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Calliope

(x = space)

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Calliope

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What is the song

In your head

Just now?

Mine is “Song Sung Blue,”

Because everybody

Knows one

Sometimes it’s “One Voice”

Sometimes it’s

“Color My World”

Now you know

Where I’m from

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Sometimes

It’s a theme

From a movie

Or a show

TV or Broadway

But if I stop

To catch it,

There’s always

Something there

Always music

And that is something

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C L Couch

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Pyrophone of Georges Frédéric Eugène Kastner (1852–1882).

By photographer unknown – Hermann Ludwig von Jan: Johann Georg Kastner, ein elsässischer Tondichter, Theoretiker und Musikforscher – sein Werden und Wirken. Breitkopf & Härtel, Band 2, Teil 2, Leipzig 1886, p. 308, Digitalisat (Internet Archive), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25667386

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A Song about Creation

(x = space)

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A Song about Creation

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I am a Calvinist who

(enough of a Calvinist

who)

Believes the world has

Fallen with the first

Sin we decided to take on

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The world should

Be different, though there

Are reminders everywhere

In nature, in the

Morning, in the soft way

That evening falls

Sometimes

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Maybe it’s in newborn

Life that we have

The promise of creation

To be constant if not perfect,

Wonders in asymmetry

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Science and religion

Taken over by

The awe that greets us

In the mornings of

Every hour, every day

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Hexagons and spirals,

Nature seems

To favor these

(bee cells and nautili,

for instance)

And nebulae sometimes

Look like one-celled wonders

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And for all the shapes

And sizes

In leaves and roots,

Mitochondria, and the

So-much larger flesh outside

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Above and under all we know,

There is amazement

In waking to creation

Remade in amazement

Until “Earth and all stars”

Be renewed perfectly

One day,

A moment

Signaling forever

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C L Couch

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“Earth and All Stars,” a hymn composed by David N. Johnson

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Photo by Gabi Scott on Unsplash

Denver Museum of Nature & Science

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Invitation from Earth and Sky

(x = space)

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Invitation from Earth and Sky

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Briefly then,

There are good things

On the earth

And inside sky

And inside far below

We can ask for

Closeness to good things,

And we should:

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For good warmth

From the sky,

Good feeling in our bodies,

Good reason for

Decision-making

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The substance of the

Asking might be

Prayer of a kind of

Cosmic negotiating

For agnostics

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Either way

Or with simpler hope,

We can let goodness

Have its way

With core and crust

And breathy atmosphere

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Inhale, exhale—

Walk to stretch things out

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Extend our fingers,

Reach out with our palms,

And turn our wrists

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The cosmos will

Appreciate our reaching out

So and more so

Would the mortals

And the ineffable

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Let all mortal flesh keep silent

And in fear and trembling stand

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Each year there is an advent

And most days,

Our response invited

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Our planet awaits

As does everything beyond

The sky that our shiny satellites

Detect, now draw from

For extraterrestrial

(extra-lunar)

Samples

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The maker awaits

Here and there as well,

Inviting us inside

Community, one by one

And altogether

To believe

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C L Couch

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Photo by Vidar Nordli-Mathisen on Unsplash

Strong wind, frost and rays of sunlight created this wonderful pattern on my windshield.

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“Let All Mortal Flesh” is an old hymn out of the Christian tradition.

A newer hymn, “Earth and All Stars,” also comes to mind.

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The Twenty-Third Song

(x = space)

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The Twenty-Third Song

(a paraphrase)

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My life is wrecked

I feel ruined

And here you are, Lord;

I don’t know if I asked for you,

And I am so relieved

That you are here

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I thought there was a desert

But, look, there’s water

Cold and clear;

It is the best that I have tasted

And I have no doubt

That it is good for me

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This is more than I deserve

And maybe I should leave—well,

I feel your hand

Guiding me back;

I should stay a while

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I thought this was the end,

That I could not lose any more

And it was getting dark;

But you are here,

And maybe you were with me

While I was stumbling

Back there

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Look, here’s food:

And who are those around me?

