too late the resolution
(like Louisa G. in Hard Times)
she did it right
and she’s alone
I know
it will not last
in movies
with the rom-com aspect
but in life
decisions tend to
isolate
the more done on one’s own
the more isolate
one remains
call it conscience late
to be
a part of
worldly things
to surrender
what one might have had
for company in choosing
sides
and instead
go straight
if on a life track
like
a racetrack
on one’s own
so goes resignation
wrong thing
now try
the right thing
and because of all the circumstances
with
parochial judgments
now one shall go
along
alone
c l couch
In the novel Hard Times by Charles Dickens, there is a school of place of thought, in which a horse is a “quadruped” and little more. Nothing matters of the beauty or the majesty in horses. A child of the headmaster (and promulgator of the “quadruped” importance) is in essence trapped by the limitations in perceiving, well, anything. She learns, rebels, and is at peace with the aesthetics of the world by the end. But it is too late. She remains alone, sans family, in her good thinking.
I often think of this and her when pondering the story.
Here is a paraphrase of her final state: Louisa stares into her fire with a "gentler and a humbler face." She sees herself helping others but never marrying or having children (https://www.enotes.com/topics/hard-times/questions/what-is-the-conclusion-of-the-novel-hard-times-225779).
photo by Rich Dahlgren on Unsplash
I was walking up this horse path and lo and behold a horse was there grazing! I had to wait several minutes before I was allowed to pass. The golden hour sunlight helped make this one a keeper [photographer’s narrative].
(x = space)
x
x
While in Mariana’s Grange
x
Hello, day
It’s been a night of wakefulness
Then I drifted off
Onto waters of forgetfulness
Except for dreams
That now I’m here
I am forgetting, too
x
But here’s remembrance:
I’m waking up
To what I left
And whom
There is no ignorance
Everything returns
I must learn again
How to contain
In flesh
Everything I bear
And had left
Only for a while
For angels lifting up
And demons bearing down
x
C L Couch
x
x
Mariana in the Moated Grange
John Everett Millais
painting dated 1851
the image is in the Public Domain
the painting hangs in the Tate in London
x
Both Our Houses
(in a time of, well, you know what time it is)
A plague on both your houses
I’m sure someone has thought of this
By now
My house and yours
Might be infected
Remain in isolation, though there are
Phone calls and the Internet
Our neighborhood of houses
And the nations
It might be nothing, might be
The thing that’s going ‘round
I could use some lamb’s blood for the lintel
No small thing,
Because my faith is shaken
The thing is vague except that it’s
Pervasive
The Montagues and Capulets
Cannot join hands
Just yet
But let the lovers have their way
They cannot touch for now,
Which is plague enough
C L Couch
March 2020
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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