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Slowdown Season

(x = space)

x

x

Slowdown Season

x

Lent could mean

Anticipation,

If we would allow for that

In the midst of conversations

About sacrifice

x

Having given up

On chocolate, we need

Something to talk about

How about why?

x

Sacrifice for its own sake

Being good,

Don’t get me wrong

Though we can

Say more

About the season

About church

About reading

About us

x

Lent means getting ready

Or it might

Lest we forget

Why we gave up the chocolate

Or the coffee

Or, I don’t know,

What do people give up

Nowadays?

(maybe screen time)

x

It seems we give up

Something somewhat bad

Somewhat good

Maybe it’s the excess

We surrender,

Which a good ancient Greek

Will say

Is always good

A lifestyle to adopt

x

Well, we’re not here

To parse

We’re here, in fact, because

We’re unified

We want one thing

Even if delivery

Is holiday disarray

x

We want a happy Easter

With rabbits

And eggs

(rabbits who lay eggs)

And back to chocolate

Like a former friend

Now reconciled

x

There is more

But it’s not mine to say

You must, must not

It is yours to say

To own a resurrection

Shown in nature

Told as story

A question and an answer

Of belief

It’s yours to say

x

C L Couch

x

x

Photo by Vidar Nordli-Mathisen on Unsplash

Walk the Line

x

1

Counting on God

(x = space)

x

x

Counting on God

x

We are in Lent

That like “lente” should mean

Go slowly

(Holy Week might be

“adagio,” I think)

x

Lent is a Christian thing

And goes along with

Our preoccupation

For things forty:

Forty years our parents

In the wilderness,

Forty days’ temptation

Between Jesus and the devil,

Angels standing (flying)

By,

Forty days for seasons

There are more

x

Four gospel writers

Three angels meet with Sarah

(meet with Abraham)

She laughs with them

Isaac, Rebekah

With two sons

The sons are parted

As father was separated

From brother,

Two traditions started

Eve and Adam

Had two sons as well

One of whom

Need be remembered

On account of murdering,

First murder

x

I’m making up the factor

And where is ten?

Ten tribes to the north,

Two to south

x

Numbers must be important

There’s a whole book for them

In our traditions

But I stop

Just this side of numerology

Yet remembering, just now

That Arabs gave us numerals;

Before then,

Letters had numeric value

Cf. X, V, I, L, C, and M in Roman

Usage

x

Letters as numbers

I think that hurts my brain

What is the number in the name of God,

In the quotient

Or should one multiply?

x

We say three in,

But sometimes I must wonder

How many God might be

How many parts and particles

Go into one

x

C L Couch

x

x

Photo by Makarios Tang on Unsplash

x

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See and Taste

See and Taste

(Psalm 34:8)

 

When there was communion,

Four times a year,

Small cups

Were distributed,

Clear and plastic

Warm to touch

 

I would take my cup,

Tilt its smallness just a little in my favor

To see four lights reflected

Four yellow dots floating

In and as

Four corners

A square inside a circle

 

One dot for God

One for Jesus, for the Holy Spirit,

And for me

And when I’d turn the plastic cup

Those little lights would merge

To make an errant twirl,

An artwork of gold

 

A swirl on top

A small pool of grape juice

At room temperature,

As if to say

 

Even to the child,

We’re all in this together

You’ve eaten, now drink

And with us

Seal the season

Outside, inside

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Erica Viana on Unsplash

São Paulo, SP, Brasil

 

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Invitation’s Curling—Come in, Already

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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What Do You Say, Dear?

What Do You Say, Dear?

 

Sometimes in weariness we wander

While we stay inside, trying to take in

The world about

 

How much sense we can make with

What immediate surrounds us

We don’t know,

Certainly

 

We can open a book of the paper

Or electric kind, and we should

 

Where do answer lie?

Like asking of the hills to bring our help

Or something in a psalm

 

We don’t need a tube (that

Kind of lumen, as I understand it)

We can read

We can listen, better

(though we listen to the reading words, I’m sure)

 

More directly,

We can have an understanding

With all atoms we encounter

We can be grateful

 

A moment of small noise in which

We utter some

Thanksgiving

And with an attitude re-enter everything

 

C L Couch

 

 

What Do You Say, Dear? is a delightful and wise book by Sesyle Joslin, illustrated by Maurice Sendak.

