names
Our Lady has a day
Juan Diego anglo named
she gave him roses
(12 December, Our Lady of Guadalupe)
I am Christopher
bearer of Christ and walking
hundred-acre woods
your name is your name
assigned you for a reason
there is a story
c l couch
(a series, I suppose, though I think each poem stands on its own)
there are good stories [a line while drafting that I thought I’d let stay on the page]
photo by Aida Batres on Unsplash
(x = space)
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3 poems of encounters
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Love, NOAA
x
Emily
Franklin
Gert
Harold
x
The writer on
The wuthering heights
The character from PBS
Maybe the nickname
For Ms Stein
And I heard one forecaster
At least
Call it Harry
x
Our alphabet
Our panoply
Of names for the destruction
Small gods as small pilgrims
Manifesting through the portal
Moving away at last
To foreign altars
x
And what they do to us
Who would be faithful
If we knew the rites
The saints
For weather and
Forfending the destruction
Of an age
Each time
x
x
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Grocery Store Evangelists
x
I met two evangelists
Last evening
After I got all the pills
That I needed
Well
Nearly
(the count after
means I need to order
more
silly
heart disease)
And was shopping
For a little more
When a tract appeared
x
Do I believe in God
How about Jesus
And the Holy Spirit
Am I saved
Do I read my Bible
x
I could say yes
And so we had
A pleasant conversation
In the spirit
We invoked
As two and three were gathered
(that’s in the Bible
too)
x
Their work is urgent
And actually
They’re happy
In it
Still the greater task
Not to take on faith-attackers in the forum
But to reach
The dispossessed
Who are indifferent
x
The lukewarm dogs
That Revelation says
Are the greater challenges
To see
To hear
To taste
The need for faith
x
Through all the rings of Earth
The rounds
Of worldly agendas
x
I wish them well
I wish no violence
I wish smooth rhetoric
All love through
Everything
They are
And move
And have their being
x
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For through God we live and move and have our being. As some of your own poets (Aratus, say) have said, “We are God’s offspring.”
Acts of the Apostles 17:28
NIV with paraphrase
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These Girls, These Women
x
I wish I were more
Like Meg
But I don’t have a seeing rock
And I’m not that faithful
Though my feelings
Toward my father
Moved
Evolved
As well
x
I wish I were like Angharad
But I’m not a warrior
And have not won
A blue sword
x
Or the young women in
The Witch of Blackbird Pond
Who was running
From her persecutors
Turned
And beheld
Her ship of rescue
x
I have the managerial acumen
Of Mom
Some of her anger
Too
And there’s my sister
Who does everything
So well
x
Maintains a jungle
In her home
While I take my few plants
To turn them brittle
Though
The pots look nice
x
These girls
These women
We should learn so much
About being boys
And men
And girls
And women
And scions of great literature
Ourselves to qualify
Among them
Should someone tell
With fictive elegance
Our stories
x
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A Wrinkle in Time
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C L Couch
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Photo by Vlad Frolov on Unsplash
x
Naming Things
A first prerogative in the garden
That’s a cow and that’s a dog
That’s an Edsel, that the World Wide Web
And if we don’t like them
We can blame the editors,
Translators
There are nicknames, too
Blame-free alternative
Did God name day or night?
Who said that they’re good?
Whose naming,
Whose words?
Knowing origins
A story fills the void
Words is what we got
We set them on a stool
Play them with or without
Syncopation
The jazz of
Genesis
God’s making, our telling
Listen to the teller
Hear the names
Respect the language
Of the singer
No one knows the maker’s words
What we have
We perform in parts
Rehearsing for Parousia
Last words to name
New heaven and new Earth
C L Couch
Photo by Rafki Altoberi on Unsplash
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