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2 poems about ecumenicity

(x = space)

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2 poems about ecumenicity

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Many Things to Make

(nothing like a rant but a ramble)

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And there are other great traditions, too,

About which I know next

To nothing

Remembering the Gulf War when

Some of us felt ecumenical

And took part in gatherings of Christians,

Jews, and Muslims

Where I got to hear the testimonies

Of the followers of each

And who they were as persons

And believers

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There was a young woman

Of Islam

Who articulately smoothly,

Even beautifully

That who knew her better than her parents

With regard for her

And so who better to arrange

A marriage for her?

x

And I was convinced

And I disagree

And there was beauty in the

Disagreement, too

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Doubting that we changed much

Of anything—there

Was still a war, and our young

People left to fight—but

In the moments

Of these hours

There were the points of light

The President then

Had been asking for

Inside the nation

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There is so much more

To learn

About my neighbors

In the nation

And the world:

Who are the believers?

What do they believe?

What is the story of their faith?

Might they respect

The disagreements, too,

So that our world

Has a chance

To survive

To prosper

To believe

So that with integrity

We might reach for another world,

Too?

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Pray the world lasts

Until we meet upon Megiddo

Not to fight

But have a meal,

Exchange apocalypse in faithful terms

And human

For a conclave

And a celebration

Of each other

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Reasonably

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Most of us believe

And there are those who don’t

Though binary’s not enough

There must be more

Than defining one thing

By its opposite

Humanists

Secularists

Unitarians

People of the Renaissance

Who gave science a category

Near faith

Without faith

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Objectivists

Phenomenologists

People of reason

Rationality

Naturalism

Modernism

Fitter for post-modernism

Than the rest of us

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Who could lead the way, in fact,

In appreciating

Difference

And diversity,

The creative celebration

Of the mind

And the experiment

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Sorry I must

Define these as an

Other

But they must be

Welcome at the table

They could welcome us

We could invite each other

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coda

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Yes, which is not to say

Believers are irrational

Some are

Some want to be

And there are those who keep

Their faith as

Something in the wild

Those who lost at Whitby

But kept the Celtic

Style and ritual

Below

And now in daylight

Seek in celebration

Understanding for the rest of us

x

But faith has reason;

Might we say

That reason is creation

By creator?

Say no

Say yes

But allow for some very smart people

To believe

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No one has to change

Except in violent intent

It should be an instinct to

Understand oneself

When understanding others

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Keeping in mind

With hopefulness

That the one requested

Will in turn

Turn toward you to say

And what is your story?

Delightfully,

Be ready

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C L Couch

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I was writing before dawn and thinking about the seasons that are upon us now, wonderful times—and that in the spirit of this or that we might serve each other not only better but also for the first time, the stakes being, well, everything

now it’s dawn

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by M. Garlick/University of Warwick/ESO – http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1627a/, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=99645426

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2

The People Walked

The People Walked

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God announces

God’s own birth

An absurdity of prophecy

Things bang together

Light good

Dark bad

(for now

for often dark is good)

People in darkness

Who understands?

God is coming

But God is here

God has been here

From the start

Before the start

God was

And is

And shall be

And now, what,

A child?

A virgin birth,

Come on

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A working together

Of generations,

Places

So that everything

Comes together

Complements

Too much

It is too much

You try the words too much

The documents are old

And sacrosanct

We keep them in a temple

Leave them be

What we believe

Is in the temple

Leave it be

We sacrifice flora and fauna

We dedicate

Our children

We don’t need another child

Or of such scandal

Leave us be

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We are specific

We are everyone

(analogous)

We have freedom

In measure

We hate the other measure

But taxes

And armies

Are the world

It could be worse

It has been worse

We plot

Inside the darkness

In our own planning time

As we say,

Leave us be

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So God is coming

And it’s taken centuries

Ages, if we count

From the beginning

And before

The God who answered nothing

With creation

And now a child

Without instruction

For our training

As a Caesar

(any Caesar)

This is too much

We have our own children

And for Caesar

Charges and complaints

From Spain and France

Morocco, Egypt

To Iraq and Israel

Rumors in Russia, India, and

China

All the world

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Everywhere

And everywhere we know

Is burden

Don’t weigh us down with more

Words and promises

And obligations

Expectations

You expect us to believe?

