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Hurry Up, Please, It’s Time

(x = space)

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x

Hurry Up, Please, It’s Time

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Time to pray

My God, you are here

Sometimes your presence

Seems so thin

Like vapor

In the morning

Then sometimes a

Numbered weight

Sometimes a fire

That frights

x

It’s how we imagine you

Though you are manifest

As you are manifest

Not invisible

Not hiding behind a tree

Awaiting human mischief

For a peak

You are not voyeurish

x

As it is, you’ve seen it

Heard it

Touched it all

Our antics are not of interest

Unless we should please you

x

That would be

A forest of content

With scenes of love and action

(love in action)

That would delight

In fact

And in fact

Of all the constituents

Of nature

And believers

x

Animals might pray

Might live in prayer

We must talk

Must confess

Must ask

Though, yes, we may

Keep it in the mind

Just behind

Or just inside our tongues

x

You hear us

Remarkably, some time

And every time,

Which is the miracle

The need

Even the requirement

To pray

For us to mutter something

You to hear

x

Sorry

Thanks

Love

Amen

x

C L Couch

x

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(I take the title from T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”)

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Photo by Alex Wing on Unsplash

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Wounding Time

(x = space)

x

x

Wounding Time

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Hot, rainy day

I could be in Brazil

Except for lack of

Verdure

Did you know that the

Big mark of the equator

In Ecuador

Is wrong?

There is another line,

A smaller line,

A ways away

x

I’ve never been

To Greenwich,

And I don’t know

What might be wrong

There

Or in Geneva

x

In the planetarium

When I was young

(it has been

moved),

There was

A Foucault pendulum

Enormous,

Knocking down pegs

So faithfully

Marking through collapse

The hours in the day

x

Atomic clock?

I’ll take a sundial

But then

I don’t need

Tactical precision

In my day

Microseconds for transactions

Bids and buys for Wall Street

Testy parents

Watching watches

x

Olympics

Boats skimming water

Shoes on tracks

So many things need

Measurement

Of time

I’m sure

I hope

The athletes have joy

In their work

Pleasure in the wind

Running under the sun

x

There is a tower

Somewhere,

Where four faces are

Four clocks

Each clock noting time

Each clock a little off in minutes

From the other

So that

When people meet

There,

No one is late

x

C L Couch

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Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

Goodwood Festival Of Speed , Chichester , U.K.

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4

Salutation

(x = space)

x

x

Salutation

(meaning health)

x

I hope this is

A good day for you

You deserve it

I know it’s Monday, but

It is as full of opportunity

As yesterday

Tomorrow

And the next time

x

I’m not saying

Everyone has the same

Opportunity, because

In no way

Do we all have the same

I wish we did

x

But the hours are

Ahead of us,

And the moments of now

Have arrived

What shall we do, not

To pass the time

But to make it

Into something that is

Prosperous and peaceful,

Ancient wishes

Rendered imminent

For all of us

Here and now

x

C L Couch

x

x

There is a good book by Henri Nouwen entitled Here and Now.  And by Jean-Pierre de Caussadethere is The Sacrament of the Present Moment.  Each book is brief, imperfect, yet brimming.

x

Nobility of Time by Salvador Dalí

(photograph) by fabiolah, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=51922306

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Antiphon

(x = space)

x

x

Antiphon

x

I hope it’s

A good day

You might be at dawn or

Well into tomorrow,

However the sun

And moon

Are moving

One place or another

On the world

x

Our count of day

Is relative,

While the actual

Ebb and flow

Of tides and

Of day and night

Move in

Real relationship

Without

Our measure—that’s

The way it is

x

And it is good

As I’m hoping for

Your day

To be

Or, in the uncounting

Time of Genesis,

Become

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C L Couch

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Groume – Le Cadran de Dalí, uploaded by Paris 17, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23114485

Cadran solaire de Salvador Dalí sur la façade d’un immeuble de la rue Saint-Jacques, réalisé pour des amis qui y habitaient.

(sundial by Dali)

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Finite

Finite

 

When we exhale

Things go out

We no longer need,

Which is all right because

Parts of the world need them

That, in turn, give up what

We need

And so inhale

To say the least, it’s a good arrangement

We should keep it going

Oxygen doesn’t come from

An artificial tube

We borrow it

And sometimes

Too often, really

Don’t give anything back for it

Let’s not begrudge astronauts

Someday maybe

We’ll make our own sustenance

For breathing

Though really everything we have

Is borrowed, molecules from

Someone else

Call it Mother Nature

Father Time

Or random, hexagonal arrangements

In the universe

Finally, it’s what we’re lent

Of substance and of time with

The energy to use them

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Moses Lee on Unsplash

Richmond, BC, Canada

Comet NEOWISE over Iona Beach through tall grass.

 

11

July

July

(pandemic time)

 

Just is going by so quickly

Soon will be the ides

And yet how can that be?

