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31 January 2016 (in the global north)

31 January 2016
(in the global north)

I still wake up with jittery feelings. The sun is bright. The snow is melting down. Maybe I need it gone. But is that the boundary of my fear? I sit and look outside to see the beauty. I am inspired to come back and write a verse of two. Still, fear jumps inside me. At least it doesn’t leap. I’ll feel better, once I write a bit. Drink a hot drink, maybe take a pill or two pills. I know that on a good day my heart still operates in an iffy way. I know that what happened here was momentous. It’s momentous, still, outside. As in ancient Arabian architecture, I cherish space and righter light. Not simply looking out into amorphous glare. Rather the view of a virtuously bright and blue-skied world above with earth of desert browns beneath. Through arches made of genius and of grace, numbering the stars within each stone’s embrace.

I dream this is all easier, if not delightful, in a desert paradisal scene. Where arid becomes beautiful and free air moves through all, spirits borne and carried along. Maybe heaven’s healing wind will pause and wave upon me there, and I will feel and know something of the serene aspect of God.

Too much romance and earthly-bound, I know. But I need this. My fear frankly needs it, as does my hope and peace.

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“Adversity, Misfortune”

“Adversity, Misfortune”
(written with all urgency)

Is what it means
Malheur (thanks to
Collins), and there is
A certain story about
That (Mister Thurber,
You can look it up)

But the story that is
Written now can
Only add to the
First meaning

Set fire? No
Imprison any longer?
No
Militia? We have
The National Guard
(I know, national)

Grace, which translates
Closely all around,
Needs abounding here

Not perched in a
Distant tree, an
Observation pillar,
Waiting to return
To normal life

Not to blame the bird
The bird is natural,
Even as a metaphor

Grace is better
It takes “mal-heur”
To render it “bon-temps”
(Sorry if I slaughter French
A language I enjoy)

I am of Northwest
I am in Oregon (check
The names)

My grandfather built
Refuges like
Malheur (though I’d
Like to think he’d have
Checked the name)

All are right in this
All are wrong
Everyone back up
And change the stakes

Then everyone not further
Newly charged (please, no)
In need-corrected wrong

Everyone
Go
And be home

C L Couch
January 2016

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MLK(J)

MLK(J)

More than letters,
Though there were
Amazing ones, is
Love that suffuses

Not to claim
Perfection–I
Could not I do that
For myself

But gentle, numbered
Overwhelming
Victory
Is for those who
Outlast imperfection,

Even as they with
Finality close trap-
Jaws of persecution

Marching persistence
Realizing still, always in
Grace, wondrous change

0

Psalm 18, about the divine participle

Psalm 18
about the divine participle

(Note Advent and Lent have
Participle meanings)

Lord, you are action, you
Are acting

The active spirit in the
Cosmos and inside ourselves

As a participle or a gerund
(Noun disguised as verb), you
Are meaning in all moving
Within beauty, space, and time

All is sounding, finding
Depth; all

Is soaring, reaching
Height, as you are passing
Over earth and sky and star

And under earth and in
The core

Our mortal lives
In waiting

You are saving
Saving grace
Within our lives

Helping us
In our divining
Lord

2

Writing Prompt: Describe your worst ever Thanksgiving meal.

while wrestling with recall, it turns out what should have been the worst day turned out not so bad–a terrible time, a moment of grace

Cathartic Thanksgiving Day

My worst Thanksgiving ever. Hmm, I can’t recall. Not that Thanksgivings were always grand. But they tended to be good. The years my mom was dying from cancer. I can’t imagine those Thanksgivings were good. I was trying to visit her in the hospital each day or taking care of her when home, trying to take care of the house, trying to work a job across the city.

But I think for the holidays my siblings came to town, and I had a holiday of sorts unto myself. I didn’t cook or do much of anything except sit still. And Thanksgiving Day was peaceful. Same thing at Christmas.

I probably felt tired and numb at heart. The constant pace of covering everything increasingly took its toll by coring out my spirit of enthusiasm, which I then learned to manufacture. I felt bound to provide for my mother and others, though more and more I felt little else. But it seems that in my memory of mind (though I wouldn’t trust myself to be my own life’s reliable narrator), I can recall the long table in the dining room space, all around the table the folk that I’m related to. Lots of containers filled with many things, turkey in the center, carved. Glasses we could make sing by rubbing fingers around the rim, which always bothered someone (I can’t recall whom). A hum of conversation with a layer of laughter on the top, like whipped topping on the pie. (Always more than one actual pie.)

A good day in a miasma of sad and difficult time. An anodyne. Better yet, a day of grace.

There would have been two such Thanksgiving days while my mom was sick. The third year I think maybe there was little celebrate or nothing at all. And within a year or so, I moved out, as everyone had gone before over several years’ time. Leaving my dad who later left on his own, too.

C L Couch

image from http://www.kutkupret.com and Google Images

not dissimilar from our actual table; even the chandelier looks right, though our walls were white

now off to make a turkey sandwich

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