Unlikely

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C L Couch

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I don’t know how I got to thinking about Christmas while summer is hot on.  Maybe it’s wishful thinking, though I like the seasons as they happen.  Maybe I need a charge of faith, like a CO2 cartridge making soda pop in the soda fountain.  Maybe I need some soda pop.  Maybe I’m preparing what might seem way ahead for liturgies in Advent (the good news and the difficult).  Or maybe a little future holiday (of any number of holidays) is okay for the present, that is, right now.

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Photo by Alistair MacRobert on Unsplash

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Cyber Prayer

(x = space)

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Cyber Prayer

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God, help

The people of Ukraine

And the Russians who

Protest the war

And are arrested

By autocracy

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Brave days for faith

And hope

And love

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Amen

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C L Couch

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Photo by Andrea De Santis on Unsplash

Cyberpunk Tunnel

London, UK

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Boiling Springs Fire

(x = space)

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Boiling Springs Fire

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I caught some

Of the story

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A fire burned

Inside

Above

(fourth floor)

Smoke and water through

All the floors

Of the apartment building

A converted mill

In the town of Boiling Springs

One town away

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I hear details of the fire

Nothing yet about the people

I’m sure I missed

That part

x

I used to drive by the building

Hoped about living there,

Each time

Now it’s gone

Or at least

Forever changed

Now sorrow for

All displaced

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The town is small

An unincorporated village

It will be affected

Me, too

And you, too,

As you know about

Such things

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(after reading)

Everyone got out

One cat

The headlines say

Eleven displaced,

Which includes ten people

And the cat

The Red Cross has been

At the scene

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There was a fire

In the village

Two years ago

One person was killed

Welcome that person

To another home

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God bless the town

And all the towns

That gather loss

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C L Couch

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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/11-displaced-by-cumberland-county-fire/ar-AATiBcL?ocid=uxbndlbing

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Photo by Daniel Tausis on Unsplash

“Fighting Fire”

Sundsvall, Sweden

not the Boiling Springs fire (the photos of that fire are copyrighted, sigh) but a fire

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The Agenda in the Storm

(x = space)

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The Agenda in the Storm

(having gathered)

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New York was hit

Awfully bad

It’s moving north and east

The fires out west are also

Famously terrible

And there are storms

And floods and fires

Elsewhere

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It is bad in Kabul,

Too,

The President asking for

More planes from non-military

Sources

And we can’t compare

This to Saigon, because

The fighting isn’t over

There’s a force ready

To fight the Taliban

Will North America and Europe

Recognize this group

To send them aid,

If an irony of aid

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And there are other groups

In prisons and dealing

With worse persecution

(another irony)

On the outside

These groups are in Myanmar

And China

And northeastern Africa

And in North America,

Native Americans

And First Families

And do we want to keep the

Border nonporous to the south

Because we want to contain

Mexicans for being

Mexican?

And blacks and whites

Where are we now?

x

These are the ethnic

Fires and the flood of hate

And fear;

In the USA, we once liked

The melting pot

Though now it seems a crucible

To separate us and to test us

Then we might go back

To melting

In that first, patriotic pot

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There’s climate

And still too much unchecking

You know, there’s a town

In Ohio that found natural gas

In a parochial way

And burned it all,

Frankly, excessively

Until there was none left

I don’t want to blame them

For excitement

Or working out technologies

At large, we need to do that,

Too

x

But I suppose there’s a lesson

In there, somewhere

And we have so much to learn

And do

To stop the fires,

Contain the floods

Mine in every way

Our minerals well

Maintain both poles

Step in, step out

So there might be

Peace in western Asia

And elsewhere

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And then there’s hate

And fear behind the hate

That’s for our dealing,

Too,

To have a planet that we’re

Fond of and it shows

It breathes, it smells,

It tastes, it sounds, it feels,

It looks

Grand as canyons,

Vast as deserts,

Cold as frozen,

Hot as eruptions,

Living as oceans,

Deep as thought

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C L Couch

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The Gathering Storm by Winston Churchill is alluded to, above.

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Photo by Kevin Grieve on Unsplash

Trafalgar Square, London, UK

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Interpersonal Toxicity

(x = space)

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Interpersonal Toxicity

(bad week, bad season)

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Toxic people

Make me toxic

But that’s not all there is

I can without doubt

Do it on my own

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I’m sorry, I’ve had

Bad encounters this week

With people who are

Poison,

And it’s so tempting

To turn poisonous as well

(there, turned)

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To deal with the pain

When what I really need

Is an antidote

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Thoughts?

Recipes?

