Count and Serve the Days
(for Martin Luther King, Junior, Day)
Four score
And fifteen years ago
A person was brought forth
Into the human world
To change that world
His clothing
As he wore them
When grown-up
Are on display
At least they were
Last time I was in Atlanta
So that we could see them
See he was a person
Not a giant
Not bearing metal armor
Though he had a strength
And for a while a protection
While others felt
Stronger and protected
With him
He was a pastor
He was named for
The first Protestant reformer
And he took steps
And got many
To take steps
To change things
That too many folk
Believed
Could not be changed
And he took on
The attitude
That not changing things
Was good
For the society
(a part)
That believed
The dominance arising
From not changing
Kept things good
Even though
Things were not so good
Protests
Marches
Covering details
With rides
And meals
The words that encourage
That could not always
Be counted on
For softness
For the wrongness to change
Was hard
And difficult
And broke many lives upon it
So strength was needed
Out of prison
Out of reason
In all persuasion
For all
Of humanity
That
Yes
It was time to dream
It was also time to move
Through the world we have
The time we have
To make things
Better
Make things fair
For everyone
Uncommitted to an evil way
Because everyone
(everyone else)
Deserves a voice
And to be heard
And everyone
Should have a turn
In which there is
Justice
And through which
Should there be an opportunity
To live
To grow
To believe
To vote
To be busy in one’s work
And delight in play
He served the faith
He served the people whom he knew
As well as
So many strangers
Finally
The human world
Out of Selma
Out of Birmingham
Our of Montgomery
With his family
That goes on
And his
Many
Many
Friends
And acquaintances
I cannot help but think
About the night he spent
In jail
As have spent
So many believers
And protesters
And did he surrender
For this
And all barriers
Set up to siege his conscience
And his hope
Seems not
For out of that experience
And all such similar
Experiences
He dreamed
He wrote
He shared his thoughts
Before
During
And after
So that there was a cause
And a cause
Articulated
We have those words now
We have the pledge to change
To take it
Or leave down
But it is there
And
You know
For everyone
For the famous
And the not-so
Most of us who do
Only small things
But change the day
And altogether
Change the world
Because
You know
Change is endemic
It is human
It is spiritual
If need be
We have our aging cells
To prove it
If change
Then change
For the better
Starting
With the smaller
Hearing the larger
And supporting
As we hear
His words
As with progenitors
Successors
Happy Birthday
Martin Luther King
Junior
On fifteen January
Starting in 1929
And for the ages
And even
For
Into
Eternity
C L Couch
Martin Luther King Day is tomorrow, 15 January 2024
Photo by Frederic Bourbeau on Unsplash
The Glory in the Choir
Have you ever been
In the room
To sit
Almost to rest
To hear holy music
The singers
Other instruments
Our happening
Ticketed
Or happenstance
To Be there
As
A live performance
Shall we say
Have you ever got
To listen
In the room
For I have not
I have either been
Singing with
Them
Too
Or heard it
From the TV
Radio
Or disc
Oh
Dear
What I have missed
I mean
Being inside of it
Is grand
Where there is
A mingling
Of discipline and joy
Concern
For pitch
And complementing others
Trying to watch
The director
Not for approval
But a downbeat
So there is
That limitation
If to call it
Limitation
I don’t get to be out there
Simply
Not minding my place
For where I am
And who I am
Is challenged not
To matter
There simply
Is the pulse
Of the music for
A heart
No Tin Man
Should object
For here it is
We’ll stay
Our hearts are here
Listen
The notes are vessels
Sound is circulation
What we see
Can matter
Too
Shapes in the shadows
Unselfconscious
The light is dim
Here
While the light up there
That’s where it has to be
And really
Where
The glory is
For us
We can pretend
Maybe
In dim light
Or starker shadow
What we hear
That’s for the world
Might or must
Also be
For us
C L Couch
Photo by Dieter K on Unsplash
General Delivery
It’s all for
General delivery
Eventually
These words
Your words
The words of anyone
To our chagrin
It all gets kept
Inside the book
Except when
