What Kind of Country
The Constitution
A grand response to the ancient notion
Of democracy
Preamble
Principles
And rationale
And then how to operate a nation
Amendments
Laws to address exigent
Inequalities
And is all this worth defending
It’s worth repeating and
Defending
We could say
Defending to the last
We could say
Defending for the first
If the first is a child
If the first is First Family
Is the first was a slave
If the first
Lives and by living
Is mistreated
That’s the first
She is the first
And all
Who by birth and by the way
Are here
Only one of us was here
To begin with
The rest of us have
Come in waves
With each wave unwelcome
Scaring
The preceding wave as
A single ocean
Never acts
C L Couch
photo by Sean Oulashin on Unsplash
(x = space)
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away from all things (haiku)
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away from all things
only bloom and branch attract
safety in numbers
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c l couch
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photo by Kamala Bright on Unsplash
apple blossoms
(safety in numbers)
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(x = space)
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Remembrance of Things and People Past
(Memorial Day 2023)
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My grandfather was a doughboy
Another one
(I knew him more)
Cooked for the
Army in
The second war
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My father served
In the war that followed
The war no one remembers
But cost lives
Of bodes and the souls therein
And for lack of
Remembering
Because remembering
Matters much
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It’s a thought
A salute
And a parade
To visit flags on graves
Before we shop
Before we picnic
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Mind you
Shopping and picnicking
Ain’t bad
Rights and privileges
Secured
Silly to you
Perhaps
There’s also watching war movies
On TCM
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Arcane remembrances
We still make war movies
We still shop
And eat outside
Save rain
To drive companionship
Inside
x
Be inside
Be there
Be aware
Remembrance is a near miss
From experience
What follows war
Was bought for us
Our own secular
Allegiances
And promise
In significant
And blessed silly
Existence
x
God bless peace
And forestall war
And keep us faithful
To each other
More so to you
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C L Couch
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Photo by Wesley Mc Lachlan on Unsplash
Corning, Corning, United States
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(x = space)
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Birth of a Nation
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It’s the Fourth of July
In the USA
It’s hard to miss
What with all the sales
In the computer
x
And all the local booms
That will happen
Between buildings
In the neighborhood
This evening
Upsetting dogs
x
The bell did not crack then
And the document
For the assembly
And the criers
Wasn’t ready then
More like the sixth
And no one need worry
x
A day was selected
For the start of freedom
And a nation
Approving thirteen groups
That did not want to fight
But would fight
A famous army
With a storied king
From faraway
Now home
x
Home needing freedom
From political
And corporate interests
That took more and more away
Until at home we said,
Enough
x
And war is war
It would not be kind
Or clean
Though ranks set on the field
Were tried
And when to start the battle
x
Really
How farmers
Children died
Holding guns
Or something enough like
To draw fire from the foe
x
There were strategies
And spies
And those with local knowledge
Of terrain
And somehow
Against the European mind
For monarchs
The war was won
By merchants and farmers
Fugitives and foreigners
Identified
Foregoing slaves
To free
Only to count
x
With vision to admire
Yet with fractures
Like the bell that was fractured at
Other times
Now we had to form a nation
With all the blunders
And the cheating
All the buildings
And the farmland
All the expanding
All the settling to come
With treaties
Skirmishes
And battles
We borrowed names
America
The United States of America
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We asked for God
Too often after everything arranged
Maybe we could do better at that
Now
x
God is known in many ways
Inside this land
The values of the heart
And mind
And neighborhood
Remain the same
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Reasons abound
For trying God first
Each day
In every time
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In a nation born
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C L Couch
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United States flag painted on the side of a Saturn V rocket.
Photo by Brian McGowan on Unsplash
Kennedy Space Center, Merritt Island, United States
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