Search

clcouch123

I talk you talk we'll talk

Open Search
Tag

poem

I Touched the Moon Rock, Too

I Touched the Moon Rock, Too

 

Memory is funny

And I know you know that

I saw the Hope Diamond

It was small

Though small is relative to an elephant

Also the Mona Lisa

Small from its perspective, too

I saw Mount Rushmore from a distance

It was better in the movies

I’ve seen two oceans of the seven

Should there be seven seas

(and oceans do the counting)

I’ve visited, how many now,

Maybe four of the Great Lakes

Though two might been at a meeting

Place—and I don’t have to tell you

(do I)

That they are great

 

One day when I was in Washington, D.C., again

I saw the huge flag

And it is enormous

The one with the upside-down V sewn on

Fear of victory?

The shape of something torn that happened?

And there it was, a moon rock

I swear I got to touch it

 

And all this comes to mind

Because I just heard Mister Wildman

Say it was so

 

C L Couch

 

 

note(s)

 

it turns out I’m sending up the Smithsonian Museums, Mysteries at the Museum, and big things elsewhere in the USA

 

Wknight94 talk – Own work

Lunar Olivine Basalt 15555 sample collected from the moon by the Apollo 15 mission, at station 9A on the rim of Hadley Rille. It was formed around 3.3 billion years ago. On display in the National Museum of Natural History.

Olivine basalt collected by the crew of Apollo 15.

(image via) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_rock

 

1

The Act of Reading

The Act of Reading

 

It’s amazing how

Letters on the page

Keep us going

How the, which has little

Meaning, is essential

 

I look at the page, and

It matters

You find me there, too

And everyone who

Has meant something to you

And me

 

However it’s configured

Nowadays,

We go to words on pages

And they matter

The secrets of all time and space

Are there

The words wait

Like magic spells

Invocations standing by

 

Turn to them

Whether paper or electrons

Our salvation waits

And other stories

 

C L Couch

 

 

title by Wolgang Iser, The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response

 

image in the public domain

 

0

El Año Pasado

 

El Año Pasado

(20 Septiembre 2018)

 

It’s a year since Maria

Wrecked into Puerto Rico

I don’t know what to say

Since I don’t make policy, and

No one has dropped funds on

Me to make things better

My widow’s mite went to Ciencia PR

A group of scientists and learners

That persists

 

They love discovery and invention

And are of many kinds and ages

Affirming the timelessness of

Method, observation, and synthetic

(in terms of reasoning)

Progress

Someday someone here might save us

I shouldn’t be surprised

 

Though I wonder how they were ignored

In their hours

Might be subsumed by the privileged

Who will all of a sudden say

We’ve been behind these saviors

All the way

(and how far behind is that?)

 

Well, I can still remit my pittances

And pray for everyone bilingually

I studied that much in school

And feel ashamed for mine who

Will do nothing

Believing the corrupted lie

That all is well

Look at us

We are so good

Perdónanos

Nuestros pecados

Y en olvidarse

Ustedes

Su vida y su esperanza

Hope or expectation

 

C L Couch

 

note

(don’t worry, it’s only college Spanish;

I’m sure I made many mistakes)

Perdóname para estos)

 

 

facebook.com/cienciapr/

 

ciencia pr logo

 

0

A Holiday Carrel

A Holiday Carrel

 

Stacks of books

I’m moving them around

And culling some

To say I have too many is

To understate

They have meaning inside

Also understates

They have meaning on the outside, too

Color, texture, haptic sensations

Simply looking

Reminders that the world

Is bigger than the walls

That freedom is intentional

It takes a process

To be published

 

C L Couch

 

 

Bibliomania

Di tabaluga – Opera propria, GPL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5800206

Da Wikipedia, l’enciclopedia libera.

 

2

Signing Petitions

Signing Petitions

 

It was about prayer

Something I was thinking while

Nodding off

(officially, I’m trying to learn napping)

Prayer can be done in any stance, I think

(for instance, the entry into dozing)

Standing, sitting, kneeling, even

Prostrate

For we see the nuns and monks do this

And others in obeisance

Maybe the positions are for us

Appealing to ourselves

A signal to our peers

A sign of intent

 

What do we need to concentrate,

What makes a prayer a prayer?

It might be focus

It might be lining up the body to have this

To promise it

But can’t we pray on the fly?