They don’t come any closer

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Before I eat, please

Bless all this

And maybe me;

You are the one

To do it, after all

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Should you be with me

Through all that is to come,

Then blessings

Will continue, even in

The splintered times

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And because of you,

Your presence in my life,

When this life is done

And the next mystery begins,

I shall be with you

With a living place in heaven

Or on Earth renewed

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C L Couch

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Photo by Edgar Castrejon on Unsplash

Rome, Italy

The Forum, Roma

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Remembering a Song Often Sung on Sunday Night

(x = space)

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Remembering a Song Often Sung on Sunday Night

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O God, our help in ages past

Our hope for years to come

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It’s Sunday night

And the chapel service is ending

We’ll all be leaving soon

To ponder Monday morning

Then what should be done tonight

That might be done

And what will be ignored because

The sabbath time

Is measured, still

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Our shelter from the story blast

And our eternal home

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Sometimes it’s too dark

And quiet

The winter will be worse

Not to be bored or frightened

We don’t fear wolves

Or wolverines so much, anymore

Except the allegories

We encounter Monday morning

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Time like an ever-rolling stream

Bears all its sons away

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Daughters are as sons

All are borne by mortal time

Away from what we know

Into a mystery

That we believe has

A final solution

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They fly forgotten as a dream

Dies at the opening day

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The scripted dream

Cannot be retained

Maybe it’s a contract

Between imagination

And the ages

Some keep a journal

About retaining something

The week begins,

Regardless

With the night, the dawn

And then the waking hours

Everything we know

Pushing away

What subconscious rules there are

When sleeping

Plus working out in

One brief act after another

Who the playwright is

Who will not let us

Keep our lines

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Amen

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C L Couch

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Photo by Deleece Cook on Unsplash

Cambeltown, Australia

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Old Times There

Old Times There

 

It’s an unordained day

Unornamented, too

Too soon for everything like that

Late November, cold and chilly

Sky flat with pale gray,

Everything else dark against it

A perfect day for candlelight, I think

Maybe pretend it is an older time

When caves were justified

Along with houses

And people might keep moving for

A life

A livelihood as tinkers, fighting

For hire, or maybe storytelling

In a common room

Manor or pub

(I don’t think churches or temples

were lent out)

Small town, desert place,

Or greater city

 

Told, though I think sung

Maybe couplets, maybe rhymes

A language we will never speak again

Food and drink for fees,

Maybe coins

A night to sleep inside

Up and out next day

To travel to whatever

In an older age provides

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Moodywalk on Unsplash

New Delhi, India

Some magic is happening in every moment, have a close look.

 

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Rainy Days and Mondays

Rainy Days and Mondays

(tribute, as it is)

 

She used the glissando too much

But was a fantastic singer

Then she got sick

I don’t know how it happens

Something in the head

The heart

The soul

We forget the present, cannot

See the future

Past is disconnected

Everything is disparate

Everything’s in pieces

 

Not that I knew her

I had an album, was all

And liked every selection

In the world, no big deal

But has only happened one other time

For me

The Eagles Greatest Hits

I even liked the baroquish piece

Fitting on the end of the first side

Telling us the singers had to leave

For now

To go to the bathroom

 

I don’t know how he handled it,

Her brother

Sad to say, I don’t know where he is

Or if he is

I can look it up

 

The death of the singer was a blip

In entertainment

Decades later, I am sad

Maybe more so

Untimely feels more untimely

Things that shouldn’t happen and that happen

Karen Carpenter is gone

We can say the music lives,

It does

When I have a stereo again

Because there’s been a dry spell

And a quiet one,

I’ll drop the record, as is said,

But, oh, so carefully

 

C L Couch

(drafted on a Monday)

 

 

Photo by Todd Quackenbush on Unsplash

 

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‘Tis a Gift

‘Tis a Gift

 

In simplicity we are free

That is a claim

And it’s a good one

If bemusing

Because I think we might

Be tempted to take it

Numerically

 

That simplicity means less

(and it does)

And having less is freeing

 

Of counting

Of cleaning

And of time

 

But I wonder

(still I wonder)

If simplicity means more than less

 

C L Couch

 

 

Simple Gifts

(attributed to the Shakers)

 

‘Tis a gift to be simple,

‘Tis a gift to be free,

‘Tis a gift to come down where

we ought to be;

 

And when we find ourselves

In the place just right,

‘Twill be in the valley of love

and delight

 

When true simplicity is gained

To bow and to bend we shan’t

be ashamed;

To turn, turn will be our delight

‘Til by turning, turning we

end up right

 

(cited by recollection; I’ve heard “’Tis the gift” sung and “turn ‘twill be our delight”)

 

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Chanton

Chanton

(Notre Dame)

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1117888314323791874

 

Cathedrals built to music over time

So relate certain Victorians

Now music while the cathedral’s coming down

Illumination

Challenging the fire

 

A story goes that Camelot arose

To Merlin’s music

There’s Aslan singing so that

Narnia can come to life

And did not the utterance of Christ

Make all worlds

 

They watch and listen to

The fire

There is heat to feel

Ash to smell

And the taste of ruination

 

There is more as music

Cups the feeling of the tears

And gives, unbidden, thought to soul

Vive la France

Vive l’homme

 

C L Couch

 

 

(c.f. first part of Hebrews 3, Christian New Testament)

 

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