Mexico

In Mexico and California

(x = space)

In Mexico and California

Hilary’s been visiting

With water

Wind

Pages of destruction

Formed by words

Of storm clouds

We run away who can

There is great sense

In this

Those who can or must

Weather

Well

We weather

Waiting for her to pass

Astarte

Or Ba’al

Some god in the storm

We do not sacrifice

On stones

Or inside fires

Elijah’s altar

Would be dowsed

By Hilary

And so prove the faith

When manifest

The truth

Is given

Wait

Maybe wait as those

Who wait upon the Lord

Except for the things

That are destroyed

And us

Left in the center

Trying to stay

On the mortal side

Of all this

How long until

The juggernaut

Leviathan

Has passed

Here

We could use water

Someday shall the satellites

Serve us

With such saving deliveries

To here

From there

Both termini

The people

With our properties

Yes

Our things on Earth

Kept

As rescuing

And keeping can

Stay live

As you and others

Can

Nothing else matters

Until this

Until us

C L Couch

Photo by Alexander Jawfox on Unsplash

August 21, 2023 0

The Glass No Longer Darkly

(x = space)

The Glass No Longer Darkly

(for All Souls’ Day)

I’ve been too busy

With the living,

Not to praise that

Habit

The dead have frightened me

When they are active

With the living

Like the Twilight Zone episode

That used to scare me,

The one with the telephone line

Fallen against the grave

And the dead calling

A living relative

Or the one in the Old West

With the peddler selling

Magic to bring back

The family members

To the living

In a town

And then charged more

To keep the dead, dead

And they return,

Anyway

That sounds comic, I suppose

But the dead used to scare me

Not so much now

Experience, I guess

And a constructive belief

In afterlife

And the agenda of their own;

They will be busy,

After

The sacred and the secular

All Saints’ comes ‘round

It doesn’t have to be so somber

In fact, there will be picnics

By the graves

In Mexico

And elsewhere

Commemoration

Remembrance

By the families

Who know how to love

On either side

C L Couch

Fotografía de una calavera de azúcar, típica en México.

By Pedro Moga – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22536159

November 2, 2022 0

Terremoto

Terremoto

(Mexico)

It is the land that moves

Who pushes it

The Earth

And all of us

We lean into fault lines

Hurrying along

The motion

That will, by nature,

Harm us all the same

(Earth doesn’t need our help)

Loss of life

Among the rescued and the rescuer

Cold irony

In an otherwise heated day

We grieve

For our neighbors

And I trust will pray

Those who do

And those who do and don’t

Will think and plan

More actively

To live our prayer in action

This is mission

This is living

In a neighborhood

Of us

Somos Oaxaca

C L Couch

Earthquake shakes southern Mexico for second time in three days

http://b3co.com/mexico/da-de-la-bandera/

February 19, 2018 2

North American Union

North American Union
(not NAFTA, more than)

So my friend Dennis
Who taught me how
To smoke a pipe (don’t
Worry; the pipe for
Years now serves only
As a decoration)

Well, Dennis once
Posited a plan—that
Canada and Mexico
Merge with USA

Dennis from Canada,
I the USA, while we
Lived and worked
Close by the San-Diego-
Tijuana border; we
Spoke of our

Now-new nation (and,
Admittedly, this is
Somewhat stereotypical
Thinking from thirty
Years ago), a country

Enjoined: vast resources
Of nature in the north
With great human ability,
From the south with ever-
New technologies from
The land between

So there, Dennis, shared
In time of friendship,

Knowing that all mortal
Things are finite and
So need care to last then
Maybe last again,

Shall we disassemble
Walls—add a writhing
Serpent into bald eagle’s
Claws, all set upon
Autumnal maple leaf—
This our new metaphor
To try?

Perhaps this is a time
To arrange triangles of
Tables, negotiating
Continents of possibility

February 17, 2016 0

My own little Valentine celebration. I guess we celebrate feast days, though these are the days in which the saints have died. Martyrdom—we celebrate? Well, I bought little round pink plates with small square napkins to match. I am drinking coffee with little croissants on one of those pink plates, dabbing with a small square napkin. Watching the pope visit Mexico.

Where is love? Is it there? Is it here? Is it intertwined through both places and all other places? And the people? Are we bound in red silken ties of love? Free to move yet tied so that, when we might fall, others are there gently (remember, silk) to pull us up and on.

Quizás.

Goodness, the president of Mexico is good-looking. He speaks of “a better community” (translated), “a better society.” A better world, I imagine. Why not? Here’s a chance to speak of objectives and ideals in a country toward which too many look askance.

Quizás.

February 14, 2016 5