We’re inside in pandemic time

The days are blurred

The hours should be slow

As if marked

By a Gothic clock

That ticks without relenting

In a ruined house

But here it is, half the month

Is nearly done

Maybe the problem is

Each day is rushing by,

Losing pieces

As an airplane hull in a comic book

Crashing craft before the superhero

Comes,

Lifting up the plane

Restoring those of us inside

To safe living on the ground

 

What we’re used to

Isn’t happening

All the things we’re told need doing

In each hour

So the hour slides

Collecting in a bin, somewhere

Maybe we think the hours

Will be called back into service,

Though really I think we know they’re gone

And with them,

All our former expectations

 

We want time to wait

So we might catch up what has gone

Bring it back into our time

That it might rush again

But we’ve heard the occasional

Voices

Like soft-spoken prophets

Telling us that normal will have to be

Redefined,

And then

It’s all right

We will have it

Back and for the first time

Hello, I must be going (Captain Spaulding)

Time will be back

To fill more as we wish

Though there is a call

In the air

Or on the tables with our alarm clocks

Inviting us to be more woke,

As we’re saying,

For the day

 

A day of work

A day of home

A day of work at home

School out there

Jobs out there

Keeping them inside, too

Inside us

The Earth is a busy place,

Though not so much in nanoseconds

As in seasons

Seasons of life

And letting go of life

 

When we return,

We’ll have the chance to keep some things

Old things and new

Making a fuller way to live

A fuller way to understand

Ourselves, our families, our friends

The world we’ve been given

And still have, for now

 

Intertwining life

With more threads for the loom

More strands in the weaving

Valuing some things

We always said

We’d get around to

Such as lifelong learning

Family really matters

Well, it’s turning into a banner over town

Relax, enjoy the day

Fill it with what you will

Or let it go

But here is a chance

For an awful reason

To repack our lives,

Leaving what’s no longer needed

Along an existential road

Backing into what we’ll call

Another time

That now is past

We’ll walk straighter in the now

(straighter however we go)

With vision, other senses for today

And some toward the future

 

Tomorrow hopefully will grow

And then a little more

But have today

A first day in July,

All the hours in a day and season

Count them slowly, count them fast

Count them not at all

Let time be a blanket

Rest or play or work upon it

Savor

Breathe fully

A gift of air from the sky

And the host above, below

The maker it works for

Who will, as we will,

Keep the time for us in

What happens

And what happens next

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Ian Macharia on Unsplash

Kargi, Kenya

Took this on a trip to Kargi, a remote nomadic settlement in Kenya. It’s been a while since I got to experience a people so constantly happy and full of joy as the people of here.

 

4

Floating Illusions

Floating Illusions

(title in the pile of stories to be read)

 

The confession of it is

That I’m glad to be here

And for the moment, for today

Don’t have to be

Nowhere else (I play with

the negative)

Or elsewhere

Even if it’s Christmas every day

The good parts

I’ll stay in my mortal place

Where time rolls

And I think I’m on the stepping stones

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by John Spencer on Unsplash

 

7

Peace for All Time

Peace for All Time

(a three-part cycle)

 

1

Machine Language

 

Each moment’s a decision

To exhale,

To circulate some blood

To let the body stir for a while longer

To let the synapse burn

Brightly with mind-fire,

Transactions between what’s happening

And memory

Much of this is done for us

But there’s a partnership, I think

Between all parts

The automatic will take over for

The temporary

When immediacy of thought and movement

Are tired out

Call it sleep

Call it the second cup of tea

Taken on the porch

When for a time there’s nothing else to do

And this has been invoked

Because needed,

The ending of which we’ll debate

 

Peace an invention,

A transaction

Between all partners

Serving on the inside

 

2

Contrition

 

I won’t take it back

Not yet

I need to know the outcome,

Did I get anything I wanted

 

If penance is a prayer,

I’ll do my part

If it’s in bad feeling,

I’m already there

And counting

 

A return to normalcy

And what is that

It takes me out of this

Otherwise, I want

The special moments back

 

But it’s the future, now

Plu-imperfect

 

Please

Say them with me, maybe

All the prayers,

Then let’s move on

 

3

The Answer Is in Someone Else as Well

 

Inner peace

That’s cool

It’s not enough

If I’m in my chrysalis

And have no sight of yours

Or time

 

Where is my peace

If not in you?

This is cheating an invocation,

For it’s not a talk to God

But to you

The one nearby

And not inside

We need transaction, too

And more

 

You need to carry me

And I a part of you

A magic story in which twins

Keep a gem lit by the light force

Of the other

And there’s responsibility

 

In our story,

We will partner differently

That is, for real

Not to prevaricate conditions

But to say push on

Make peace because

We know each other now

To arbitrate

 

And there’s no other way

To build the day

That each must have

Into a present contract

As the future

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Jarrod Reed on Unsplash

 

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Stopwatch for Genesis

Stopwatch for Genesis

(1 January 2020)

 

How do Arabs count the new year

How do Jews

How does China of

A billion tens of fingers?

How do those who know only seasons,

Who count days as

One traversal of the sun,

Then of the moon?

A change of feeling in the year

To favor birth or harvest?

It would be fair of all of them

To ask of us

The people of the nanosecond

Why there is counting and, once-measured,

Presumption to ownership

 

How does God who with better reason

Owns the days count them?

We guess a lot about this

A day

A day that is an age

I don’t think God can be bound

Held by our computing

Any more than the bars of an abacus

Should make a cage

Or calculators calibrated to electrocute

(maybe watch out for

servers serving)

 

There is even scandal in census-taking

For the king rather than the nation

It’s in the Chronicles and Samuels

People dying for

The autocrat’s close ticking

 

Now’s a fine and healthy time for remembering

God’s of chaos, too

And if we want, if we will

We can be held ourselves

(by God or ourselves)

To keep it either way

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

hide and seek

 

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