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After a Kind of Rain

After a Kind of Rain

 

There is hope

While there is good

We don’t even have to know

It’s more than half

We only need to catch a gleam

In the morass of kidnapped night

That better roles have

Abrogated

That was, I think, the war

In heaven

 

And if the hopeful glint

Is not in evidence

On the field or in a corner

In case our spirits are abducted, too

In the metaphor, we can close

Our eyes and in a better

Darkness recall

The light,

Which lifts the cause for metaphor

And story

More poetry, more narrative

We need more, we must have more

In case so much depends upon

 

By all means, this is not a call

For this

There is so much around

Barely a kick will stir it up from

Dulling dust

Or here’s a thought:

Create

Co-create

Strike an agreement with a muse

A long-term contract

Don’t worry

She awaits

With clarity even within

The rolls of night

Even before the end of

Stormy weather

Over one plain or another

 

C L Couch

 

 

Fahad Hashmi – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40357621

Lahore

 

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Hear My Cry

Hear My Cry

 

A featureless sky that nonetheless tries to speak of snow

An unremarkable day in which the world

Might be saved through

A sky-sound,

A child’s word, or an animal’s cry

Something to break the kind of silence strangled

From an utterance of need and hope

 

C L Couch

 

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Peace, Prevail

Peace, Prevail

(for the USA and all)

 

Red leaves on trees

Against the season’s

Bright blue sky,

Branches lightened in

Late-afternoon, autumn

Sun

 

Vision of nature

Hope for a nation

 

C L Couch

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psalm 4-something

psalm 4-something

 

too tired for capital letters

proper phrasing and

reliable numerals

 

I extend my hope

my hand is open

 

will I have it when I draw it back

will it be empty with some taken off

will it be an open plain upon which is

 

something of a gift

something to keep me going

source of sustenance

symbol of believing

 

even the lines on my palm

might tell me as they intersect

that patterns are really chaos

without some understanding

 

nothing gnostic or occult

no wise artificial secrets

 

only openness, like a hand,

 

when the act is fragile

ready to receive whatever

you place on me to do

5

Sanctuary

Sanctuary

 

Because one is still

 

Does not mean that one is safe—

Life in one cell is open to

Mutation, loss of parts, disease;

 

Life within a prison cell

Suffers from same dangers

 

In detention and in

Isolation

(Even with others in proximity),

 

Under death-order and maybe death-

Watch;

 

How,

 

Fixed under a demon’s yoke

Whose cause is politics,

Who for an idea

 

Has been taken out

Of actual existence?

 

Toward the Southern Pole

(Closer than most of us will

Get), there is a Russian Orthodox

Church—

 

Ten bodies with ten souls within

May worship;

 

The rest know that the church is

There:

 

Triptychs of spirit and of hope

Inside

At the end of the world,

 

Where there is likelihood

Of living through oppression

 

Wrought by nature or assignment.

 

What sanctuary in the prison cell,

Where trapped mind and abandoned

Spirit are closed maybe for a

Final time,

 

Where fear

The only inner company?

 

Andy awaits

Release of one kind or

Another.

 

 

http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/23100

Kidnapped Briton spends 700th day in illegal detention

A British man who is held under sentence of death in Ethiopia has spent his 700th day in unlawful detention, after he was kidnapped and rendered to the country by Ethiopian forces in 2014.

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Parting Storm

Parting Storm

(Good Friday,

while rain falls)

 

Tempests of dread

Over waves or

Maybe upon towns

Or fields or where

Any once had met

 

Storms have many parts

 

Forget the question if

It makes a sound where

There is no one to hear:

Storm sounds

 

(Makes noise,

Goes deep)

 

From the first

Crashing, splitting, thieving

Maddening descent

Of all the elements

 

Calling for chorus

And rebuke

 

Within or under

Land and water, as if

Newly and terribly alive, and

Where both converge

In savage contested

Bordering

 

Dying sets in, life strives

Against

 

Waking day of uncertain

Force, fearing that

Maybe faith no longer

Holds

 

Falling with night

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eccentric impoverishment

eccentric impoverishment

 

I believe in odd things

in the creeping things of scripture

in the texture of flower petals

that hold the elixir of hope

for nature

 

in that which doesn’t last but

really does

kind encounters with strangers

(kind when strangers encount-

with me)

joy in small things

joy even on a day that’s dim

with unlined sky

for creative impossibilities

 

the world doesn’t value the

arcane

things or my eccentric way of

loving them

 

so how am I to live

 

in response

I do not know is first

with fear closely behind

 

how do I live for real I mean

 

how does a world set so differently

(or I so differently to it) agree

and arrange to pay for who I am

and what I do and how

 

how do I find my way with

only colors in the corners

if I must direct myself toward

a blander needle point

 

but I need the life of hope in

creativity with the world

 

who salaries that

 

who pays me

for that artful amorphous

life

4

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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Burying the Unknown Dead

Burying the Unknown Dead

A ministry, non-sectarian, in
Boston

Students from a private
School—senior-students
From a private school

Attend to one, an unknown
Man, somewhere with a
Name but no one to claim
And care for his mortal
Remains

“But today we are his family,
We are here as his sons . . .”

Pallbearers, recitations of
Free and liturgical verse—
These youth provide all

To bear the body and,
Finally, kindly lay with
Loving intention into the
City’s yard and ground

In Boston, it’s a frozen
Day, yet there is some light

Because hope of all kinds
And times and mortal or
Immortal prophecies—

Hope blazes here

(reported at npr.org for
25 January, “Today We
Are . . .” by Arun Rath)

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