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Again with the Sunday-Thinking

Again with the Sunday-Thinking

 

It’s Sunday, and

I should say something spiritual

But there’s Hamlet’s rub

(not a small town’s)

About mortality or, I should

Say, the end of it,

Which is what the Dane’s discussing

One side of the coin, as

It were, the other side

Well, spirituality

Who’d have thought?

 

So here we are

The coin I have,

The choice I have

Heads or tails

Or stand it on the edge,

Which I can do

 

Do you?

This is where we are

Where angels could dance

As slender as the pin

Though it goes around

Another way

Both things, the circle and the sphere,

Are endless

One comes back

And if a mark isn’t made

We’ll fool ourselves

In the illusion

A belief that we are always going

Somewhere

Somewhere else

 

So we need another metaphor

Metaphors as analogies

Always fail somewhere

Along the way

But we have the vine

The true vine and the faulty

And would that we graft ourselves

To the stronger,

Greener branch

And so grow

Like a magic beanstalk

Toward heaven

Though here’s where plants no longer

Serve analogy

For heaven’s not up

Where Claudius would send his prayers

Not forward, backward

Interior, exterior

Exit, arriving

I think you know

Where heaven is

Open the window of the soul

The air is good, at last

No teaching no longer necessary

Breathe the good and lasting

Air of heaven in

I wonder if in heaven

All we do is inhale

 

Better than direction

Better than metaphors

Better than Christmas morning

Or a birthday

(not analogies but real

remembrances I trust, I hope)

Heaven is an invitation

Please respond

r.s.v.p.

a.s.a.p.

I want to meet there

And maybe you

Will help me

Though there’s one who

Will bring us, both

 

C L Couch

 

 

Image by Thanks. All my pics are free! from Pixabay

church war syria civil war devastation devastated

 

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Returning Gifts

Returning Gifts

 

Praise the Lord

And all that is in me praise the Lord

Or something like that

How can I praise such a thing as God

When I am such a thing as me?

To God be the glory

How can I glorify

When I am so small,

And my voice is broken?

I know the story of the smallest angel

In the movie, Fred Gwynne as

Mentor angel talks of his mother’s

Brown bread, when all

Were mortal

 

But in the young one

(newly angelified)

There is purity

And innocence to give

As gifts in the small box emblemize

What have I like these?

 

And wouldn’t I look at you

To say there is so much

Because there is—I

Guess I need to understand

That everything with life has worth

Even if itself it were a gift

I can turn it over

(so can you)

And that’s the act of service

And of love

 

C L Couch

 

 

Image by Marc Pascual from Pixabay

The Littlest Angel by Charles Tazewell (1946)

 

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Heading Home Again

Heading Home Again

 

I cannot write as Mary Oliver has written

About snow geese and the song of dawn

Over a living pond far away,

Because she’s far away from me

Now more than ever, more than forever

 

She commanded nature by

Never giving orders

She sensed through more than senses

All she met and came to understand

I think we can rely on her, through

Words and more she left us

 

I wish like wishing on a star

That I could have sat with her just once

Maybe we would not have been good company

My inclination would have been

To do little more than listen

And maybe she would not have left it that way

But like nature as she cast it

Only settled for full participation

 

In my place under town lights

I cannot see the stars

But on the inside I can travel like Thoreau

And other theories

And read her words to let them sink

Like stones returning home from the rim they

Had been cast upon, long ago

 

We can all love the world better

Through our pastored mischief-making

There is need for redemption

But we need to look more closely, all the while

To remember all the places where love sits

Or rises now and then to play

 

All the people who will take us home

Or simply push on gliders made by wind

As we arrive

 

C L Couch

 

 

Oliver lived in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and Hobe Sound, Florida, until her death in early 2019 [which is now]. She was 83.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/mary-oliver

 

Wild Geese

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/wild-geese

Mary Oliver

 

(image)

John Fowler [destined, if not predetestined] from Placitas, NM, USA – Snow Geese, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24663639

Incoming snow geese fill the dawn sky at Bosque del Apache.

