(x = space)
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For a Sad Time
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God gives
We say
God takes away
It’s true
Especially
If we accept Job
As a template
Loss for what seems is
No good reason
If reason
Loss arrives
What shall we do
But keep
The good we know
The hope we have
Say
In other stories
Our own
That we compose
As best we may
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C L Couch
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Photo by Jules Marvin Eguilos on Unsplash
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(x = space)
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Stone Soup
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I don’t know what to say today
I want you to have a good day
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And for a while
To know good days
And what to do when days are bad
Beyond the dreaming we all do
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So that it’s
What we know to do with what we have
Sometimes that’s hard
And hard to believe we have
I’m poor
I know
Too close to the legacy
Of art and artists
x
But I know good people
Am learning to ask
And not gauge heaven by response
Or lack thereof
But to keep trying
x
Also allowing expectation
We live
We are entitled to live
I don’t know about evil people
I know so few
You are entitled, too, I suppose
I am not God
And cannot judge as God
x
But the many, many, many
Of us who are not evil, not pure good
A mix, you know–
Choose a complementary color
We are colors
We color the world
x
And are deserving
You deserve
A good day and another
A whole bunch like bananas
Or corn kernels on the cob
Or other things so many colors
(as I’ve said)
x
Anyway,
A wish is not a horse
Or an electric car
And, drat, we have to try
The curse of Adam, some would say
Eve is cursed as well
But curses are not endings
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“We have to make our own way,”
I just heard,
Which is true
And there’s so much more
There’s you
There’s me
And any me or you who happens
To be close to you or me
In distance
Actual
Or relative
(and there’s cyber-),
Which is to say
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A nearness
(actual or relative)
To help make life
One bowl of stone soup
At a time
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C L Couch
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Stone Soup is a European folk story in which hungry strangers convince the people of a town to each share a small amount of their food in order to make a meal that everyone enjoys, and exists as a moral regarding the value of sharing. In varying traditions, the stone has been replaced with other common inedible objects, and therefore the fable is also known as axe soup, button soup, nail soup, and wood soup.
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Statue of a monk and stone soup (sopa da pedra) in Almeirim, Portugal
By Adriao – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7645719
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(x = space)
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The Second Story Mountain
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Merton wrote
The Seven Storey Mountain
About his journey to faith
And affiliation
David Brooks has written
The Second Mountain
About the search for a moral
Life that also
Has in it
Brooks’s journey into faith
x
There are many such stories
(John Henry Newman, Anne Lamott
Karen Armstrong—I give these folk
in order of reading them),
And high places
Are often an association
x
Once we climb, once we achieve
The phenomenal
The numinous,
We end up
On a mountain top
There is, in fact, the mountain-top
Experience,
A trope of faith
x
On my way back recently,
I skirted a tunnel torn up for construction
And drove over two mountains
As an unmarked detour,
Taking roads who edges were too near,
Too sharp, too narrow
I was scared
x
And wondered among things while driving
How folk could live on either side,
Having these as ways
To take a normal day
x
I don’t like heights
I don’t like driving off the road, either
It’s all done now, and if I’m smart
I’ll never take that way again
There was a mountaintop, I guess
There were two such tops
I only noted a change in incline
Down from up
There was not a park or anything
x
A pullover,
A bench with an inscription in huge letters
Come and have your mountaintop here
Rather the only words I got
Were my own
That said, don’t look down so much
x
I’ll live in the valleys,
I suppose,
And have my faith life there
Or at the oceanside from time to time
It’s not stormy weather
That I mind
Though someday it should take
Me home
x
I’m sorry, this is more a story
Than a poem much cleverer,
Not much more
Than talking
In the room
Over coffee or some such,
Should we be meeting
At a table
Or in comfy chairs
Or with both
x
I have my life of faith, such as it
Might be
I hope, I even pray, that
You have yours
In a healthy sect or tradition
That suits you and
Creator and
Creation
x
Fits you like a story to
Which you return
Time and again
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C L Couch
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The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton
The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life by David Brooks
Route 641
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Photo by Fabrizio Lunardi on Unsplash
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(x = space)
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Let Me Tell You about My Day
(first hour or so)
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Pre-dawn
