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What Number Pain Today

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I don’t know

Or recall

Who came up with

Quiet desperation

Perhaps a modern poet

I hope you

Don’t have to live that way

Something inside

That found its way

A sidling kind of thing

That won’t let go

It could be memory

Or money

The potential for a  scandal

Or simply a lot of pain

Not the kind that

Inspires a statue

And who needs that?

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Pain is a reaction

A response

Also a signal

Can keep in the inner workings

Working

It should have an end

Not simply a measure

But that’s what

Therapy

Or medication’s for

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Or simply bearing

Old body pains

A place of wounding

In the spirit

We can keep

Except sometimes we can’t

Then the therapy

Or medication’s needed

Prayer

Companionship

Companionship in prayer

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Aquarius bears water

The libation bearers, well,

Libation

As offerings

Atlas

Or the elephant

Bears the world

And there’s the story of Saint Christopher

Who carried Christ, not knowing

It was Christ, through water

And a storm

And the child’s weight increasing

Until the one who carried him must say

He bore the weight

Of the world

And did bear

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Carry weights

And pains

And as pains are signals

Pay attention

Carry,

I mean carry,

Carry on

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C L Couch

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Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

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the phrase “quiet desperation” is by Thoreau in Walden

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