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The News

The News

(for those for whom there’s something new)

 

Are the fires out?

Where are new ones rising?

We could say vigilance

But not, I think, so much

Against our own

It is democracy, still

When there are good decisions

Made (listen,

politicians)

And we should listen to

Our neighbors

Excusing ourselves not

To talk so much

 

There is freedom

To be rung

If all the bells are silent,

Now

There is a time to mourn

A time to repair

A time to do things better

And to celebrate

Memory is fine

Remember them

Who died, and we

Are here

 

We have the present to repair

With children to look after

Teens to slide into involvement

Or-and they’ll do it,

Anyway

And should—though they

Should also be allowed to

Adolesce

That’s natural

 

Do you camp

And leave it better than you found?

Try doing that with Earth

And all the parts we tread

And take

There is a future

Or there better be

 

Earth-crimes against children

You don’t think the cosmos

Is keeping track?

It is,

And before there’s heaven

With a judgment,

There will be accounting

From all things behind the sky

A reckoning for all

Materials lost,

Lives wasted by other lives,

A universe securing

All there is

From what we had

From what we thought we owned

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Mike Marrah on Unsplash

 

2

Something Sacred This Way Comes

Something Sacred This Way Comes

 

The tyranny of religion

Has called up wars, which we can do, anyway

On our own, thank you very much

 

Has forestalled advances in astronomy and

Hygiene (Christians took cold baths because

Muslim took hot ones)

Has decided what we read

And how to think,

Making translation and the Reformation

Dangerous

 

The problem is not Catholic

Any denomination

Or a group formed last night

Becomes an orthodoxy

And so finds a way to rust thought over

Given time, it always happens

 

The bigger problem should be keeping

God in a box

God might be in there

But I think we measure better when we witness

God everywhere

In the pit or in the sky

Or on our middle Earth between

 

God has created old

And re-creates in everything that’s new

We give God shelf life

We feared

The smells inside the tomb

From death and execution

So we, as they, thought

But God was fresh that day, because there’s

Nothing newer, once first made,

Than resurrection

 

This is for Christians, though the problem

Lay on each one’s lintel

God is ancient; God is new

We should know this when we breathe

To give ourselves green opportunities

Not to reinvent the world each day

Until the day it’s called for

But revel in the many cells that rise up in

Creation overnight

 

Morning has broken

Midnight, too

Ancient of days

Makes new,

Dropped on the horizon

Folded into hills

Pressed over the plains

And pushed into water

 

Orthodoxy isn’t bad

But don’t forget

That in a favorite story

The Tin Man needs anointing,

Which is ongoing

 

Join me for church today

(it’s happening somewhere)

Maybe we’ll remember that we’re old

And also facing something delightfully unknown

 

C L Couch

 

 

Rennett Stowe from USA – Saint Francis of Assisi, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26302833

 

0

Dialogue with Demons

Dialogue with Demons

 

I imagine sitting beneath

Pale columns

Fronting an ancient building

Awaiting wisdom

From ghosts

Who will come near me

Bearing questions

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Micheile Henderson @micheile010 // Visual Stories [nl] on Unsplash

 

5

Blush

Blush

 

The flower is old

Nothing untoward happened

The plant from which the flower droops

Is green and brown and healthy

 

Seeing into a dappled sky

The pink is down

There are marks and spots

Peer fuchsias don’t look so well, either

It happens, doesn’t it

 

Little more to say

As day drops toward night

There might be even less tomorrow

Nearby I think there is a bud-in-waiting

To release

Youth into the air

 

Is there a metaphor—well, there

Really is a flower

I’ve seen it every day for two weeks now

And some

Sure

A figure for something else

 

Passage of time

Inexorable results

Everything we gain

Bright then slowly fading

I think you can take us through the rest

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Paintings from my [Spiske’s] thirteen year old nephew. Have a look: http://felixspiske.com.

 

0

Override

Override

 

I feel old and useless

Too much pain inside and

From the world

Like the Quixote, then,

I might read too many romances

Find a pink horse

And ride off into windmills

Any Panzas wishing to apply

Will have ‘til my departure

For an interview

 

C L Couch

 

 

photograph by Cathy Birdsong Dutchak

(gratefully) used with kind permission

https://wanderessence.com/, where she is blogging now

https://catbirdineurope.wordpress.com/2013/07/06/a-morning-with-the-windmills-in-consuegra/, attribution (link) for the windmill image

in search of a thousand cafés (her blog title that grabbed me)

 

5

Ashen Wednesday

Ashen Wednesday
(liturgical need)

You have dirt on your
Forehead, the student says

I wanted you to know so you
Don’t walk around all day
That way

But I had just come from
Church (an early mass), and
Wearing the dirt (the ash)
All day would be our routine

If I had to guess, I’d say the
Room is mostly learner-
Populated with evangelicals
With maybe an honest
Agnostic or two,

In which (for all) formal
Understanding, knowing of
Old church practices would
Not be prominent among or

Within

But any church that survives
In turn gains its own
Orthodoxy,

And we spend time after
Noticing the dirt, talking
About spiritual habits plus
Other rituals

My church is trying this,
Someone observes

Yeah, my church, too, another
Notes

And so together in discovery

It appears—newer evangelical,
Independent communities
Reviving treasured actions
Of the first church,

The one ablaze at Pentecost

Reviving in the church is good:
There is great precedence for
That

And for all of us on this new

Day, we find new ways into
(To share outside)

A faithful, ancient season

4

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