x
Blue
And if you look into it,
A promise of silver
x
In a while,
The mourning doves might call
Take over for the cardinals
And the robins
Who might be louder elsewhere
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The doves
Sing us into green
x
Town noise might subsume
The outside sounds
(except the doves who
are right against the window)
Except that it is Sunday
So the morning
Should be
Relatively quiet
For nature’s sentineling
And mine
We’ll find out
x
As for other senses,
Touch and smell and taste
Should have their turns
You might
Guess at the prospects
x
There’s still a war
Two wars, three wats
Still a virus
Many viruses
People will die today
And people will be born into
Air-breathing life
x
I’m a little late
Proposing all of this
Because the coffee cup
Slipped from my hand
And all the coffee
Slid
Down the down the
Sides of everything,
Flat surfaces
And cushioned
(a play of surface tension
and of gravity),
To land upon the floor,
Most of it
Slight sweet
More creamy than sweet
An expensive brand
Though not a kind
More dear
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So I took time to
Clean the mess:
To clear out things,
Take things
To the sink
Where I’ll deal with them,
Sponge and paper towels
And cleaner for
The rest, for the floor
Now things have to dry
Then to be
Cleaned again
And there’s more coffee
To take out from
Its machine
x
Sigh,
One of those days
And what does that mean?
x
I see
The blue
And sense a silver promise
Like new friends
In a scouters’ song
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I reckon now
You’ll have a day to survey
Finally
Of many hours
I’ll look forward to any
Of that story that
Might come my way
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C L Couch
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Before Dawn
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(x = space)
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Thirty Means End of Story
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How will it end
We do not know
What happens next
We have great lore
And supposition
We have stories
Of returns
We should believe them
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C L Couch
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(not years—thirty is or used to be a sign in journalism)
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Photo by Rishabh Sharma on Unsplash
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(x = space)
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Why Sometimes There’s a ? Mark
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The ending of a movie
Doesn’t say
“The End” so
Much, which
Might be just as well
x
Stories go on:
An event has an ending
However it might
Dwindle
Toward an emptiness of
Time and company
While the next thing is in
Motion
x
Motion, motion—
Investment of potential,
Expenditure
Of energy,
Profit of contribution toward the
Turning of the Earth
And shall we say it,
Joy
x
Yes, using
The “eternal delight”
Of Blake
Amid the envying of
All unmoving things that want
To be introduced
Into the
Calling rushing of the universe
And so it seems
Never the end
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C L Couch
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On Set
Photo by Avel Chuklanov on Unsplash
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(x = space)
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Peer Review
x
Your stories are
Amazing
Amazing stories
Keep sharing from them
We need their wonder
That
Certain metaphors aside
And without exaggeration
Are real
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C L Couch
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Full Disk Earth, Apollo 17, 1972
Photo by The New York Public Library on Unsplash
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(x = space)
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Wednesday Diagnosis
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I’ll see the doctor today
At 2:20
A friend will drive me there
The pain is sharp
And then it’s dull
The dull kind, naturally enough,
Harder for persistence
Making
Night
Difficult and ongoing,
Rest made into
Dreamless chore
x
But one thing I have forgotten
In sharing what is going
On with me,
And that is to ask of you
How are you?
What’s happening with you?
I hope that you are well
And having a fine day
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I had a student
Who entered buoyantly
Each Wednesday day,
It’s hump day! she would cry
Each time
And now I think of her
Each time
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C L Couch
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A ball of energy with electricity beaming all over the place.
Photo by HalGatewood.com on Unsplash
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(x = space)
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Yes to Another Story
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I can’t do this
I won’t
And I won’t grow up
Like Peter Pan
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Another child who’s
Lost
And wanting pixie dust
Must tell the tale,
Instead
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Of flight into the London sky
To islands that
No ship can find
Except the ship
That story says
Has been there for a while
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So that the story
Might have adversaries
As stories need
More than
Pixie dust
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C L Couch
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Photo by Sophie Louisnard on Unsplash
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