 

Photo by Humphrey Muleba on Unsplash

Chester, United Kingdom

 

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Pumpkin Spice Girls

Pumpkin Spice Girls

 

Fall, fall

Then fall some more

It’s all right, it is the season

I guess all the seasons can be verbs,

Especially the quarter that is half a year

From now

 

Spring and fall

Fall then spring

This sounds all right

Pretty hopeful, really

 

Maybe there’s a joke in that,

See you in the spring

After you fall

 

Seasons that are seasoning

We spice our lives with them

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by George Gvasalia on Unsplash

Lake Lisi, Tbilisi, Georgia

 

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Too Technical for Numbers

Too Technical for Numbers

 

The people of the nanosecond

That might be the Japanese and us

The Russians and the Chinese

German timing

Somewhere there might be

Understanding of a season

When were you born?

There was great rain

It was a miracle

 

The Druids were aware of something

Witches, too

They mark the seasons, still

Despite our tendency to burn

Churches change with colors

But maybe not their stripes

I don’t mean to condemn

The vestige of Christ on Earth

But maybe take away

The matches

 

And return the decision made

Long ago at Whitby

Let the Celts ally with nature

In the faith

So that creation’s flow of time

A day that is an age

Shall inherit blessings now

Of peace and mourning

Birth and, so to say

All of life

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash

“Eventually everything hits the bottom, and all you have to do is wait until someone comes along, and turns it back again.”

 

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Day 181

Day 181

 

It’s Friday afternoon

Day 180’s passing

And so the children should be

Out of school for summer

Last rides in yellow buses

For a while

 

They can populate the stores

For a time

And visit in each residence

Pets should be happier

For the company

And lemonade or something like

Becomes a commodity

 

I don’t mean to say

It’s all sugary

Some will need work,

Too many will go hungry

There will be

Pain from separations of all kinds

 

But some will take trips

They will enjoy

And though not expressed,

Wear a new kind of gratitude

 

As a child,

My summers weren’t idyllic

But I couldn’t help from time to time

First relief, then

Reveling in freedom

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Luiz Guimaraes on Unsplash

 

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After Words

After Words

(Lent 41)

x

There must still be words

We’re stuck with them, I guess

Or at least I am

x

We could end here

Or yesterday

But we won’t,

Which is not a matter of words

As it is of life

x

Yet we should be ready

Now,

To pause when needed

Maybe turn the pause to play

Whatever is called for

x

It’s called for often

Snow day

Day in the sun

Comp time (whoever has this)

Playing hooky

(you can look it up)

x

Work will resume

With its kind of

Awareness, learning, deciding

Not in cryptic ways

Or inaccessible

Though recall that there’s a mystery

In pretty much everything

x

The kind that moves a martyr’s heart

And for other reasons, too, can thrill the heart

Of each of us

Of the sort like

Joan, Priscilla, Rachel, Esther

Judith, Hrosvitha, and Hildegard

Who found their way with God

While in the world

x

And for the Joans, Priscillas, Rachels, Esthers

Judiths, though I don’t suppose we’ll be

Naming anyone Hildegard or

Hrosvitha for a while

We may

We will

x

I don’t know, I think we’ll find

What we need

As long as we don’t keep the process to ourselves

Or the results

x

Anyway,

I thought I should say something once it’s all over,

Our Lenten experience

We’re comingling times and traditions

Of the end of Lent (for those still counting),

The Passion, the Triduum, then

Easter and the Easter season

x

I pray

Together and apart

These are all good for you

The way spring days, clean from rain,

Can be

x

C L Couch

x

note for the blog

Counting forty days from Ash Wednesday takes Lent through Palm Sunday, which might seem odd given the reflective nature of the season maybe abandoned in triumphant celebration.  But the count of days in Lent can take out the Sundays and Holy (Maundy) Thursday (when the celebration of the Eucharist occurs) and add in Good Friday and Holy Saturday to make up a count and observation of forty days.  Timing of events for the Passion and the Triduum might overlap this way of counting, and it’s also true that some have it (more or less officially, according to one’s tradition) that the length of Lent (even the sense of forty days) be taken metaphorically.

I guess I’m counting forty days from Ash Wednesday and let the paradox of Palm Sunday prevail.

Whew.

x

Photo Credit: Wikimedia User John Morgan CC-BY-2.0

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