Hello, It’s Me
It’s Saturday
An ordinary day
Maybe it’s ordinary time
In the liturgy
Ain’t extraordinary, that’s for sure
It’s dark before dawn
Why was it said the darkest time
The fading has begun
Just before dawn, there’s light
It’s an announcement
I am coming
Get ready for me, day
C L Couch
Photo by Jenna Anderson on Unsplash
Was driving early in the morning to shoot a wedding and saw this to my right. Had to pull over to capture it.
Ascendant
(believe it or not, for J K Rowling)
Suddenly the steam from
The coffee rises in an eldritch way
Because the cup is now a cauldron and
The liquid is the matter of a
Spell,
Not the dangerous kind
The easy, adolescent kind that only
Causes sit-com harm,
The kind that must be resolved in
A half-hour
And hadn’t hurt that much, to begin with
But rain is coming on
Humidity is high
There is wind high in the trees
The branches dance to universal motion
And I wonder who
Casts such a summer day
As this
C L Couch
Burnt Cabins,
Pennsylvania
We’ve suffered
A local tragedy
That might never
Be explained
Even if a reason’s
Given
We have a super
Highway—yes,
America’s
First “super
Highway”—that
Is the Pennsylvania
Turnpike, and
A retired trooper
Of the state
Police tried a
Robbery at one
Of the stations
There
Between small
Towns in the
Allegheny Mountains,
Two workers
Are taken, held
By his gun,
Until the truck
Arrives to gather
Monies from the
Turnpike tolls
The theft occurs
And fails, the
Captives shot
And killed; the
Officer-now-
Suspect is killed,
Too
Serving troopers
Prepared and
assigned, had
Arrived to restore
An aberrant,
Criminal scene
Back to ordinary
Nothing ordinary
Anymore here:
With tears, the
Deaths are told
Each word
Sounding like
The heavy note
Of a mourning
Bell
Sadness ringed
Round sadness,
As voices split
To tell
It will be a
Story of
Transgression
And the sorrow
Brought to many
Kinds of
Families, and
It might pass
From focused
Attention
But here was a
Neighbor tragedy
On persons who
Will not
Appear in their
Expected places
At work or at
Home
And others living
Who will never
Be the same
A chance for
Money maybe
Too easy a
Reason for all
That befell
Close by—I
Tend to believe
Something else
About surrendering
Life happened
Here
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.
clcouch123 
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