Tree Kind
I fell from one
Once and again
And in the breath
I struggled to take
Back again
I still called you
Friend
I cannot make flesh
That has its own
Or invent a spirit
When already imbued
The tree breathes
Out its own
31 January 2016
(in the global north)
I still wake up with jittery feelings. The sun is bright. The snow is melting down. Maybe I need it gone. But is that the boundary of my fear? I sit and look outside to see the beauty. I am inspired to come back and write a verse of two. Still, fear jumps inside me. At least it doesn’t leap. I’ll feel better, once I write a bit. Drink a hot drink, maybe take a pill or two pills. I know that on a good day my heart still operates in an iffy way. I know that what happened here was momentous. It’s momentous, still, outside. As in ancient Arabian architecture, I cherish space and righter light. Not simply looking out into amorphous glare. Rather the view of a virtuously bright and blue-skied world above with earth of desert browns beneath. Through arches made of genius and of grace, numbering the stars within each stone’s embrace.
I dream this is all easier, if not delightful, in a desert paradisal scene. Where arid becomes beautiful and free air moves through all, spirits borne and carried along. Maybe heaven’s healing wind will pause and wave upon me there, and I will feel and know something of the serene aspect of God.
Too much romance and earthly-bound, I know. But I need this. My fear frankly needs it, as does my hope and peace.
(response to Denmark’s new law)
First Words Depending on Where Refugees Arrive
Welcome to our nation
Give us everything you have
Welcome to our nation
We need to assay all you own
Welcome to our nation
How will you contribute?
Welcome to our nation
We have to screen you first
Welcome to your nation
Let’s get you settled here
Claustrophobe
Am I trapped on
the second floor?
My town for now
has the greater
accumulation,
And I realize this
is maybe too much.
I look out:
all I see are shapes
of indistinction;
I can’t even see
that well for
vapor pushing
up against my
window, making
visual barriers
in condensation.
The storm is Jonas;
that’s fine. If you
can escape the
hunt of God by
living for days in
a great fish—before
being retrieved by
hunter’s hand (let’s
say)—then I not
hunted by the
divine with the
exception to be
loved,
then I can weather
this—well, you
know–weather.
Re: Terror Cuts Pay
Slices pay in two
A secret ISIS memo
Leaked (I guess that
Phrase defines itself)
About paid staff
Losing half its pay
Benefits might be
Halved as well, at
Least from the neck up
Since ISIS wants a
State and hates the
Past (destroying
Ancient Arabian and
Asian works and the
Scientists who work
To preserve these), then
A state might be
Provided for the
Group, since there
Are uninhabited islands
In, say, Pacific waters
(Ironic), where UN
Patrols would sail
Sentinel so that an
Island of hate might be
Appropriately (by
Itself) preserved
On the Cusp of a Nor’Easter
(prose poem)
So my friend calls from Indiana. I tell her of my sister’s new job. I am relieved and happy, because my friend’s been struggling with sufferings that would drive me mad. She sounds well and has a chance to tell me some about her family on her way to church to help lead (in technical matters) a Bible study there. It is cold here. It is colder there (single-digit degrees for many days). When she must ring off, she does. I am at the coffeemaker and place the backside of the phone on a spiral burner on the stovetop (everything turned off). While the coffee’s cooking, I clean out some plastic bottles into which I put tap water to drink throughout the day. Not thinking at first, I place the cleaned-out bottles just outside the burner circle set upon the stove. When I’ve done this four times, I have four empty bottles cornering a phone set on a burner plate of labyrinthine form. I’m sure there is a deity for winter (generally, Persephone, though I’m thinking there’s one for winter only), and have I not built a small, strange contemporary altar to her. A narrow receiver (wireless) offered up inside four plastic monoliths keeping in their stillness their own kind of sentinel watching. Is this supplication? I want my friend to be well. I want her husband to enjoy retirement and her daughter have success at school. I want the cold to move on, over there, though for a Midwest winter season, I guess what is endured is rather normal. (Still too cold.) My temps in southern Pennsylvania still have two digits. But we are called to be ourselves storm-ready against a coming, miles-wide soon-arriving gale. It smacks the South and later rounds out to sea—on the way releasing slivering ice and snow and the season’s other dangers onto our regional metropoles: D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. And in my small town? I pray for navigable roads. In my small place, I pray for electricity’s constancy—that it might faithfully provide sufficient heat in rapport with the thermostat. And now I guess I wait. We wait. I clear the stove and leave on the burner now a single cup, ready for coffee. The empty ceramic vessel a suburban symbol of encouragement and also, I think, of supplication.
On a Monday Holiday
On a Monday holiday
Outside my window there
Is special quiet
I live on Main Street
Which, here, is
A main street
Much traffic in the
Town goes by and
Emergency vehicles
Yet all action by
Wise or by a fool
Sounds blanketed today
Even the helicopter
I hear now shudders
Through a more silent
Sky—yes, there is an
Air-push on its way
With a storm behind
But humidity rising
While the barometer
Descends does not
Evince, I think, the silence
Outside my window now
Now, where there’s
Muted sunlight, too
Where, fuzzily or not,
Thought is knocking on
The pane, asking for
An invite in—well, why
Not on this kind of day
clcouch123 
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