The doctrine of
Justification
Is established
And then
The sins are written out
No book mark
Or any record left
When we can try again
To draft
Compose
Revise
Edit
Have someone else maybe
Take a look
Then we commit
The words are out there
Once again
Actions
Repercussions
Maybe it goes well
This time
For we are clearer
Then become reliable
For this
To some
Even constituents
Those we serve
Most closely
While in the future
Subject to interpretation
Still
Whom do we know
And how
The ethnologists
Have a way
With story
And might get us right
Eventually
We have today
For saying the right thing
And if we need
To make up for it
(not make it up)
Well
We have our doctrine
Still
To keep us
With our God
And with each other
Say this
Don’t say anything
Restraint
And modesty
Could be our values
Too
With respect to keep a world
From destruction
And bring us to
Instead
A table
Neither polished
Or shaped perfectly
But smooth enough
With people standing
(sitting)
By for splinters
But ‘round which
We have set ourselves
For conversation
The expressions
Of ourselves
The receiving of
The offered words of others
Why
There are models
Of this
Here
And every day
Thank goodness
C L Couch
Photo by Brina Blum on Unsplash
We Want to Make This Classic
Two years
Plus three months
Two wars
The ones we know about
Who are the combatants
How much material
Is left
To each side
How much longer
Even supplied
By the bigger thugs outside
Who claim
Defense defending
How much robbing
Peter
To pay Paul
And then Paul
Demands more and more
Of Peter
And it’s us
Is the idea
All us
We lose
We run down
We run out
We manufacture more
To say
It’s good for the economy
While the vaults in
Hell
Or waiting by the river Styx
Are the only things
That are full
And this become our legacy
We lose
Things from the Earth
That cannot be restored
Life in which
We had only given
Love
And there is less
The surplus population
Whom did we not need
And did we push them
Toward the front
Uriah-like
Of course
We wish it over
We wish them done
So we could walk across the fields
And say
This happened here
But statues
And they are meaningful
Fly flags
The same
By force
A fallow field
Unchanneled water
And who knows what
Congeals inside
Our natural
And plastic substances
To raise
Hate
Or something else we hide
Ongoing tries
For greed
Until we say
There
Someone made money
Out of this
Someone got a bit of power
Well
The illusion of it
Anyway
But that’s the best we have
In shadowlands
Expanse
There is the sun
At last
It will rise into the clouds
Maybe into a day
That’s only gray
Until the setting hour
When all these lines of yellow
Turn toward red
Then blue
Then black of night
It happens all the time
And is not
What’s happening
There are orbits
There are rings
Of different shapes and sizes
There are fields of gravity
There is magnetism
We try
To ken it all
To suss the meaning
In the measure
Or get a damn fine story
Out of it
Feature
Human interest
Sci-fi tome
That tells us where we’ve been
And where fancifully
We might be going
Out of these rounded places
Into an
Unbounded expanse
With only our imagination
For a shield
C L Couch
Photo by Krisztian Matyas on Unsplash
snow on one branch to start
snow on a branch
then move closer to the window
to see the snow
is everywhere outside
of course
and this is good
it’s winter
and it doesn’t look severe
most of this will clear away
and the temperature
supposedly
reach fifty
by
midweek
it’s the kind
to look at
and to watch it fall
as if nothing else is pressing
even though it is
calls for a drink
with rising vapor
and to sit
at something
by the window
take it in
and also think
and feel
far away
this is hardly farm show weather
it is so mild
but it’s the first snowfall
to note
in a year
and will have to do
being an untroubled visitation
on the first day
of
the January fair
c l couch
photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
Epiphaneity
Epiphany
Twelfth Night
Also
Orthodox Christmas
Yet in the west
We have the
Magi
Visiting
The child
With the mother
And adoptive father
And since
Liturgy
Respects only its
Chronology
We might mainly note
Today
The baptism
By
The cousin John
Of the child now grown
Now
Authorized by the
Spirit
As a dove
Then the child
Grown
Journeys into
Wilderness
C L Couch
Le Jourdain au site du Baptême, en Jordanie.