There have been

Poison pens and poison rings

I don’t think

A tourist’s anodyne will help

Though there must be

Something

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I don’t mean chemicals

I think you know that

Though certain things must

Be released inside the blood

From time to time

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I suppose we have

Our healing substance, then;

But what I’m thinking is

The answer is communal

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That in love of each other

We’ll get better

And survive

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C L Couch

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“Poisoning of Queen Bona” by Jan Matejko.

By Jan Matejko – kpgd.pl, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=698448

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2 poems—pray for me, pray for you

(x = space)

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2 poems—pray for me, pray for you

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Life in 3/4 Time

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I’m sorry, Lord

I spent half my life repressed

The other half aggressive

Now is a time of

Negotiated peace

I’ve tried to give up everything

From each time

Even time

So that now there’s little left

With which to make a new life

Made of acceptable things

For an acceptable time

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Pray for Friends

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Lord,

Watch over all my friends

Send your angels to protect

Them from all kinds

Of things

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There is sickness

There are sick pets

There are jobs

And then no jobs

And sometimes jobs

Not worth the having

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And sometimes things get

Broken, and there is pain

Of all kinds

Sometimes relationships

Are broken and I cannot

Speak with expertise

But eschew all the bitterness

As well

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They are people, mostly

Some are animals

And I pray that where something

Has been split,

You will fill in with healing

And a promise

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Though tomorrow only waits

While today is what

We have

So I must pray for now

For them

For you

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C L Couch

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Photo by Tejash Verma on Unsplash

Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India

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Shipwreck of State

(x = space)

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Shipwreck of State

(in pandemic time)

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By the way, the highest number

Of cases was reported

Yesterday

But this mass lack of perspective

Child’s bid for attention

Ersatz use of masks

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We don’t want to care, anymore

We have sick to care for

Too many dead to bury

In decency,

Though we’ll try

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It isn’t that important,

The thing inside white buildings

In the capitol,

State houses similarly infected

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There is disease,

And there is disease

Politics aside—and that’s it, isn’t it?

Putting aside what is

Supposed to serve us

With our money

With our votes

With belief

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We have lives to deal with

And lack of life to mourn,

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Which is the real nation

That like church

Means all the people

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C L Couch

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Photo by NOAA on Unsplash

Bow of the TITANIC

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Later

(x = space)

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Later

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I’m not sure what to say

It’s been a day

I slept in bouts and woke up

Very tired

I got some coffee for the

Caffeine and the ritual

I started writing, trying to find

A way through the events that matter

Seasons and ideas

What might move us

One by one and as a people

Of the planet, who for now have

Such a nascent idea of

Who of Earth we are

Thousands of years in groups,

The rise and fall

Sometimes extinction

Through disaster,

Sometimes disaster through conquest

Then the conquered fall

Harry Lime says

The Borgias had war

And sponsored the Renaissance

While the Swiss had peace

And only produced the cuckoo clock

Great striving

Requiring great tyranny

Do you believe that?

I don’t,

And Harry was taken in a sewer

Underneath Vienna, by the way

Peace is a practical

Possibility—of course, it is

Think how much does not

Have to be destroyed

Except for fear

In tyranny

In peace, there is plenty

There is art as well

I think Harry also forgot about how

Art is patronized and how

Patronage does not need

A dictator’s purse

Coffered by the people, anyway

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Can we imagine having

Everything we need?

Do we think it would be over,

The human drive?

I think we would explore

What is beyond crushing need

In a universe,

A universe,

With which we haven’t started

Beyond machines

Impartial theories

Take away the bullies

And concomitant destruction,

There is finally a chance

For everything

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C L Couch

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The Third Man, a film directed by Carol Reed, written by Graham Greene

Greene wrote the novella of the same name as preparation for the screenplay. Anton Karas wrote and performed the score, which featured only the zither. The title music “The Third Man Theme” topped the international music charts in 1950, bringing the previously unknown performer international fame. The Third Man is considered one of the greatest films of all time, celebrated for its acting, musical score and atmospheric cinematography.

Halliwell, Leslie and John Walker, ed. (1994). Halliwell’s Film Guide. New York: Harper Perennial. ISBN 0-06-273241-2. p 1192 [cited at Wikipedia]

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By PunkToad from oakland, us – Cardinal Cuckoo ClockUploaded by clusternote, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27515171

Cardinal Cuckoo Clock, 126 1st Ave. Minneapolis MN

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