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hope

Everything Is Listening

(x = space)

x

x

Everything Is Listening

x

It is a fallen world:

Fallen people,

Fallen nature,

Maybe primal good

As in

Genesis

Until the fruit is eaten

Then everything is

Changed

x

What kind of universe

Allows such a fall

From the marrow

To the skin

And in the air

The slough above the skin?

x

A universe that’s made

With allowance

From its maker

x

Everything made

Real

With real alternatives,

Real consequences

x

Real joy

x

Real loss

x

The chance for one thing

Or the other;

Chance matters

Choice matters more

x

What we choose

Moves the Earth,

Maybe heaven

A little

x

Heaven malleable enough

For a third

To fall away,

The Earth more so

Affected by our choices

Mortal

Inside mortality

x

Save the Earth,

Save each other:

This can be done

With faith

And better choices

After faith

x

We believe—help

Our unbelief

x

What shall we say?

What shall we do?

How shall we live?

x

We are fallen;

Our choices mingle

With the dust

Of ages;

We have an age,

This age

x

We have flaws

x

We have hope

x

We know a better way

x

The prophets and the angels

Tell us

Of repentance

And good news

x

C L Couch

x

x

Photo by Mohsen Samimi on Unsplash

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4

Releasing Hope

Releasing Hope

 

There should be hope

The only thing left in the box,

Which means it lay with

All the evils for who knows

How long

I guess Pandora knows

And what were the evils?

Envy, sloth, gluttony?

Yet there’s nothing wrong in

Wanting, in ease, in eating

Maybe those evils were

Culture-specific

Mesopotamian, Egyptian

Greek

Maybe a foe

Such as Carthage

Or allies, such as

One city-state to another

Maybe it was treason

The treachery at Thermopylae

False promises that might

Surprise for being small

And murder

These are harder to analogize

Disloyalty, betraying one’s own

Taking lives

 

Unless hope might be

Dispensed without

Letting it go,

Then she should open the box

Once again

Let the creature rise

And take the Earth

Then the mission might be

Re-collecting evils, placing them

Back in the box

Maybe with an intern

From Olympus

(an intern team)

Who could

For and with them

Re-think the evils

Remember goodness before

The ruin

But then the gods

Would need to learn about

What is good against the pettiness that

Snapping or a wave

Can wreck for mortals

Mortals, too, once freed up some

Might receive reminders, too

Goodness and balance

Golden means on a silver path

The final thing

For the Athens school

For the Lyceum,

Let everyone in

To give the good a chance

Democratized

As was their theory, after all

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by David Becker on Unsplash

 

7

The Opposite of Magi

The Opposite of Magi

(for Epiphany, for any old epiphany)

 

The gift of the fools

The young who pay too much

For love

The old who believe there is too little

To be paying for at all

The city street is harsh for both

It’s only for transition

But because we feel the wind

Or the heat of summer,

We hope too much there’s something here

Only for us

And there is

The Earth remains a gift

And cities an invention

Not to mention farms

And small towns at crossroads

The roads themselves

The way that can only be felt

Across the desert

Through the forest

Choosing the strand to take

In a web of waterways

 

All ages have a chance

Must we always give

As in lose

Or in surrender?

Maybe so—if so, let’s make it

Worthwhile

(comes to mind is something about

aphoristic pearls and pigs,

sorry, pigs, a metaphor forwarding

the story)

Money, time, muscles, potential

Whatever it’s going to take

For betterment

One life, two lives, two and a half

A million

Can we count what matters,

Can we take it one by one?

The old response comes to mind

From the teacher trying to teach:

I don’t know if you can,

But you may

 

C L Couch

 

 

“The Gift of the Magi” is a short story by O. Henry first published in 1905. The story tells of a young husband and wife and how they deal … en.wikipedia.org

Photo by Linh Nguyen on Unsplash

 

3

Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Please

Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Please

 

God, what shall I say

Of you today?

You are exasperating

You are all hope

You are the center of my faith

You are the labyrinth

I mean to cross

I take my comfort from you

As I take sustenance from food

You are my food

There are no empty calories,

Which on occasion is my deal

I will die

I am afraid

I think I shall meet you there

Or someone from your office

I had an episode last night

To remind me

Though there’s fear

There will be relenting, too

A last litany with Earth

A first step toward

What you deem is next

 

C L Couch

 

 

Froaringus – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7633775

 

5

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

 

0

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

 

0

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

2

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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