a liturgy of us
(and smaller things)
exhale
think of something
of the spirit
now
what would that be
the green outside
perhaps
the blue that sponsors
all the green
the gold
the kind we cannot see
that might be
illumination
well-defined
but then
how well others know
there are other
senses
to be saved
and that save us
from
time to time
what do we hear
what do we
smell
and taste
and what are we touching
now
well
flat surfaces of gray
that smell
and (thankfully) taste
of nothing
though
there is
a tapping
we might hear
as above our chamber door
should there be a raven
perching like
the poet’s
trickster
maybe we smell the coffee
that we haven’t made
or the shower
we have yet
to take
(we break for both)
and now
we are back
with
coffee
to taste
water having touched us
and is this
the investment
of the spirit
that made everything
in six
days
as eras
though let’s not forget
there’s a seventh day for
rest
and maybe there’s mélange
a compromise
most days
in which we rise
from tries
at rest
at least
and then invest ourselves
in small things
call them readiness
and chores
and so we live
you know
as best we may
enormous things
to take
smally
and so ingest
as best we may
the cosmos
in our coffee
heaven
for Earth
as best we may
c l couch
photo by Florian Hahn on Unsplash
Lent 18
(synthesis)
I romanticize
Apologies for that that
I think we need to give ourselves
A pause
And a chance
For something good
Deserving of so many
Repentance for the rest
Then everyone can have
Color, sound, texture
In life
To have it fully
With safety in
Awareness
There’s more, of course
And that’s all right
Ask not what the heaven’s for
But how is life on
Earth today
C L Couch
Suburbia ved Tranberg på Gjøvik
Øyvind Holmstad – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48486425
Advent at 1806 President Drive
(Advent, maybe anytime)
I don’t know the count
Of Advent, anymore
I’m tired
And the days don’t match the dates
This is why we have the calendars,
I guess
Except they count out December
Their Advents always twenty-five
Ours had images
Years later I found out about the chocolate
But, you know,
I rather like the pictures
(there was chocolate, anyway
and cookies, cookies, cookies)
The last portrait was Santa
In a kind of glory of arrival
And within the dates somewhere
There was the holy family
Hey, we got these at the mall
They taught us anticipation
Maybe not well
(considering the clientele)
But with persistence
Each day was in a tiny box
With perforated shutters
I think the five of us took turns
In trying to pierce
And leave the day intact
Hard for impatience
The season’s and the child’s
But we made it
Our little house inside
The bigger house,
Our fortunes read each day
For Christmas
Yes, it was suburban
There were snow days, too
Chains on the tires of the family car
Fluffed, cottony bunting
On which my mother placed
Plastic sleigh, plastic reindeer, plastic Santa
I remember these fondly
All atop
The console of
Our first color television
Oh, my
C L Couch
https://pixabay.com/en/advent-calendar-christmas-2941998/
Stops
I was waiting
Under the roof of our bus stop,
A structure built of brick
And heavily painted many times
A weekday afternoon, after school
The PAT bus arrived and I got
On
The bus moved on the winding
Way that was Mount Royal Boulevard
Downhill through Etna
Onto the Ohio River road
Crossing the Allegheny on
The George Washington Bridge
Downtown in Pittsburgh
I left the bus through folding
Doors near
Mellon Center
Walked to the Alcoa Building then inside
To find my father in
His office on an upper floor
We had dinner somewhere in
The city
Then walked to the Stanley Theatre
For
A showing of Kubrick’s 2001
Seventy m-m on a screen
That was maybe silver
I was thirteen; it was my birthday
The movie plot was long
And deliberately enigmatic
I liked the
Sci-fi scenes
And then it was all over
All of it
There would never be another day like that
I suppose
Suburban adventures
Don’t happen
Like this anymore
Too far, too dangerous
Too much for one child to negotiate
But on that day
Nothing bad took place
And my year turned
Just the same
C L Couch
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.
clcouch123 
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