Elevens
I have somewhere
A piece of heavy olive drab in care
Wrapped ‘round himself to bear
Grandfather over there
C L Couch
Florida Memory – Unidentified WWI soldier, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38793228
Fourth Protocol
(counting commandments from Exodus 20:3)
Remember the sabbath
Whenever you remember it
Some can’t have it on a Sunday
Some will have it on a Friday
Some will let it change according to
Third shift
Or when the sirens scream
If it shifts
If it is the same
Whenever it must be
According to the current schedule
It is a time
Well-chosen
(even if it weren’t directed)
For if God must rest
So much more
Must we
C L Couch
Photo by Yunming Wang on Unsplash
God Is a, Sí, Dog
God keep Schnitzel the
old poodle while he’s here
(the dog, that is). He had
a brother who went first
and not so long ago. Way
back when, the poodle jumped
out of the enclosure, too, and
so my sister took both dogs.
Weiner and Schnitzel (my
brother-in-law’s a chef who’s
funny, the kind of guy who
makes friends waiting for the
cashier in the store). Old
Poodle’s had a good life,
I think, with a home and sunshine
when he wanted it. Both dogs
used to sleep like Yin and
Yang ‘til they outgrew the beds.
Now Yin must wait for Yang
when all the dogs will play on
heaven’s lawn, fed and watered
after.
C L Couch
Photo by Joe Caione on Unsplash
De Profundis
(2019)
Four score and seven years ago,
was 1932. There was a depression
and designs around the world.
Some people were well enough.
Near as I can tell, my father’s folk
were all right with government
positions and a salary. My mother’s
people struggled on farms in
Tennessee. I don’t think they were
sharecroppers, though for their
state they might as well have been.
Wringing a chicken once a week
was for a feast of sustenance.
Oranges and walnuts were treats at
Christmas time.
C L Couch
Photo by Joshua Bartell on Unsplash
The Ordinaries
The dog is old and that concerns me
It should concern me for me, too
But I am inside and have some idea of
What’s going on
What’s going on with you?
It is in ordinary time
Running long between Pentecost and
Advent
With special days in between, such as
All Saints’ and All Souls’
It is our time
As Sean Astin’s character in The Goonies
Says
Down here, this is our time
Down here, we are ordinary
I have little idea how time in heaven goes
There was a war there, so we think
Our lore recalls a third of heaven fell
Maybe Eden was
A strategy for getting back
What we know is
We have this day
For our old dogs
An aging Earth that sometimes
In whirlwinds
Acts as if it knows no limits
And will live forever
In wildness
Without rules or counting,
Which is amazing
And is dangerous
Down south where I am now,
Folk really like their porches
They sit on special outside chairs
They rock, they glide
They tell stories
Sometimes it’s only the weather
But tell me there isn’t gospel in this
Good news that after storms
We will recover
And we will meet each other at least twice
Here and in extraordinary living
There
C L Couch
Photo by Jason Chen on Unsplash
Every Time I Feel
Every time I write
I might mean to do the spiritual
Thing, idea, icon
Proposition
(I know it’s okay if I don’t)
Not to moralize
Though I suppose there is that, too
Not question training, either
But to say the numinous is here
Real as a knife
Diaphanous as insect wings
Forever as gravity
(there are fields in space)
Earth itself a lesson for
Eternity
And the need for choice
To have it
I think God is present
In the grocery store
Between the dog’s shoulders where
I rub
Riding on the new back bumper
Installed after the accident
God is inside the mosquito
Next to the disease
Maybe to apologize
As if to say, you chose this way
Back in the garden
Though maybe you hate me for it
Maybe you want to know I want everyone
To be well
Maybe you don’t
There is the book, the letters on a page
The mountaintop, the solid roots
Beneath
God is not these things
But is with them all
And with us in the shallow or the deep
In something no one knows
And the everything under the sun
That no one’s ever overlooked
C L Couch
Photo by Chen YiChun on Unsplash
Here, Here
I’m in another state
Will Microsoft updates find me here?
I suppose if I were atop Curiosity
It were working
They would find me there
Its waves or whatever mingling with
The dust of Mars
As an electric refugee,
I’m feeling pretty good
Wide rivers and a mountain range between
Us
Everything I wade through for
And as the troubles of the day
Appointments I can’t keep
Should I have remembered them
Dishes in the drainer
They can relax
Empty icebox shelves
What’s left will have to rot, though slowly
A fine for me for having been
Forgotten
C L Couch
Photo by Patrick Hendry on Unsplash
Goblin Valley State Park, Green River, United States
Temporary Good Life
(All Souls’)
Temporary good life
Big, empty house
Dog by my side, having been fed
Now ready to snooze
The program that he likes
On television
Good coffee for me, the
Human
It is All Souls’
To go with along with Saints’ the
Day before
And the eve before elaborate
With costumes and with chocolate,
Led by carved pumpkins lit
From inside
Or turnips in old Ireland
All Souls’ to say that after
Saints (big-S) whose litany
We sang and patronage remembered—
Saint Brendan for the navigators,
Saint Nicholas for
Children and for hookers
(who surprises innocence)—
The rest of us
Should have a chance
For remembrance
Maybe the veil
Thinned for Hallowe’en
Remains diaphanous enough
For discourse with those made
Of clay and ash
Now mingled with eternity
Whose memory is not miracle
So much as simply having been alive,
Which is something,
After all
We take our pleasures to the graveyard:
Children, candies, and stories
In picnic-style we reminisce
And hope that in repose
All might be well, as
Saint Julian reminds us
In the world that is a hazelnut
(Blake’s piece of sand)
Small, complete, and loved
For me, the gravestones have been set
Too far apart,
And I cannot visit
No candied skulls, no fires,
And no proper memories
But those I can have here
With coffee and the dog
Inside in
A borrowed home with dawn
(outside)
Thinking about rising
C L Couch
Image by Susanne Jutzeler, suju-foto from Pixabay
Broken Pathing
‘Round here, I guess it’s sinkholes
In other parts, it might be from
An I.E.D.
Or maybe lava turned to magma when
Nature groans upheaval
If I were walking, and an unformed line
Broke open before me,
Whether in the moment or who knows
How many hours before,
I’d wonder not only what to do
But also how it happened in the first place
Forming foreboding words,
Don’t cross here, not at this place
Not here
Walk around, if you can
Walk around
If I’m still here by nighttime
I might not tell one darkness
From the other
For all we say of woods and bread crumbs
(now ash),
Treasure might be on the other side
Or
A new way home
C L Couch
Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash
Yellowstone National Park, WY, USA
The Big Trip | Moody Morning at Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone National Park — Explore more at explorehuper.com/the-big-trip.
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