new year’s eve
the last week of the year
by the counting
of
the old
and present church
a purple season coming
or it’s popular
in blue
the green of churches
as well
and gatherings to
make it so
sometimes with soup
maybe chowder
(I
imagine chowder)
after
and thus these colors begin
with
poinsettias
red or pink or white
to be added
and
maybe there will be a tree
somewhere with
ornaments
could be
Chrismons
for ornaments
and
who knows whose presents
service
or wishes
underneath and all around
while some churches
will go
bare
for budgets or beliefs
and let the Christ child enter
to save alone
any human season
c l couch
photograph by Vidar Nordli-Mathisen on Unsplash
Once and Future
Camelot has fallen
The last knight rides
Away
Into the sunrise
Of the first day of the year
So Tennyson decided
Maybe based on information
Or more by
Insight
That had moved the poet
Through
Construction
And destruction
The rising
And the falling
Raised by music
Like cathedrals
Or said the poet’s peers
By the command of
Merlin
While depicting in
What must have seemed
Indomitable stone
All ascent and descent
In
Human ages
By
The wizard’s art
At its command
Now fallen also
The unearthly being
Sealed away
For now
And we are left
To ride away with Bedivere
Into our uncertain year
As
A matter of courses
When this hearing is done
And in our case
Unready for the courts
Ideals
By betrayals
Story-slain
As if by Mordred
Also
Guinevere
And Lancelot
All exposed
As our
Baser impulses toward
Ruination
Wrecking the foundation
Into rubble
That can
Support nothing like
The comely towers
Anymore
What kind of year
Is this
Where is the refuge
For the refugees
Shall Camelot be rebuilt
If only by words
In songs
Until we have the might
For right
To try again
With mortar in
Our stanzas
For now
On this first day
The sounds of riding
Harsh
Like our discourse
Now concluded
‘Til we open up
The pages of our lives
Again
While in a distant place
Already to be set
In camouflage by nature
The final
Burning
Broken stones of the last battle
Settle into
What had been
A part of Earth
More glorious
Somehow
By us
C L Couch
. . .
Or thought he saw, the speck that bare the King,
Down that long water opening on the deep
Somewhere far off, pass on and on, and go
From less to less and vanish into light.
And the new sun rose bringing the new year.
from “The Passing of Arthur,” concluding Idylls of the King by Arthur, Lord Tennyson
Photo by Jigar Panchal on Unsplash
so this becomes a song
so this is new year’s
and what have you
hung over?
shall we have
pork and sauerkraut?
a pretzel
or a pickle?
this is new year’s
and what we done?
it’s only been a day
we protest
not even that
but some of you are there
helping others
serving food
an arm around a shoulder
sending vibes of love
because it’s really love
we can do that
now
no waiting
no line
and if a line
(you know air travel,
certain movie tickets)
then
loving in line,
a happy
if not always chortling
new year
C L Couch
(a hangover is referenced, which may not translate well; a hangover is a state of drunkenness, especially in the morning after too much drinking of alcoholic drinks during the night before)
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
huevos nuevos
it's next year here and there
already
have a happy
to say
knowing that the challenges
also here and there
are many
deep
and difficult
but find a way
we shall
or can
by saying to ourselves
to this at that
or to someone else
I need your help
a new year
(in solar terms)
try it
love it
have it
clc
(Title—sorry, it’s a silly pun that, once I found and it held on, I or it could not escape. Happy New Eggs, everyone!)
(x = space)
x
x
Drafting into a Welcome for Rosh Hashanah
x
It has
Sundowned into
Tishrei
Rosh Hashanah
x
Now into
A count of five thousand
Seven hundred
Eighty-four
x
The new year
Turns the calendar
Adding one
To five millennia
(a few centuries
away
from six)
Together
As a people
x
We have liturgy
Reading
Hearing
We have the word of God
Visit
And then send us on our way
x
Our way together
Responding to the invitation
Of another year
Of seasons
For dancing
Mourning
All that is required
x
There are lessons
As we need them
x
A thousand died on Maui
Ten thousand in Libya
More than
Less than
A counting for
A necessary tally
As with those who fell in battle
Tallied in the texts
Of old
x
The wars waged with nature
And too often
With each other
x
And yet how many born
How many here
Grown into this family
Of long life
Together
x
And each one matters
Fallen
Risen
Breathing
Or having given up on breath
For what is next
x
Each one matters
x
Maybe
There are other
Older
But we are
A five-thousand (going on six)
Years-old people
Plus one new day
x
Ancient and new
We are
We work
We play
We pause to rest
We go again
x
(So)
Remember who we were
Remember who we are
This year of blessing
As we have it
Inside which
We’ll part
And come together
As required
Meaning it as celebration
Too
x
Sundown into sunrise
Go our days
Here and now
For we are here
We’re now
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Veronika Diegel on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
5783
x
On this numbered
Christmas day
There is a new year
Counting as we do
By Gregory
Of course
It’s not new year
Yet
(or maybe before)
In other places
Other traditions
Counting
Whoever has a lunar year
Whoever numbers
Seasons
The Christian Orthodox
In a couple of weeks
Or so
x
We
(dominating
west and north
and much of
east and south)
Being we
Might say
We have an atomic clock
And we prefer the sun
For clocks
That has lasted for a while
And
Will last
On our own
Until the Martian landings
Not only by machines
But by people
With machines
x
When we shall have
Two clocks
On walls
In ships
On wrists
Intentional for
Arean negotiation
And for fashion
We start our chronicles
By keeping double time
That yes means fast
For Mars
Is a smaller planet
Get there
Get it fast
We need new years
On new Earths
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Dan Meyers on Unsplash
All that’s missing is Homer Simpson sleeping in a chair with a box of pink donuts nearby. This is the control panel of the first nuclear power plant ever built. I love the retro 1950s style, dials, buttons, and lights. This is a free museum located in a remote part of Idaho, that’s only open to the public for a few months each summer.
x
3 brief poems for the new year
(x = space)
x
x
May I Sell You a Machine?