By Jean Housen - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11820699
Kneeling
I’m sorry
I’m tired
I’m sorry I’m tired
I should have given more
In better ways
To serve the Lord
The people of the Lord
The planet of
The Lord
And shall you forgive me
I think you shall
Because you’re perfect
At such things
And I am punishing myself
And you know that
And yet you love me
With a perfect love
Not to let me off the hook
Any more
Than to let me go
There’s color in repentance
Moving from
The black and white of sin
The stories in which
Color
Wondrously appears
As if we’d never known
Such a thing
Before
There’s texture
There are layers
In the Earth
They have colors
Too
Everything is better
We can hear
The colors
From within
And taste them on the surface
Through and through
We let
Everything improve
As health
After sickness
When we never thought
To feel
At all well
Again
C L Couch
Photo by mostafa meraji on Unsplash
I am trying the “Verse” option in WordPress, because in part I think I should; and at least I miss having to type Xes for spaces. I’m not sure how it’s going; I’m not sure what you receive, even though I proofread graphically as well. I’ll keep trying. Thanks for reading.
Tollers
Yesterday
His birthday
The day before
My brother’s
For who shall be
My brother
Well
My brother
Though I could meet
Him
In the Bird and Baby
As in a pub
He met
With Dracula
(a good story
that)
And I shall send a card
To my brother
Through electrons
And there shall be
Good wishing
In a meeting
With him
Too
That may
Or may not happen
Though we know
We can’t see
Tollers
Save on pages
And having seen
His son
Once
At a conference
At which I read
A paper
About riddles
C L Couch
notes
Henry V, Act IV, Scene 3.18 ff
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973
Steven Eric Couch, 2 January
Photo by Tarik Haiga on Unsplash [kind of mixing up Tolkien’s use of dragons with the Year of the Dragon approaching]
photograph of one who stands different
(flash fiction challenge--the photograph reacted to is at Melissa's site, link below)
she’d like to talk
I think
she has things to say
and has invested in earth colors
and a visible presence
in a crowd
inside a city
who might keep her from talking?
well
she’s surrounded by black forms
hoods
perhaps hijabs like hers
(though hers is kindly brown)
and on the other side
black uniforms
of police
who also wear
visors hard to see through
and though we cannot see them
there must be weapons
somewhere
she has no actual platform
for her platform
there is a sign close by
she might be holding it
ironically
it says
SILENCE IS VIOLENCE
because
well
it is
silence is violence
if the silence is words
frightened
or (otherwise) brutalized
away from utterance
out of consideration
for fear of weaponry
arrest
and isolation
which would
once again
be silence
and this is a message
to the rest
that keeping silent
is through indifference
or only taciturn
approval
a kind of violence
in and of itself
we let it happen
let the wrong things happen
or keep
the right words
the protest words
the revealing words
get out
it’s like the leave to vote
and then
not bothering
infantilizing values
of democracy
her mouth is covered
I don’t know if
from cultural requirement
protection
from infection
or to illustrate her point
she is not tall
which is to say
everyone is taller
all around her
though she (or whoever)
holds the sign high
higher than everyone
to make her point
and maybe find
an invitation
to speak out
from up higher
sometime
she is not subjugated
yet
she’s there
she’s standing
and the sign is standing
not to mention
that the line
of her suit jacket
sends a message
of some fashion
something lined
through razored words
through silence
after all
the eyes are windows
clearly open
though the message
of a moment
might need more
some exchange
some blinking
we could get
from being there
but she needs to talk
everyone there
everyone here
needs to hear
and heed
what she has to say
the need is ours
outside the frame
to find her
and the source of words
and more
in principle
and action
to take away
C L Couch
(for) Melissa’s Flash Fiction Challenge #249
https://melissalemay.wordpress.com/2024/01/01/melissas-fandango-flash-fiction-challenge-249/
(tag #FFFC)
Photo by Priscilla Gyamfi on Unsplash
Chalk writing on the street near the George Floyd memorial in Minneapolis. "Together we will change the world."
clcouch123 
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