In Aslan’s Country
(https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46014463)
I don’t understand
I guess I don’t need to—
Not for mourning
Not for counting
Not for asking
A new plane crashes into the ocean
No survivors
One missed the flight for traffic
Or other ordinary reason
I imagine there are some who made it
And were considering their luck
Half a world away
Right now feels like home
Not an issue
Except that God is watching from
A breaking place
C L Couch
Turning Time
It’s late in October, isn’t it
The season soon enough will be half over
No other season calls to itself so much
In northern parts at least, everything to say
We’re done for now
Cover us and let us rest
Autumnal residents
October people
C L Couch
Vincent van Gogh – Les Alyscamps: Falling Autumn Leaves 1888
L’Simcha
It happened in my one-time town
It could happen anywhere
We’ve known that for a while, now
We like the violence we have in
The arenas
Until we have to pay
A prayer service
Affirming spiritual courage
A coward’s assurance of easy
Semitic targets
Let’s go to church and kill
Brings his guns
What is the time
What will we do
The news mentions “a search for answers”
But the answers are all over, everywhere
There’s no mystery here beyond the numinous
The life of faith that the synagogue enjoys
The people there
Their guests
And anything by way of intercession
For the rest of us
Confirm
That eleven people died
We have to say so far
Worshipers and officers who are wounded
And more
In need of mortal healing
And more
The killer still alive
Pray for forgiveness sometime
Not today
Sorry I don’t have a bigger feeling
Not today
C L Couch
Where a 3,000-year-old tradition meets a 5-year-old’s curiosity.
Tree of Life or L’Simcha Congregation is a traditional, progressive, and egalitarian congregation based in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood.
We offer a warm and welcoming environment where even the oldest Jewish traditions become relevant to the way our members live today. From engaging services, social events, family-friendly activities, and learning opportunities to support in times of illness or sorrow, we match the old with the new to deliver conservative Jewish tradition that’s accessible, warm, and progressive.
If you haven’t visited us yet, we welcome the chance to introduce you to our community!
Unrelative Truthing
Even in dim pre-dawn light
On a Sunday morning,
The colors are clear
Finally, it’s fall
The leaves are turning into glory
And should one think there is a subtext
About the beauty of all races
Well, that’s not really there
But, now I think of it,
Why not
There is beauty in all races
No need to place that truth under
Something else
Now, fall’s late arrival
Something of a pattern
Might also beg
The warming of the planet
Let’s go with that one, too
It’s not progress to have that understanding
(though another kind of progress is the cost)
It’s the kind of sense
The ancients have employed
Coffee’s ready
Time to get it
I am thankful
I hope your day is good
And for your neighbor
C L Couch
West Virginia Fall Colors
(at) http://www.lanephotoworkshops.com/portfolio/landscapes/fall-colors/
Walls
A depiction of a death
So that insurance might be sold
That’s all right: I appreciate
Investment in exigency
But in the advertisement,
A door is shut with the grey world outside
The small things of home within
As if the employment of the product will
Close off death itself
For a time, at least
What are we protecting, then?
I hope it’s home
And not mortality
We can’t keep it out
It dwells inside
In every room
I don’t recommend the dance of death
A final scene of The Seventh Seal
We don’t have to step out with it
Or nurture it within
But it is reality
(you know)
And isn’t it a wonder
That, if we relent a little,
Death will not have to break through the door
Or turn over everything that’s good
Inside
It will happen nonetheless
And regardless
Our rituals might help
And family life
Give it some time, if there’s time
Comfort each other
Talk about good times
But not cowering on the other sides of walls
Walls at best
Are not for that
Not for shouting down an enemy
On the other side
Do good fences make good neighbors?
When privacy is called for, without doubt
But not for death
Death is not unusual
It does not have to separate
It can bring us over barriers
Home in better ways
C L Couch
Stone Fence
Taken in Harpswell, Maine.
Clytemnestra
(Homer, Aeschylus)
Agamemnon
Leader of the Greek forces
That went to war against Troy
He won a victory
He sacrificed his daughter for safe passage
From a god
And brought a prophet back to Greece
As a trophy and a mistress
The antique word and calling, concubine
His wife would dominate the next act
In a drama of her own
In which he would finally become the victim
The real accomplishment he’d earned
C L Couch
By Travelling Runes – https://www.flickr.com/photos/travellingrunes/2949254926/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10603596
The Mykonos vase (750 to 650 BC), with one of the earliest known renditions of the Trojan Horse. (Note the depiction of the faces of hidden warriors shown on the horse’s side.)
Pastiche
A mélange of media
Rococo
Painting leaps out of sculpture
Plaster writhes from metal into stone,
Lurks in upper corners
I don’t know how much we make of this
(the making and interpreting)
These days,
Though steampunk runs some tries at this,
I think
(and really well)
I remember pictures from a textbook
I doubt I’ll get to Spain to see
Just past the golden age
But I appreciate the media
Mixing up to make a life
Yours, mine, and ours
McLuhan notwithstanding,
We are the message
We go through the doors
Then rise
And all the art we’ve made
C L Couch
Prettysleepy2
https://pixabay.com/en/steampunk-gears-pipes-brass-door-3222894/
Parabling
(Chapter 10, Actions of the Apostles)
The sheet unfolded
Peter saw so many things
And was told they are all
Good
Enjoy it, Peter
This is the bounty of the Earth
Fertile plains surrounded by
Its hills and all its oceans
Kosher is important
It’s devout and, frankly, safer
But how could there be
A kosher forest? Or a kosher
Ocean or a sky?
All that is created and blessed
Is in the litany of Genesis
And that is good
Darkness and light
Water and land
Animals and our charge
To care for it all
Everything that bore the movement
Of God’s spirit and carries
The imprint, still
Having been made
Against the loneliness
Of God
Peter’s solitude is challenged
The exclusion of society
The orthodoxy of an elite
Must open the door
Rend the curtain
Opens its doorway
Baring the inside
Of robes and crowns
Relent, ye wealthy of the Earth
You are not Solomon
Who knows whose obedience
He owes
And a better nature
Demanded in a daily life
Turning over all the neighbor’s need
Like finding small, hard, and fibrous plants
To harvest from dark soil
Peter is enlightened;
Through the story,
Now are we
C L Couch
http://rosycroix.blogspot.com/2010/04/clothes-line.html
Ghost Walk
The past haunts it,
Doesn’t it
It walks with us at night
Well past the witching hour
Sometimes I am awake
On my side
Fearing that my heart might sometime explode
Figuratively but
A crisis with literally arrhythmic parts
It can be a problem
How do I stay awake
(too easily)
And how might I fall asleep again
(that’s hard)
There is an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show
When, for fear of something, Laura doesn’t want to
Sleep, and so she flips up
All the switches in her house
Plays music and the television
And gets the neighbor to stay up
With her
And there are other alterations
And, you know, I’m sure
There is some resolution
(it’s a half-hour show),
Though I have no idea what that was
But the black-and-white imaging is invoked
When I can’t sleep or think about
The lack of sleep
In the middle of a night and wish for rest
C L Couch
CC0 Public Domain
https://pxhere.com/en/photo/697047
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