Sooners
Soon
And very soon
What a wonderful way
To say that
A promise
That we won’t have long to wait
Before the bad things
End
The good things
Might be realized
Unsullied
Snow
Without mud
Or slush
Beneath
And spring beside
Well
Whatever season
We might need
A place for each one
And whatever
Passes for meals
In there
And meetings
With a purpose
The only agenda
Love
A life
And such a life
Soon
And very soon
C L Couch
Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3898658
is herein the shape of heaven?
though the soons I borrowed here are more from Andraé Crouch
(x = space)
x
x
Pastures Green
x
We ask you
You are near
To take us with you
After
As you let us go
Before
With this strange back-and-forth
The holding
Letting go
For the between
x
The life we know
Best we can
Or may
Given potential
And our choices
Matter more
Until
They done
Evolving to obedience
Rejection
Nothing more
x
To train like angels
To rebel
Like angels
To resolve
The war in heaven
So that admittance
To the new Earth
Is allowed
x
A heaven
Made for one
Which was hell’s agenda
Now thrown open
Like windows
Upon spring
From mansions
To interpret
A party in the courtyard
With victory overwhelming
All remembrance
Love and food
For news
Living water all around
For
Life and safety
Wings and colors
All released
For good
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Immo Wegmann on Unsplash
x
The Green Pastures, a great movie, I recall (see it, hear it)
x
“pastures green” in the lyrics of “Brother James’s Air”
x
(x = space)
x
x
Consider It All Joy
x
Let the outside
Be awful
If it must
For princes of the world
Might have their own way
There
(not letting
princesses rise
by the way)
If only
There
x
Be good on the inside
Your own realm
Where you have willed
Let in
Avowed
God to rule
While you serve God
Servant
Steward before monarch
Even when pressed
Persecuted
Outside
Sigh
Sometimes devilishly
On the inside, too
x
Consider it all joy
The paradox of life and death
And resurrection
Final joy
Complete
And unrelenting
Even
In new tasks
Assignments from
A celestial magisterium
Or shall we say
The will beneath the crown
Of the Lord
x
Doing what God says
Because
The glass is clear and
We can hear
x
x
Consider it all joy when we must have trials, knowing that this testing of our faith makes endurance. And let endurance be complete even by trials so that we are whole, lacking nothing that we really need especially inside.
James 1:2-4 (paraphrased a little)
x
Photo by Sam Mgrdichian on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
Devilry
(the passing mischief)
x
I suppose the devil
Is after me
In a suburban way
After you, too,
I imagine
Maybe there’s a strategy
Maybe the strategy
Is chaos
Lack of plan
To ruin all the plans
x
Temptation, certainly
And also despair
A bright life
Too bright
To cover all the rest
The real pain
The real faith
To get us through
x
The real hope
That’s in the jar
After all the evils
Have escaped
That move around
Outside
And try to set up
House or shop
Church or
Place of work
Lanes of traffic
Bars
Or at the store
x
More so the aim
To find a place inside
To take our rest
And better
Resolutions
x
It’s not a grand
Or grandiose
Establishment,
A studio
With garish sets
Ringed
By biggish cameras
Managed
By phantoms
x
It might look like
The nicest place
We know
Only off in ways
We can identify
Should we be ready
And aware
If only of ourselves,
Our close-in loves
x
Deviation
Hell
The hell of it
Is that it is a trick
As all the stories say
The diabolical
Looks like everything
And is
Nothing
Maybe sound and fury
For a while
‘Til the ending
As the better stories
Say
x
Give in
Or not
It seems easy, I suppose
The wider path
The golden opportunities
The promise of
A winning ticket
While the other way
Purportedly
Is narrow
But certainly accessible
And it gets wider,
Wide enough
For two or more
x
Not to moralize
But moralize
One way is always easy
Joyless
But easy
The other way gets hard
But promises
The peace, we know,
That passes
Understanding
x
Though we always
Understand enough
For the
Irascibility
(and ability)
Of will
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
15 February
(1925 to 1983)
x
Today is Mom’s birthday
Happy Birthday, Mom
x
I trust
The birthdays have been
The happiest
Of days
Since you arrived
And for the forever
That you’ve been there
x
Do you have a place?
Is it your own
With neighbors
And community close by?
I imagine walls
Made of bright wood
And a few
Favorite things
And a door that opens
Into spring
x
It is a dream
It is a hope
It is a formless prayer
Against the real joy
Better than my guesses
Of eternity
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by daniela de gol on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
Mortal Timing
x
It’s cool today
Thank goodness
I am thankful
I guess I can’t haiku this
No artful three-line
Praise
Or only observation
Out of nature
Yet nature should be thanked
We are lucky in this hemisphere
Just now
North enough
And south enough
(ecumenically)
Praise fall’s invocation
Of bright colors
Praise the God
Who shows us grace
With autumn
x
Someday
The seasons mesh
Their virtues celebrating
All together
How trees will bear fall colors
While serving new life below
As spring
And summer
Under winter’s cover
We don’t know
(maybe there will be quarters of
seasons’ perfection)
But it is heaven
And new Earth
And these miracles will work
Like clear gold
In the streets of
New Jerusalem
x
C L Couch
x
x
The twelve gates were twelve pearls, each made of a single pearl. The great street of the city was of gold, as pure as transparent glass.
Revelation 21:21
x
Photo by Steven Cordes on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
armageddon morning
x
all earthly alliances
whose treaties are for war
in violation
with a claim
to win the world
x
God will fight us
weeping
with the rain
no doubt of victory,
would rather gather us
on a field
for celebration
will take the victory
if we shall give it
insisting we are right
in no other way
x
dawn after
final skirmishes at night
surrendered remnants will
be healed
and taken home
surprising what was won
in defeat
who was the foe
we battered in the dark
who struck
who struck
we have forgotten
or will forget
with a will
x
the place is clean
Earth an altar
all other altars served
without knowing
the template
last sacrifices needed
and these weren’t
x
we will come home
quiet first
names
and wounds
the celebration shall come
later when renewed
x
when we awake forever
a universe
to get to know
and new assignments
x
there is a party
only for an age or so
inside new heaven
over new Earth
x
c l couch
x
x
photo by Dan Senior on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
Presenced
x
It should not come to this
But God
Rescue us
With miracle
Maybe miracles all around
Friend and foe alike
Even on the blooded field
Now turned
For fallow ground
Ready for
New planting
New heaven and new
Earth
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Quaritsch Photography on Unsplash x
(x = space)
x
x
Homers
x
A brother gone
Another brother going
Like homers from the park
What’s on the other side
Of the stadium,
We wonder
Though we know
The town outside
The city of disorganized noise
With the ritual
Inside the designed
Space
With bases and a plate
Clean lines
Maintained swarths of green
This is what we know
x
On the other side
Is chaos
And unknown
There are streets in heaven
There might be traffic patterns
Something to guide
The hit,
The sail home
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Andrew Jephson on Unsplash
x
clcouch123 
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