In an instant, while we must be doing something else

A prayer sounding

Off the cuff in an

Emergency

 

Like a child who baptizes someone

In a dire situation

It counts

The books must record it happened in

This way

 

So prayer matters

In whatever way

Whichever muscles might be

Angled here or there

Sometimes we can’t apologize enough

Sometimes we can’t apologize at all

 

C L Couch

 

 

By Bill Kuykendall, Photographer (NARA record: 2708009) – U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17118564

 

1

Looking

Looking

(not with eyes)

 

I’m sure we’ll be all right

No compelling reason

Faith, I guess

Measures of hope and hope for grace

In faith, these are promises,

 

Which on a tired, hungry morning

Sore and cynical

Do not win over, easily

For anyone

But there’s optimism in that, too

Tolerance unearned

Shame assuaged

 

Should take more strength than I have

You might be tired, too

But the next hour will arrive

Without us

We can’t make everything happen,

Thank goodness

Though we can do this much

 

C L Couch

 

 

By Poupig – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20853200

 

0

Pluto Attacks

Pluto Attacks

 

The problems of impatience

The perils

I hang up on sellers, anymore

They’re doing a job, I know

But I can’t handle little parts of

Conversation prior to a pitch

I feel the pressure

Lean into my wall

Pressing on the shield

Of disclosure

 

A stranger wants me to buy

I have nothing and want nothing

In that way

Maybe you relate

I do not curse

I do not wish ill upon the current

Generation of marketers

Or the next

I simply want the phone to answer with

The known

The friendly, the familiar

Some comfort in connection

 

So I can’t listen, anymore

Can you?

Does your day have either holes

Or heroic capacities

To have the agenda pushed

With additives or promises, once

Paid for?

 

You are better than I

And I imagine you are, anyway

You have peace

Where I sense only perturbation

You can give

When I must withhold

Energy, even motes of time

 

Well, this is me

This is me now

Don’t try to sell me anything

It burns the hole burned through long ago

I don’t want to have what’s left

Set up on the block

In a marketplace of phantoms

 

C L Couch

 

 

Grzegorz Rejniak

https://www.freeimages.com/photo/old-phone-1313726

 

0

Hot Spots

Hot Spots

 

It’s close enough to be war

Venezuela, Colombia

The Philippines, Myanmar

Eastern Ukraine

Syria, Yemen, the Sudans,

And Nigeria (thanks to Boko Haram)

These are near enough to war

And there are other places

Do we name Chicago?

 

Are wildfires war? Then we must

Add California

And the violence of our spirits?

Where does that extend the boundary?

 

Is it a cosmos that wars as well?

In terms of matter, we might claim entropy

Or the mustard gas of stars’ annihilation

But where is will?

I think we need to know

 

This becomes our place in the universe as well

Does matter tilt toward intention

Or simple cessation?

Whose woods these are I think I know.

Does it participate,

The maker and the builder—

Does it build?

 

Do we matter,

Does matter matter?

Does a notion of a providence bamboozle?

Okay, I don’t think so, the Calvinist

In me will out

 

We need to talk about this

Let’s think first,

Maybe set something down

Like homework

Then come together, class,

To learn

 

We learn from each other

Dialogic, the style of Socrates

Synthesis, Hegelian

 

On the other side, what then?

We live more fully,

Fed on coffee, pastries, wine, and cheese

Civil plates’ discussion

Offering cups of cold water

Never forget that

A metaphor made real every time

Even a commandment

 

We live better together

Each one has one’s own

It is a choice

It is a pleasure

A present

And a future

 

C L Couch

 

 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

 

0

The Sacrifice of Isaac

The Sacrifice of Isaac

 

What is remarkable is the presence of the angel

Who stayed the hand of Abraham, bearing

The knife or whatever would be taking away

 

Isaac from his life

And is it remarkable

The surrender of the spirit of the son

To be carried away from the promise not of prophecy

But of parenthood

 

It happened

It would never be forgotten

My father took me to a place and set me down

To steal my life

Rams could not do this time

I must be the sacrifice

 

He is the offering to God

For what

Sorrow of the people

Plea for repentance

Future abundance in the land

 

Is it enough

To give up himself,

The words promised his father and his mother,

The dealing out of Ishmael,

His mother

 

Once sacrificed, always gone

Even spared, what should be left

Of hopes and dreams

And a father’s guard

If not affection

 

What is left for Isaac:

Was he blinded by the presence of the angel

Suffuse with the strength and majesty

Of God’s own following,

Will he live in love and faith and

Aspiration for a lifetime?

 

So much later, David weeps for Absalom

We might also wonder about the tears

Of Abraham

Relief, sorrow, the temerity of

Surrendering all sides to

Barter with the future

Of a parent

Of a people

Of a child

 

C L Couch

 

 

(caption) The sixth-century C.E. floor mosaic from the Beth Alpha synagogue, in Israel’s Jezreel Valley. The mosaic lay near the door, so that anyone who entered was confronted by the scene. Walking from here to the apse, visitors crossed a large mosaic zodiac and then a panel depicting a lulav (palm branch) and etrog (citron), menorahs, and the Ark of the Law—the same objects that accompanied the Akedah image at Dura-Europos 300 years earlier.

(from) https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/bible-interpretation/binding-sacrifice-isaac/?mqsc=E3987540&utm_source=WhatCountsEmail&utm_medium=BHDDaily%20Newsletter&utm_campaign=ZE8A9JZ80

 

3

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