Door Prize
Through a door to Narnia
For others, it has been a dream
Or through a wall
Something that opens between worlds
Because we have to be there
There is a story half-done, only
We must change something
And be changed
And someone else will tell
The now-whole story
And we who might not go anywhere
Will go through, too
C L Couch
Photo by Ronald Cuyan on Unsplash
Antigua, Guatemala
Passenger
I don’t care who’s at fault
As I slip from Earth
There will be rage and judgment
From our advocates in heaven
While we are carried
Souls inside
The fearsome (fearful) wings of angels
I don’t care who your leaders are
They’ve all turned faithless
In this, the taking of our lives
I see her, now him
Now small ones,
This is all they have
Yes, it’s glorious
But more time on Earth
Was called for
The ground or air will have my body
But I should be walking, still
Upon the planet
Even a nestling of supernal charms
Is difficult to manage
Though we were caught in time
Too fast is fast enough
Sad, outrageous, peaceful, stolen
Those who are left, caught here
With the search
For conviction
Have got to know there’s hope
If never own it
Or, if owning it,
Feel it
Rather the irony of forced agnoticism
C L Couch
Photo by Akira Hojo on Unsplash
January 8 Iran plane crash – CNN
edition.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/iran-plane-crash-live-intl-hnk/index.html
2 days ago · Iran plane crash: A Kiev-bound Ukraine International Airlines Boeing 737 plane crashed after takeoff from Tehran on Wednesday, killing all 176 people on board.
Remembering Mohammad Asadi-Lari
Remembering SSP Fellow Mohammad Asadi-Lari, who died aboard the Ukrainian International Airlines flight PS752 that crashed in Iran shortly after takeoff.
Peace for All Time
(a three-part cycle)
1
Machine Language
Each moment’s a decision
To exhale,
To circulate some blood
To let the body stir for a while longer
To let the synapse burn
Brightly with mind-fire,
Transactions between what’s happening
And memory
Much of this is done for us
But there’s a partnership, I think
Between all parts
The automatic will take over for
The temporary
When immediacy of thought and movement
Are tired out
Call it sleep
Call it the second cup of tea
Taken on the porch
When for a time there’s nothing else to do
And this has been invoked
Because needed,
The ending of which we’ll debate
Peace an invention,
A transaction
Between all partners
Serving on the inside
2
Contrition
I won’t take it back
Not yet
I need to know the outcome,
Did I get anything I wanted
If penance is a prayer,
I’ll do my part
If it’s in bad feeling,
I’m already there
And counting
A return to normalcy
And what is that
It takes me out of this
Otherwise, I want
The special moments back
But it’s the future, now
Plu-imperfect
Please
Say them with me, maybe
All the prayers,
Then let’s move on
3
The Answer Is in Someone Else as Well
Inner peace
That’s cool
It’s not enough
If I’m in my chrysalis
And have no sight of yours
Or time
Where is my peace
If not in you?
This is cheating an invocation,
For it’s not a talk to God
But to you
The one nearby
And not inside
We need transaction, too
And more
You need to carry me
And I a part of you
A magic story in which twins
Keep a gem lit by the light force
Of the other
And there’s responsibility
In our story,
We will partner differently
That is, for real
Not to prevaricate conditions
But to say push on
Make peace because
We know each other now
To arbitrate
And there’s no other way
To build the day
That each must have
Into a present contract
As the future
C L Couch
Photo by Jarrod Reed on Unsplash
All We Know We Have
The existentialists
Have it right
The Positivists, too
The Deists
(God sets the world in motion,
leaves it go
leaves)
The one thing they know
Is that the present moment matters
As if there were nothing more
There might not be
For conscience, there isn’t
Living for tomorrow
Worse, living for heaven
Was medieval mischief
If I want my serfs to work
For me contentedly,
Then I need assure them
Of eternity
There will be no pain, no sickness
No poverty, no want for
Anything (the present moment, again)
Work now, suffer now
Under my thumb
Heaven’s coming
Lennon’s song has it right
Don’t dwell on heaven
Don’t fret hell
There are consequences now
Don’t put off righteousness
Live as if
There’s nothing next
What do we know,
There might not be
There isn’t
If we go together
That is family
If not, then I’ll have my present
Presence
You’ll have yours
And it is a gift
Too easy? Sure,
And not enough
And it doesn’t mean to re-create
The world every moment
We have standards
And philosophy
This is philosophy
But there is now to apply
There might not be another
Work it in
Walk through
Go on
It’s what we know we have
C L Couch
Photo by Sung Jin Cho on Unsplash
We Are X
Dear God, what shall we do
With a new world?
