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Fate Unravels

Fate Unravels

(for Rosema in pandemic time)

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I don’t know what to say

Today, it’s Friday

Hanukkah

Christmastime

Specifically, the Advent

Season

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Who is coming to my house?

No one, for above the

First floor, we are not friends

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We’re good as strangers

And a little worse

It’s so pretty outside

In a pastel way

It’s not as cold

As December should be

Around here

But it’s within the comfort zone

Generally,

Forties to seventies,

And I should not complain

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A murder mystery

And if there’s no one to admire

Or a hero garnering

My admiration,

Then I’m not sure how much

I’ll care,

Since it isn’t real death, after all

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So I’ll close the book and choose another

I’ll choose another day

Simply by waiting,

Persisting through this one

Not that it’s bad

But it’s the same

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Under the aegis of pandemic

An aegis that’s a weight

Upon the mind, the heart, the soul

That we’re supposed to love God with,

All three

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As for festivities,

It’s all right to have them quietly

Under a cellular radar

And should,

Like Penelope or fate,

We have to unloom the loom

Each night,

We’ll have another day

To reweave

With what we have

To raise our masks

Like players on an ancient

Stage,

To love close up

And as current love requires

From far away

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CLC

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https://areadingwritr.wordpress.com/

read her great and open work

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Photo by Josh Redd on Unsplash

Kansas, USA

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2 poems about parochial gods

(x = space)

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2 poems about parochial gods

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Anvil-Thinking

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Sheesh, I wake up with more

Headaches

Under the metal

Of the skin

Someone has been hitting with

A hammer while I slept

Or gave a go

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To anyone who suffers

With these things,

I’m sorry;

For those of you around them,

Take a moment to consider

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I don’t know if it’s pollution

Of some kind

Or the tyranny of thought

That keeps us from free thinking

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Well, more power

To you from the utility

Of time and grace

And maybe a surprise, that if

We try everything we know

(keep it safe, please—no

candles in the ear)

Then both of us will have

A better morning,

Thanks to

Maybe all our household gods

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Leave an offering

Of grain upon the hearth

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Photo by Bruce Kee on Unsplash

Patrica, Italy

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No Contest

(1 Kings 18:20-40)*

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Are there false gods

Or gods who are false?

Are there true gods

Who like to lie

And treat penitents with

Indiscretion?

Does Ba’al not exist

Or did it not give its profits

What they wanted?

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Maybe it cows before

The God of Israel

Who holds the truth

That displays

Are for the chumps

While true belief

Has no need

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And so Elijah won

The contest because to him

It was no deal:

Light a fire on wet wood?

Not only is it nothing

It proves nothing

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Belief is a fire

Somewhere else,

And faith lives out a lifestyle of

Easy miracles

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https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Kings%2018:20-40&version=ESV

*verse 40 is especially brutal

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Photo by sarina gr on Unsplash

Forest

Campfire at night!

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C L Couch

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Rescue Time

(x = space)

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Rescue Time

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1

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Monday

Is remembrance

And for some reason

(for that reason?)

A deadline for

Medicare plans

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We remember days

Invaded and sometimes

Days invading:

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Sixth of June

In Normandy,

Sometimes Grenada

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Remembrance to

Become a kind of normalcy;

We turn it

Into ritual,

A plain on which to

Cry

However smally

And to celebrate,

Wave small flags

Attending on parades

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Later or before

By gravestones or

With photo albums

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2

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We’ll have

So many reasons

To remember now

With names and with dates

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We could remember

As we go

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The numbers needing

To dealt with

For what they mean

In bodies

And the layers of

What they mean,

What has been lost

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Talk of remembrance

Ironically

Or,

Ignoring politics,

Through the heart

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C L Couch

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4380 CA-46 W, Paso Robles, United States

Paso Robles

(https://www.brucemunro.co.uk/

https://www.travelpaso.com/blog/post/your-virtual-escape-to-paso-robles/)

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Impulses

(x = space)

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Impulses

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Exhaling’s good

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We feel as if we’re

Letting go,

Letting things out

We no longer

Need

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Maybe small cells

Of disease

(don’t breathe those

at anyone),

Maybe

Small particles of

Memory we

Could do without

Because they act like

Sickness,

Like an infection

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Maybe we’ll

Straighten up a little

As we inhale,

Let the shoulders

Do their part

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Maybe we’ll inhale

Healthy remembrance,

As life allows

For these, the

Memories that heal

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It’s a dicey game

That is no game

Breathing, hurting,

Healing,

Breathing some more

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We learn from

this, from these

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It’s why we

Went to school,

To learn how

To learn

To breathe

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C L Couch

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Photo by Erik Dungan on Unsplash