 

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Mister Sanders Speaks

Mister Sanders Speaks

 

I may not know much

But I can wonder

Why the sky is blue

And my balloon is green

And will I reach the tree

With all the honey

 

Why there is a name on my home

Of someone I don’t know

Who counted out

The hundred acres of our wood

And why does Piglet

Help me in all the plans I make

Despite the fact that

I am of small brain

 

He is so good, my human friend

He could come by more often

Maybe find a way to keep

The tail on the donkey

So that we could

Hunt the Heffalump

And play

And find more honey

 

And better still,

Eat more honey

 

Christopher Robin Couch

 

 

EllenChan / 1110 images

(Pixabay)

 

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Home Keys

Home Keys

 

I know who I am

Do you?

It’s not a challenge

Maybe

 

Maybe it’s a way to say

That if we talk

And as we listen,

It will go better if

If you have some understanding

Who you are

Me, too

 

C L Couch

 

 

https://pxhere.com/en/photo/627056

 

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At 5 a.m., How and Why

At 5 a.m., How and Why

 

God

You are there

And I am here

The distance between us need

Be no more than a filament

The breadth of a capillary

A pulse between two nuclei

Or the space can be

The width of a world

 

That has more to do with me

Since no qualifying of divine will stands

Beyond the condition you placed upon yourself

For a savior

 

One who redeems as God and a person

Flesh molded with spirit

Majesty in ordinary undertaking

To teach, to heal, to live, to die in innocence

And then all will returns

In death defeated

 

It is a Christian way to know things

It might not be yours

 

But to God

I wonder how you stayed the angel

Who took the knife from Abram’s hand

But would keep it in the Roman plan

To hack a cross together

Display one who dies because

A decision was made

In Sanhedrin and handwashing

Not for justice but for status quo become murderous

 

Abraham was flawed, so was Noah

So was Sarah, so was Isaac, so was Miriam

Yet you made them whole

As all were knit together

Except your child

Who was you and yet was not excused from execution

Out of innocence

 

How do you mitigate your will

And maybe you never do

You allow yourself to bleed

Blood and water, liquids running life

 

You could have changed it all, and you didn’t

Change a thing

I am amazed and horrified

And would never lift my eyes again

Except

You promise joy and peace

And whoever have I been to argue with you

I must be content

 

Allow for Easter

For greater pain unknown anywhere on Earth,

Which splits the universe

And renders understanding into splinters

Of crystalline grace

‘Til grace is all that’s left

With which you save

 

With which you drag us into heaven

From drowning in deep waters

Filled with tendrils from wary sources

Always ready, in fact plotting

To bring us down

Away from light

From one day into eternity

 

I don’t get it

I don’t have to

I am here

You are there

And here

Closer in than I shall ever be

My God

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Dane Deaner on Unsplash

 

 

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1982

1982

 

My mother came home from the hospital today,

and I can’t handle the numbness from

exhaustion.  She has the disease, and it’s going

to kill her, but I can’t help but wonder (bad

son) about my role in this.  I try to cause three

meals a day to happen and earn enough outside

to pay some bills.  My father has proved useless.

I guess no one is surprised, though every now

and then I hope.

 

C L Couch

 

 

Robert Gramner

Just a lost key by a popular running trail.

 

 

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Ode to Small Things

Ode to Small Things

 

The toast has jumped

Thank you, toast and toaster

Those who made you

Then

Those who made you

 

Let’s have an ode to

Every small thing that’s good

Typing

Lids that unscrew

Peanut butter

George Washington Carver’s inventions,

The ones that were never made

 

You and me

And each one of us,

Small upon the planet

Large in worth

And skill

And gratitude

For being made

And someone of us who

Might fix everything

 

C L Couch

 

 

https://pxhere.com/cs/photo/590878

 

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By Halves

By Halves

 

When we are revealed

In diaspora

When we are outcast

Of Earth

 

When all we have is gone

Used up to stay alive

 

When there is nothing more than

Scant hope, threadbare-blown

 

Then we might turn to each other

In remembrance

Of promises we never

Broached

Wishing we could know each

Other now

 

C L Couch

 

 

halves

File:Wstega macha.png – Wikimedia Commons

commons.wikimedia.org

 

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