Another planet
Or the realm of antimatter,
Once breached?
Huge or microscopic,
There is responsibility
Not to mention
An awareness come from something
Else, new denizens
To us
Of new worlds
We’ll make an impression
We’ll try to mask the greed
Maybe we will indeed
Send our best people
But everything we are beneath
Must surface
Might we change ourselves
(change ourselves)
In the moment of discovery?
Become better friends
Or enemies
Once someone else
Some entity of consciousness
Without doubt is known?
So supplication while we can
Please watch over all encounters
Keep our explorers safe
And when and how
The universe might need
To be kept safe from us
C L Couch
Photo by Michael Henry on Unsplash
Fall on Your Knees
A new and glorious morn
For no reason other than arriving
Nothing special
Meaning all things are
Look for saints outside,
Dodging puddles
Miracles in coffee cups
Epiphanies while
Sliding on coats and gloves
It’s the oddest day, today
For being normal
It’s stunning and spectacular
For no reason at all
Except for what it’s earned
In being here
C L Couch
Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
Stopwatch for Genesis
(1 January 2020)
How do Arabs count the new year
How do Jews
How does China of
A billion tens of fingers?
How do those who know only seasons,
Who count days as
One traversal of the sun,
Then of the moon?
A change of feeling in the year
To favor birth or harvest?
It would be fair of all of them
To ask of us
The people of the nanosecond
Why there is counting and, once-measured,
Presumption to ownership
How does God who with better reason
Owns the days count them?
We guess a lot about this
A day
A day that is an age
I don’t think God can be bound
Held by our computing
Any more than the bars of an abacus
Should make a cage
Or calculators calibrated to electrocute
(maybe watch out for
servers serving)
There is even scandal in census-taking
For the king rather than the nation
It’s in the Chronicles and Samuels
People dying for
The autocrat’s close ticking
Now’s a fine and healthy time for remembering
God’s of chaos, too
And if we want, if we will
We can be held ourselves
(by God or ourselves)
To keep it either way
C L Couch
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
hide and seek
The Gray Gift
For the moment,
There is a blanket over everything
Like the one I woke up under
Anticipation of a holiday, perhaps
The blanket is light gray
It settles easily as it’s made up
Of daylight
I’m not sure what we might have done
To earn such protection and
And of
Muted beauty
It’s a quiet gift
And will last as long as diaphanous things
Might
Maybe longer, since nature
Knows the way around Main Street
Over it (upon it)
To serve it
And to keep it going
C L Couch
I don’t know where this is, but it’s somewhere.
Invitation’s Curling—Come in, Already
If Christmas is the first day, then
This is the sixth
But then that makes the fifth
The twelfth
So maybe Christmas is its own
And then the following
Twelve days are tributes,
Are a season ‘til the sixth,
The magi
The baptism by his cousin John
The revelation by a dove
Of who he is,
Which is a lot of growing up in
Twelve or thirteen days
He was in a manger
Only six days ago
And soon, depending on the full moon
And the spring,
He will be grown and on a forty-day
Journey to Jerusalem
Such things will happen in that time
The biggest coming later
A cataclysm of the each and sky
Pierced by hammered beam
And crushing empire
The abhorrence of nature, even human
The death of everything
That had been hopeful
The death of him
The death of us
Any prospects in an honest joy of living
Then the count of days, only after
And by going back,
Really begins
But before so much of that
There is this
Half-season of Christmas
Sing the carols
Claim the gifts
Play and work
Burn the homely fires
Testify to this
The witness in each moment
Christmastide
The time no one will wait for,
That is wait for well
It has arrived
However romantic,
The darkness of anticipation’s passed
We are here now
This is the best where and when
We have
C L Couch
Photo by Sora Sagano on Unsplash
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