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The Present Season

(x = space)

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The Present Season

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It is Advent I know

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Last year I wrote

A perambular devotional

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It comes without

My help and does in

Fact mean coming

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As it is a season

A loving kind

Of pre-Christmas warning

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Well I hope it is

Such a good season for you

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The kind of joy

That prophets might

Foretell but that

By planned devotion

Or surprise

We get

To live anyway

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Let all of us

As if from Santa Claus

Delivered

To the city- and cave-dwellers

And those who live

Under palm trees

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Or on high mountains

Inside windy forests

Or on moving sand

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Have such a season and

At the season’s end

Such and more so

A merry day

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C L Couch

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Photo by Sebastian Fröhlich on Unsplash

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A Letter Came from Ephesus

(x = space)

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A Letter Came from Ephesus

(1 Corinthians 1:3)

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Grace

Hopes and maybe wishes

The visiting

And writing evangelist

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We can ask

Any, all

And sometimes ask aright

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C L Couch

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Photo by Mihai Moisa on Unsplash

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Clusters

(x = space)

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Clusters

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I sigh and sip

the morning is progressing

I have an artificial breeze

a measure for tinnitus

while outside, the tarn effect

persists

another day in more or less

a string of days

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I’m clustering my thoughts

until one group of them take over

travels on its own and further

a thesis for a theme

process and product

you know

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and hopefully approve

because I’ll be doing this tomorrow

until the cows come home

or other herded things

within which are groups of one

like thoughts

there you are in your thinking

hi

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C L Couch

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Photo by Adolfo Félix on Unsplash

Love Letters

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Be Serious

(x = space)

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Be Serious

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I should say something about God,

because I like God

though I wonder how God likes me.

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Love and like,

like the basis

For a friendship.

And Jesus is our friend,

a revelation given when they met

for supper one last time.

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So if Jesus likes me,

which has been the implication

then somehow, in some way

I must be likable.

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I know God is all-giving

and all patience

with everything that’s perfect,

and my regard hardly necessary.

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And I suppose

friendship must be doctrine

in this tradition, anyway,

though we switch it to indifference

when we think we might,

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when we want to forget

until outside the booth

that God was there

in everything,

made complicit by us followers.

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We are reverse claustrophobes

on Earth—we want to tunnel in

where we might take the rocks

and build small tyrannies,

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which is not friendly action,

though if God is removed

by our convenience, how easily

each other?

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Friendship with God,

a treat by Christian doctrine, I

suppose,

while others don’t forget

the awesomeness of God

and that awe means fear;

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we could stand some friendly fear,

for it is God who loves

and calls us loves even from

prophets and lawgivers.

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Jesus as our pal?

Our buddy at the bar?

It’s fun to think that way

(I think so),

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though Jesus of creation

and of Sinai,

of Golgotha and victory

in hell—how trivially

is made up by us;

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but God is always God

who cries, who creates,

who sacrifices—maybe, then,

deserving of

an attitude of more.

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C L Couch

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Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

Coney Island, United States

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Invitation from Earth and Sky

(x = space)

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Invitation from Earth and Sky

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Briefly then,

There are good things

On the earth

And inside sky

And inside far below

We can ask for

Closeness to good things,

And we should:

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For good warmth

From the sky,

Good feeling in our bodies,

Good reason for

Decision-making

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The substance of the

Asking might be

Prayer of a kind of

Cosmic negotiating

For agnostics

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Either way

Or with simpler hope,

We can let goodness

Have its way

With core and crust

And breathy atmosphere

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Inhale, exhale—

Walk to stretch things out

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Extend our fingers,

Reach out with our palms,

And turn our wrists

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The cosmos will

Appreciate our reaching out

So and more so

Would the mortals

And the ineffable

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Let all mortal flesh keep silent

And in fear and trembling stand

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Each year there is an advent

And most days,

Our response invited

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Our planet awaits

As does everything beyond

The sky that our shiny satellites

Detect, now draw from

For extraterrestrial

(extra-lunar)

Samples

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The maker awaits

Here and there as well,

Inviting us inside

Community, one by one

And altogether

To believe

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C L Couch

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Photo by Vidar Nordli-Mathisen on Unsplash

Strong wind, frost and rays of sunlight created this wonderful pattern on my windshield.

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“Let All Mortal Flesh” is an old hymn out of the Christian tradition.

A newer hymn, “Earth and All Stars,” also comes to mind.

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