wounded

God Out

What shall we
Draw God into

Not that
It is too unsavory
Distasteful
Don’t you know

Not that
It would be unseemly
To have divinity
Involved
Even to know

Well
Not that
Either
It’s too ugly
And profane
And we think sex
Is involved

And not that
For it was murder
Yes
Between adults
But still
The wrong thing for a
God to see
And to be known
For participation
In such things

But
Yes
Well
God knows all
Sees all
Hears through everything
All walls
Even anything
We pull up for a barrier

And yes
God’s dealt
With murderers
As well as
Thieves
And liars

And
By the way
God knows everything
About sex
Even the aberrations

So
God
Could be involved here or
There
Which means
We’ll need new excuses
For God’s
Exclusion from
Our ugly troubles

C L Couch

Photo by Raghavendra V. Konkathi on Unsplash

for the Crocus concert-goers in Russia

I’m sorry
and my heart is hit
by
what happened
at the Crocus
venue in Moscow
so many dead
so many
wounded
and no doubt
these days
the language goes to blame
and timely war

but sometime
in this time
we want to wonder
really
who the hell cares

I died
my family died
my friends who had hoped
for an easy time
in all the crystalline news
of massacres
were hoping frankly
thoughtlessly
and
humanly
for the relief in a good time
together

and now my friends are dead
and I am as good as gone
and I know
so many die
across the border
the near line
and on this
side
too

we wanted minutes
maybe hours
to have music
and some pleasure
taken
away
from all the sides
and to forget all sides
and like entertainments
in wartime
to leave it
briefly
and maybe in the back
re-think it
for a while

and look what happened
so many of us
and our hopes were killed
and all we want
is to feel better
if alive
and to have home
after
and
the rhetoric
that goes toward war
to go away

c l couch

photo by Sandra Seitamaa on Unsplash

(x = space)

The Real Thing

I am not in the war

Except

With my mind and heart

My contributions

Here and there

Not for a winner

But for everything

To cease

While there are citizens

And innocence

To count

I can’t imagine an explosion

(over me

and I am done)

Next to me

So that I live

But everything is changed

For what

And whom I’ve lost

All basic things

And anything

Refined

A world that’s there

Even to know

The risks in temporality

And to persist

Then what I know

Is gone

And I am hurt

My body

And my mind

I might get fixed

But something will not mend

Something broken

That the screws

And prayers

Cannot reward

With success

Some part of me

Who wonders now

A beggar on the plane

Of dreams

And real hours

When I dance

With hate

And seeming

Justification

For it all

To have happened

And it’s happened

So that

There’s an end

Before the end

C L Couch

Photo by Jeff Kingma on Unsplash

(x = space)

Wounded Eagle

Did Ben Franklin really want

The emblem of the nation

Be the wild turkey?

Maybe so,

Though it’s hard when

One sees eagles in flight

To pick something else

In Cincinnati

At the zoo

Was an enclosure

For a bald eagle

Wounded and then rescued,

An enormous structure

For the one

Who would only fly

Partially again,

Such was the hurt

Netted magnificence

Still magnificent

Worthy for a nation

That’s somehow wounded, too,

And still can fly

C L Couch

While living in Cincinnati, I used to visit this eagle at the zoo. I trust I remember enough and am witnessing correctly.

For one season, I was able to photograph eagles at a nest. They were not bothered by my presence and in the morning the light was reasonably good. Sadly, that winter the tree blew down, and I have yet to find such an ideal site for eagle photography.

Photo by Richard Lee on Unsplash