2 poems about the day
Fish Fry
(check the shape of stanza'd, ichthus undulation)
Friday
Fry day
Fish fry day
At the Catholic church
For penance
I suppose
Though the is
So much
One can’t complain
Of abstemious devotion
And the money
Should go somewhere
Good
And we Protestants
Can enjoy that
Too
Should we think on it
While crunching into fish with
Whatever else
Is
Provided
Yay
Catholics
Thank you for
This weekend treat
You all
Have
A great weekend
Too
After all the cooking
(the worry over getting
burned
while frying)
And all the cleaning
That frankly
We did not
Have to do
Though when it’s our turn with
A rummage sale
We’ll clean up
Afterward
For you
Thirteen O’Phobia
Today is Friday
A thirteenth
Sorry to
Triskaidekaphobes
Watch out
Black cats
They’ll be avoiding you
Which now I think it
Might be the quite suitable
Arrangement
And ladders
Mirrors
Sidewalk
Cracks
Salt containers
All the things that make
This day less
Amenable
And it’s the number
Generally
As well
The lack of such in buildings
Even
Now
And what was it
Crucifixion on a Friday
Or the barbaric
Gory dissolution of the Templars
On a Friday
Thirteenth
Early in the fourteenth century
(1307
look
another thirteen)
And Judas killed himself
Maybe on that
Friday
Being the thirteenth disciple
(once removed)
In some lore
But for me
And maybe I should apologize
I often
Find
The day goes very well
Which might be
Determination
Or
Luck
Half-Irish luck
For my mother’s family
While on my father’s
Side
There are the English
Who most likely
Do not care
About the day and
Date
As long as the flag is flying
Somewhere in a
Time zone
Over Earth
C L Couch
(9/13/2024)
Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash
Matthias, Paul, Judas—who is the thirteenth disciple/Apostle? (Rhetorical question--depends on whose tradition's answering.)
A Now That Must Also Look Ahead
It’s Tuesday
It’s a nuthin’ day
A sick day
Among sick days
The novelty’s worn off
Some learning’s needed
With the cooking
And the cleaning
The boxing
(of both kinds)
All the games that
Walls and cyber-walls allow
Thank goodness, we can
Look outside and go there
There’s real talking, too
In many ways
A face to face
That’s a comfort
And we learn from this
A different kind
Of schooling, maybe
There are books
Paper and pencil, too
Or let them be totems for
Pens or the electron kind,
What it all might represent
The faces
All the forms
We can through this, now
Until the angel passes
Our own kind of rite
The Jewish own so well
Singing for pass-over
Blood upon the lintel
Chair for the prophet, should
The prophet come to call
Food, some of it with bitter herbs
But everything we need
For the journey
Into such desert and
At last
A homeland
The Passover is family
Each tradition has its form
And if we have none,
What better time than pandemic’s
For making something new?
For the world needs cleaning
Not a purging
But a dusting off
Soap and water
Disinfectant for the worst
While we wait
Research
And wait
With everything that passes over
Having something of the new
Inside,
Maybe inexorably, ineffably
Once shared,
New ritual
Based on care for what we’ve learned
Of who we’ve been
And who we are
Again and for the first time
As for death and mourning,
Each tradition knows that well
And those without
However we might feel
I don’t know how to count
While others do
Remember, in the future,
It was this kind of plague
I might not be here
Or another witness
Closer and more qualified
You’ll have to have a story
Back to learning, again
Sad lessons
And tragic
And a void
We learn this other kind of life
Lived through emptiness
It is time for a wake, the Irish say
(who also know bread
and bitter herbs for sin and hope,
Irish Jews more so)
Though this party if too big
Too many coffins to line up
Along the bar
What the dead drink
Will do nothing for a tab
Only take coins in readiness for
Ferry pilots
Announced by banshees
These groups I know a little of
You have your own
And stories
Set them down and tell them
Try not to worry about variants
They happen
There is a narrative here
Part of the story of the Earth
If we tell it well,
The Earth might weep
For us
C L Couch
Holey Week 3
Banshee
She calls death one at a time
And only she can do this
How many of her kind
Might number all the realms
She does not know
She cannot
The grammar is of one, no
More
No more can exist at a
Time
There is no plural here, for only she
Can split the night
A responsibility of one, and then
Not even that
She folds into time until
Her nature is invoked again
To rend the cloth
To terrify even the somber parts
Of night
Dawn becomes mortality
All this is hers
C L Couch
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No attribution required
(Pixabay)
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