(end of December)
x
According to commercials
At this time of year,
We should be losing weight
x
Grinding on exercise machines,
Finding our food in a box,
Engaging meditation maybe
Thirty seconds, maybe
Less
x
I suppose the box companies
Are doing well
And companies that make
Machines—I wonder
That machines are always doing well
x
We lose weight,
They weigh us down
x
x
Contemporarities
(2021)
x
God, help us in new years
Whenever they begin
In calendars,
In life
x
When someone dies,
When someone comes to life
x
Because she or he is born,
Because there is a return
To life
After pain, as she says
x
When the formal feeling comes
And something after
x
x
Our Sci-Fi Lives
x
Now is the science-fiction time,
Far enough into
The twenty-first century
That we may have some expectations
For reverse magnetism
And anti-gravity
x
For cities in the air and mining solely
By machines, enough that humans
Have jobs again
In new alliances
x
But we know how to fix it, at least
I hope we do,
The Earth that we have harmed;
And when we go, the missions we take
With us will not harm
x
x
C L Couch
x
x
I was a suburban kid but grew up in or near mining and steel-making country. And our city fell apart when the industries fell apart. If they could come back in local and safe ways, I should be relieved and very glad.
x
After great pain, a formal feeling comes –
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs –
The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’
And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’?
. . .
Emily Dickinson
x
Photo by Fabrício Severo on Unsplash
Saint Fin Barre’s Cathedral, Bishop Street, The Lough, Cork, Irlanda
x
Stopwatch for Genesis
(1 January 2020)
How do Arabs count the new year
How do Jews
How does China of
A billion tens of fingers?
How do those who know only seasons,
Who count days as
One traversal of the sun,
Then of the moon?
A change of feeling in the year
To favor birth or harvest?
It would be fair of all of them
To ask of us
The people of the nanosecond
Why there is counting and, once-measured,
Presumption to ownership
How does God who with better reason
Owns the days count them?
We guess a lot about this
A day
A day that is an age
I don’t think God can be bound
Held by our computing
Any more than the bars of an abacus
Should make a cage
Or calculators calibrated to electrocute
(maybe watch out for
servers serving)
There is even scandal in census-taking
For the king rather than the nation
It’s in the Chronicles and Samuels
People dying for
The autocrat’s close ticking
Now’s a fine and healthy time for remembering
God’s of chaos, too
And if we want, if we will
We can be held ourselves
(by God or ourselves)
To keep it either way
C L Couch
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
hide and seek
Twelfth Night or
(6 January)
What You Will
A modest title
For a late, great play
Did he mean the pun about
His name?
What you will, Will
Will who was not the starving
Artist or
Unknown in his time
It is twelfth night
Or the twelfth day of Christmas
Christmas, in fact, in the east
In may (and maybe your) liturgical
Calendar, Epiphany
In some parts I know, there will be
A boar’s head festival
A Christian way to say
We remember our English
And European roots
Deep down as they might be
Unseen for an age
What is epiphanous today is
What is found and realized in the
Christ story
The magi come to visit with the family
Of Joseph
To leave gifts for the child who
They discover is
The one they were searching for
The sky was writing them about
That was the ink
They were the page
The message now fulfilled
No return to Herod
The last part
There are other matters of
New knowledge in new light
Years after,
He comes to his cousin John
Whose voice speaks to
The wildness in the wilderness
He splits the world in truth
Those who will believe the one
Those who will believe the other
A parable one day applies
Of sheep and goats
Repent
Turn around
Follow his way,
Says he of the one he must baptize
Because deep knowing says they must
Do this
A dove descends
The Spirit is involved
To have a litany of three
Whose echoes elicited the start
Of everything from nothing
What happened to the gifts
Sometimes I wonder
Over-obsessed, they would become a movie
Like the subjects of both arks
And a spear of destiny
Maybe they were covered in a box kept by his mother
As was her way
To have her son and all that followed, after
The season before the season
An ending and beginning
It truly is
A new year
Time for decisions
Whom to follow
In the drama that our forms reflect
The play between all things
The material our due
The cosmos in the universe
Play on
C L Couch
Andrew Atzert from Mesa, AZ, USA – Family of DovesUploaded by Snowmanradio, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11044215
A Mourning Dove parent with two chicks in Mesa, Arizona, USA.
As We Are, as We Want to Be
(Advent, anytime)
There’s an invitation
For new year’s
Please join
I don’t know how we set the dates
I don’t think we know
There are forgotten, buried stories
Maybe we’ll unearth someday
Some have already started
Some will start today
Some will start tomorrow
In the vigil
Many will wait until the planet begins
To turn the other way
And many, many more will wait until
It’s been decided that it’s time
In the north, the cold time will begin
And though it might be harder,
The days will be getting
Shorter
Maybe it makes more sense in the south
But I’m here
And you are where you are
Maybe here,
And we’ll have what we have
And, ironies aside,
It’s still something new
Earth-angling
The season
More importantly, inside
As new as we want or need
New year
As we are,
As we want to be
C L Couch
By Henk Caspers/Naturalis Biodiversity Center, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45342382
clcouch123 
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