all right
And certainly
What comes with woman’s labor
Is a source
For joy
Delight in the present
While remarkable has happened
Toward the future
And maybe God and angels
Sweat and even
Hurt with us
Through everything
And there are
Times
When it’s hard
When I imagine we don’t care about
Divine sponsorship
Maybe after
Maybe not
Though we could thank the Lord
And the angels
When the job goes well
When a child is born
And for the mother
We work under a curse in all endeavors
Which sounds terrible
But that’s
You know
The way things are
‘Til dawning
Of the new age
When all pain is tabulated
Health restored
Hurt dismissed
And then
All the apologies in heaven
Divine
With what was mortal
May begin
C L Couch
Photo by eze cmf on Unsplash
thy faithfulness and 14 June
(two poems)
thy faithfulness
and now for God
though maybe
God has been with me
from the start
because if not my own
it’s in
God’s nature
and certainly God’s
skill
and also
desire
the same desire
that made everything
and more
the wish
the will
to love the everything
and above all
and with the will of
unfallen angels
to love most
ourselves
we are that important
not for demons
whose interest in consumption
is not the healthy use of
creation
but frankly
to suck us dry
of flesh and spirit
and then display the husks
eagerly
in hell
but we have God
and willful angels
elected
on our side
and in the room
though will leave us quiet
when quiet
is soulfully
or physically demanded
quiet
time
and should we wish
some company
divine
with less than a word
shall be here
to cheer
and to guide
to love
and to show
how love
begins and ends
with presence
one form
or
another
14 June
(2024)
happy
Flag Day
Mitzi’s birthday
the puppy
(not the flag)
who crawled up
on the porch
the day our family
moved
into Pittsburgh
northern suburbs
and remained with us
the next
seventeen years
and was
extraordinary
patient with
several
growing children
as for the flag
you know
we flew it
very day
I recall
there are some things it seems I wrote about most years; today is a thing
c l couch
photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash
Relegation
O God
Which is an invocation
We’re asking
You
Here and now
And are we aware
Of what we’re asking
No
Liturgically
Demanding
In
Your showing up
You’re God
And if so
The maker
And the real mover
Of
Well
Reality
All-knowing
So we say
And all powerful
Though
It’s easier
Secular
To believe invisible
And far away
That clockmaker
Having
Made and maybe
Set the clock
So long ago
Then left us to
Construct our own
Devices
Maybe
In our skill
Or lack thereof
To negotiate
Someday
To melt that primal clock
As
A Dali-like
Face-making
That is
Poured over parts
Of a parched Earth
But really
As we do things
(except
for invocation)
We could use you
Far away
And so keep our
Maybe fearing you
Also
Distant
And untested
In fact
Also
With cheek
Keeping your name
Inside our word-hoards
Available
For cursing
Or for sex
(is it
to bless the sex)
So
Such is irony
Such are
The ironies
And this is
Such
Strange wondering
As if to place you in a box
Maybe officially
To relegate you there
Until we need you
For
A ceremony
For
A clean and distanced blessing
Now and then
To complement in
Name
(whatever name)
Whatever ritual
We’ve made
Or
Somehow adapted from
The beginning
Words
So whom
Do we invoke
Just now
Whom do we ask
To call
And through our calling
Bring you here
In everything you are
And then
Even
To sing
To benedict
You
Away
Very God
Or distant God
Preeminent
Out of the way
Again
Then maybe
For an hour
Of the clock
Next
Time
Or maybe less
Then dare
We say
Amen
C L Couch
Photo by Visual Karsa on Unsplash
Well and Good
(ironic)
Oh
God
I haven’t thought
So much of you today
Weighed
Down
By my perceptions
The license that I give to stress
And even honest pain that
Doesn’t ask
For this
Forgive me
I guess
Though I’ll be doing it
Again
And
Venial or mortal
I typically can’t
Tell
So that confession
Is not a bust
Though I’m sure
A disappointment
Sigh
What shall I do
To be a servant and
Myself
To serve another
Too
And to serve you
I know
Which should be
First
Sigh again
This might be a loop
If not a cycle of
Post-Edenic rebellion
Which
We set up
As it were
At the start
But is my nature
Always enough
To explain
While I have will
As we always have discretion
Even difficult
In the moment
But I’m sorry
And I’ve thought of you
For seconds
Now
Such a big deal
And should I wake up
In my anchorite cell
Even with a car
For company
A holy cat
By its own calling
Once retrieved
The gray stone
With a specific symbol
On the wall
And a few pages
By the bed
Made out of
Nature
Meaning
Natural things
To know that I’m devout
And here to serve
The people of today
In a world
That maybe strives to rise
Or to wallow
Though I must
Keep the vision
For all of us
That may
Allow ourselves to rise
Maybe through the window
And the windowed world
I have
To look out on the other
To wait
For the inevitable
And then to wait
As in to serve
Responding to their need
And how they
How you
Say it
Then all should know
And you may know
At last
That I am with
All the time
By my own will
My time and style
Though here I am
For now
Small-town
Me for now
With all my errant loves
And wish
I could
Do better
Though for lack of djinn
And also resolution
Remains a wish
Among wishes
For faith
Or for a pony
(again
sorry
and amen)
C L Couch
Photo by José Alejandro Cuffia on Unsplash
(psst, we’re busting out of here tonight—my caption, sorry
and in part of the poem-prayer I’m channeling Saint Julian)
Awestruck
God come through that door
And I shall be
Terrified
Which is part of the awe
That God deserves
With the reason why the angels
Say so often
Be not afraid
This might be difficult
Though it’s
Finally
Good news
That makes more officially
A gospel
Of the Lord
With us
An Immanuel
Time and again
Angels on assignments
A voice
A gesture
That could bring down Jericho
Or Midian
Or approve the execution
Of Holofernes
Nothing to see
Except in accidental daring
While most of those
Who hear
Do not see
Except in the world changed
After
Supplication
The results
An affirmation
Too
Of a holy presence
So much more than us
And also
Quite frankly
Inside us
Of a kind of molecule
Our machines
Have yet
To count
So seek the Lord
Or wait for being sought
For
We should find each other
To have experience
A history
Of faith
And what we hope for
The action
And the learning from
Tandem theology
With the only agenda
That is
Acceptable
So we may plan
With details
Then have
And then testify
To grace
As approval
C L Couch
Photo by Bamdad Norouzian on Unsplash
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