(x = space)
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Yes to Another Story
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I can’t do this
I won’t
And I won’t grow up
Like Peter Pan
x
Another child who’s
Lost
And wanting pixie dust
Must tell the tale,
Instead
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Of flight into the London sky
To islands that
No ship can find
Except the ship
That story says
Has been there for a while
x
So that the story
Might have adversaries
As stories need
More than
Pixie dust
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C L Couch
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Photo by Sophie Louisnard on Unsplash
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(x = space)
x
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Timing
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God, help me
With devotion
Not the famous kind
I don’t think
I could hold that well
But quieter,
Between the two of us
And any interested
That we all might
Turn
And turn again
So that you and the sun might
Bleed together
And everything
Be many
And be one
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Maybe it is famous,
After all
I learned certain moments
From someone
To begin with
And the well-known word
That ends
It all
‘Til next time
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C L Couch
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Photo by Nsey Benajah on Unsplash
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(x = space)
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The Telling
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Pain and need
And maybe quotidian pleasures
This is a lifestyle
And it could be worse
It is, I know
x
Which means it is all maudlin
From time to time
Though sometimes
Easygoing
When meeting with friends
Or hearing someone else’s story
God bless the phone
x
And should there be
Accomplishment,
Not quite
An accident of birth
Then gratitude should follow
With what might be appropriate
Surprise
x
But don’t we grow each day?
I like to think so
Maybe it’s a matter
Of discretion,
Not today I will be brilliant
But I’m writing and I’m reading
I’m listening
So closely sometimes
The grinding of old Earth
Is heard
The motion, twenty hours at a time,
Is felt vibrating ‘neath the heart
In the center
Of synapse
x
We grow, we also
Slow down
Three score and ten
I hope we take it with us
To the next stage,
Arriving in time
To be useful there
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C L Couch
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Photo by Omar Mohiuddin on Unsplash
(there is a painting by Turner of a moving train that this reminds me of
and, yes, there is a reference to Star Trek here–in the words, that is)
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(x = space)
x
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Quantum
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There is a
God of beauty
Who by our accounts
Is fickle
Beauty in a storm
In wrinkly babies
While we determine
Beauty in a car
(I like the lines)
Or a figure on a screen
Receiving millions
Of both kinds
x
Beauty truth
The eye of the beholder
Do we know anything?
I wonder
Extremists destroy ruins
That are also
A record
A child destroys the fragile
In “The Artist of the Beautiful,”
And I think
About that often
x
But if the cell is beautiful
And it is,
Then beauty cannot
Be destroyed forever
As long as we have
Nuclei
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C L Couch
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This is a photograph of a sculpture of 20 centimeters made with wire and pigmented beeswax.
By Ordnajela Zenitram – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44982588.
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(x = space)
x
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Whine
x
Exhale the scolding
From the heart person
Who called this morning
Should heart people
Scold? Isn’t that bad
For my heart?
I need peace
More than ever, it seems
To me
External quiet should aid
The peace
Then again, I don’t want to be
A jerk about it all,
And everyone has bad days
And someone would say
There are those who have it
Worse than I,
Which certainly is true
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C L Couch
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Lady Gaga says the producer who raped her dropped her off ‘pregnant on a corner’ after locking her in a studio for months
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Photo by Belinda Fewings on Unsplash
Poole Park, Poole, United Kingdom
x
(x = space)
x
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Species Speak Out
x
Is there a dog
In doggerel?
How about a dog
In dogma?
And while we’re at it,
Should it not be called
Godma?
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I’m sure there is
A certain species
That, should we understand
And grasp
The elevated obvious,
Should know
Things are better served
By catterel
And catma
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C L Couch
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Love between Dogs and Cats
Photo by Callum Shaw on Unsplash
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(x = space)
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Never Manderley
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Last night, I dreamed
About a white tiger
In the backyard
That sometimes
Had a cub with it
And sometimes
Turned into a dog,
A big dog—
And we were all trying
To avoid the tiger,
Which was fine because
It was past-time
For me to go
x
I went through
The house
One last time,
Placing my bundles into
A canoe, set
In moving water
Out front of the house
And when it was time
To leave at last,
I found the canoe
Had sunk into shallow water
So I’d have to stay
With the people there
For a while longer
Then I awoke
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C L Couch
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Bangor Castle (built 1852, photo taken, June 2019).
Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash
Bangor Castle, Bangor, Northern Ireland, UK
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(x = space)
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It Might Be Magic
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Do you eschew
Institutions?
I do, anymore
The machines
Made out of people
Don’t blame the
Bureaucrats:
They operate
What others made
A breaking efficiency
In copper and in
Oil replaced by
Split atoms, unleaded
Gasoline and now
Other fuels
x
The early price
Was trees
And iron from the earth
Water unafraid
Unplastic skies
That might storm
But otherwise
Were trusted
x
Press agents lie
Because they forward
An agenda
They were told
Beyond the news
To promulgate
Or else
Lose their jobs
The heroes and the villains
All are mixed
Or so it seems
Because they’re not
x
We are blended
Creatures now,
It’s true
Nothing of persisting,
Edenic status
Has existed for a while
And in our
Reconstituting state
Generations are confused
x
Hamas has launched
Three thousand rockets
Into Israel
That fights with
More sophistication
Missiles from planes
And from the ground
More of us
Are good at war, these days
x
I read the city paper
In the morning
To find out who has
Shot or otherwise killed
Whom
Or who preaches
On Hyde-Park boxes
That it should rain hate
Should we have our way
x
There is an answer,
So many traditions
Espouse
It’s a good thing
And nothing new,
Ancient of ages
But statues will have to
Have their clay feet
Scraped out
Then with something better
Slid into place
And shaped
While the rest of us
The citizens, the voters
Hold the upper parts
The structures of society
In place
x
See,
Nihilism is not the answer
Nor to fire agencies
Especially with fire
We can keep
The inefficiencies
Of efficiency,
The inexactness
That comforts us
Knowing the machine
Is never all
But flesh and blood
And synapse
And our loves
Matter more
x
Next chapter,
All yours
It might be magic
But it’s not:
It’s mortal hands
Moved by mortal hearts
x
C L Couch
x
x
In the Line of Fire
Photo by Christopher Burns on Unsplash
x
(x = space)
x
x
Faithful Skeptic
(spiritual humanist)
x
I sin
And then I go to church
How does that work?
We sing that it is well,
Which Saint Julian proposes
We pray for the world
And for concerns
In the parish
We sing some more
We’ll pray some more
Then there will be teaching
(word and sacrament
for those who have sacraments)
Through it all,
We’re singing now
And thank goodness there is
Justice in that
Mingled with grace and mercy
x
Through sin and virtue
Through indifference and zeal
Through exhaustion and desire
There is something
Going on,
Something moving
Call it spirit
Call it the orbit of the Earth
And the pressing down of gravity
Call it God’s
Call it nature’s
Call it ours
x
And, yes, through it all
It is well
x
C L Couch
x
x
Saint Julian of Norwich is a saint in the Catholic, Anglican, and Lutheran churches. Other traditional Protestant churches recognize her standing. Many Christians of all kinds respect her work in parish service and the service of the Christian Church, overall. Her name is not known: she is called Julian because that was the name of the church in Norwich, England where she lived. She had a cell there, not a jail cell but a hermit’s. She had a cat. Each day people of the town would come to her to speak with her through a window, asking her for wisdom and advice. I’m sorry, I should have mentioned that she lived and worked from the latter decades of the fourteenth century into the first years of the fifteenth century.
She wrote Revelations of Divine Love, a widely-read spiritual text. It is also taken as the oldest book written in English by a woman. Two things Julian is popularly known for asserting are the metaphor of the world as a hazelnut (long before William Blake asserted perceiving the world as and through a grain of sand). And she claimed that, no matter how grim or unhopeful or destructive the world might seem, all shall be well. She says this many times.
And all shall be well.
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Photo by Külli Kittus on Unsplash
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clcouch123 
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