meaning

Mischief Intercession

Mischief Intercession

(not my place)

I hope she is okay

I pray she is okay

Like victims from a fire

That was our time together

I bear what I should bear

And should know more

I should not take the lead

Unless it’s time

That is the bearing of our time

Now fluid and porous

Like a dam built by fish

Whose instinct is to do another

I suppose out of desperate

Ignorance, they could simply

Swim into the opening

Thus making something,

Knowing from a spirit

(even zeitgeist)

That something has to change

I should have given more over to

Sacrifice

We both could have followed service

Better than the pronouns

We kept separate

As in a box that will not open

Forget the need for opening to pleasure

And pleasure’s change,

Inspiration

Well, this was a prayer

Still is

I hope she’s okay

I pray she is

C L Couch

Photo by Bryan Garces on Unsplash

November 18, 2019 0

A Cycle of Faith

Seasons move

And then return

Though nothing stays the same

There is a year and then another, and

Each moment, each molecule is new

There is a cycle

But like the one on wheels

It covers new ground when it must

Or when we like

There is a degree of choice

Stay where we belong

That’s good in town

Strike out anew when we are away

And a wide, open road unreels

Beneath us

We believe

What we believe

Does it cycle like the year?

We have it, then we let it go

Like distractions of the seasons

We may like a

Philosophy at home

But then the alarm goes off

There’s smoke

And we run away

Smart move

What scared us away

Fear of fire, as it should frighten us

But when fire is a thought

Maybe we decide

When I was in school, I read philosophy

I read more now

Not to prevaricate, it isn’t all

The mind

The rest of us makes choices, too

Have you never felt it?

Pheromones, some might say

Or other such attraction

Call it a cause, even

Somewhere the heart must stir

It doesn’t have to be

Against the rest of us

There’s ritual:

That can get us far

It will not fill up all the years

It shouldn’t have to

All our lives can’t be spent in the temple

Unless that’s our job

And even so

Life outside is necessary

Air outside is different

When it moves

So there are factors

And ingredients

With the passing of time

Ineluctable

We choose

And we have faith

Or not

Don’t deny the power that’s in

Miracles or tragedy

Trauma of the ages

In our spirit

Tragedy through time

We think we’re the only one

And we are

Now we’re not

Here comes the sun

The rain on all of us

It’s all right

Do you marvel now

We can be moved?

It comes and goes

We need the respites in between

But does it grow

Like arches should we walk upon

An aqueduct in the other way

Toward the source of water

The spire grows, if on a side

The arches take us somewhere

Toward the origin

The start of creation, we might say

But the aqueduct’s not made for us

Ours goes the other way

The spire toward the future grows

And so the cycle breaks

Its rim cannot hold

We are better than our borders

And, like Aslan, should be

On the move

C L Couch

Luis Rogelio HM – Merida – 045, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=72766771

How to Say It?

How to Say It?

God, it’s Monday

That’s not an interjection

Or some kind of epithet

Though God of Mondays would work

Be a working title,

Certainly

It’s simply a morning greeting;

I hope to say tomorrow

With the meaning

(and the morning)

God, it’s Tuesday

C L Couch

By 歌川広重 – 東京都立図書館, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39086057

Morning Glory by Utagawa Hiroshige, 1866 (Japanese Woodblock print)

March 4, 2019 1

Work in Process

Work in Progress Process

Blank page awaits

No, it doesn’t wait on me—it’s a

Blank page

It doesn’t do anything

But I do

When inspired

Wait—must I wait for that?

It’s a process, you know

Discovery and meaning

I might not have just now

I might have them later

When in composing

Something happens

It’s here—hang on, it’s

Coming

On the way, I’m sure

And maybe with regret

I’m late waiting for Godot

The sun sets on my day

But wait—the

Breath of day is ending

Yet exhale and breathing-in of

Night is more inspiring!

(Waiting for Godot, a play by Samuel Beckett)

May 12, 2016 12

Twenty-Seven Syllables

Twenty-Seven Syllables

This is crepuscular diatribe
In quotidian confrontation
Meaning I’m scared of the coming night

(three lines of nine for no particular reason; maybe because I was born on the twenty-seventh day of the month; maybe because I want to try out the dictionary word-of-the-day; maybe because sometimes encroaching night puts me off—sometimes encroaching dawn as well)

February 8, 2016 8

Epiphany (prose poem)

Epiphany

Epiphany. Twelfth Night. The magi come upon the infant Jesus at his family’s home. They are amazed. They give gifts. A tribute.

Epiphany means discovery. An ordinary act that brings new insight to life. The magi, I imagine, were not ordinary people, though what they did was hardly unusual. Many traveled land to land and town to town back when. The caravans were living roads to make trade and civilization possible.

They are not the only ones who had read and studied the stars to find alternative direction. Astrology, astronomy. They were blurred pursuits in this region of the past. There was meaning in the sky. The seasons brought us learning there. We looked for all these.

But when these magic persons, in their learn(ed) wisdom of the world, travel west at last to find this child at home, sameness leaves their lives and all the worlds’. Forever.

What did they discover? What was realized? They beheld a person who meant change.

How so? Two thousand years and some, we still ask.

January 6, 2016 2