Count and Serve the Days
(for Martin Luther King, Junior, Day)
Four score
And fifteen years ago
A person was brought forth
Into the human world
To change that world
His clothing
As he wore them
When grown-up
Are on display
At least they were
Last time I was in Atlanta
So that we could see them
See he was a person
Not a giant
Not bearing metal armor
Though he had a strength
And for a while a protection
While others felt
Stronger and protected
With him
He was a pastor
He was named for
The first Protestant reformer
And he took steps
And got many
To take steps
To change things
That too many folk
Believed
Could not be changed
And he took on
The attitude
That not changing things
Was good
For the society
(a part)
That believed
The dominance arising
From not changing
Kept things good
Even though
Things were not so good
Protests
Marches
Covering details
With rides
And meals
The words that encourage
That could not always
Be counted on
For softness
For the wrongness to change
Was hard
And difficult
And broke many lives upon it
So strength was needed
Out of prison
Out of reason
In all persuasion
For all
Of humanity
That
Yes
It was time to dream
It was also time to move
Through the world we have
The time we have
To make things
Better
Make things fair
For everyone
Uncommitted to an evil way
Because everyone
(everyone else)
Deserves a voice
And to be heard
And everyone
Should have a turn
In which there is
Justice
And through which
Should there be an opportunity
To live
To grow
To believe
To vote
To be busy in one’s work
And delight in play
He served the faith
He served the people whom he knew
As well as
So many strangers
Finally
The human world
Out of Selma
Out of Birmingham
Our of Montgomery
With his family
That goes on
And his
Many
Many
Friends
And acquaintances
I cannot help but think
About the night he spent
In jail
As have spent
So many believers
And protesters
And did he surrender
For this
And all barriers
Set up to siege his conscience
And his hope
Seems not
For out of that experience
And all such similar
Experiences
He dreamed
He wrote
He shared his thoughts
Before
During
And after
So that there was a cause
And a cause
Articulated
We have those words now
We have the pledge to change
To take it
Or leave down
But it is there
And
You know
For everyone
For the famous
And the not-so
Most of us who do
Only small things
But change the day
And altogether
Change the world
Because
You know
Change is endemic
It is human
It is spiritual
If need be
We have our aging cells
To prove it
If change
Then change
For the better
Starting
With the smaller
Hearing the larger
And supporting
As we hear
His words
As with progenitors
Successors
Happy Birthday
Martin Luther King
Junior
On fifteen January
Starting in 1929
And for the ages
And even
For
Into
Eternity
C L Couch
Martin Luther King Day is tomorrow, 15 January 2024
Photo by Frederic Bourbeau on Unsplash
(x = space)
x
x
Prescriptive Talk
x
The pain
It courses through me
I want to feel better
I want vindication
I want acceptance
In the world
x
Mainly, though,
I want the pain to stop
And feel better in
That way
x
C L Couch
x
x
Spikes
Photo by Andrey Grinkevich on Unsplash
Meadowlark Botanical Gardens & Meadowlark’s Winter Walk of Lights, Vienna, United States
x
The News
(for those for whom there’s something new)
Are the fires out?
Where are new ones rising?
We could say vigilance
But not, I think, so much
Against our own
It is democracy, still
When there are good decisions
Made (listen,
politicians)
And we should listen to
Our neighbors
Excusing ourselves not
To talk so much
There is freedom
To be rung
If all the bells are silent,
Now
There is a time to mourn
A time to repair
A time to do things better
And to celebrate
Memory is fine
Remember them
Who died, and we
Are here
We have the present to repair
With children to look after
Teens to slide into involvement
Or-and they’ll do it,
Anyway
And should—though they
Should also be allowed to
Adolesce
That’s natural
Do you camp
And leave it better than you found?
Try doing that with Earth
And all the parts we tread
And take
There is a future
Or there better be
Earth-crimes against children
You don’t think the cosmos
Is keeping track?
It is,
And before there’s heaven
With a judgment,
There will be accounting
From all things behind the sky
A reckoning for all
Materials lost,
Lives wasted by other lives,
A universe securing
All there is
From what we had
From what we thought we owned
C L Couch
Photo by Mike Marrah on Unsplash
Tentatively Yours
If we are to heal,
There has to be a hope
That someday it will be complete
That all the things that festered
Will have finally unwound
From the brain, the heart
Any infected organs
That persistence of pain will
Be replaced
With something like assurance in
Confidence of being well
That the counting that has met
Each day
Now useless
Will give way
To errands, nothing much
A nothing kind of day
Wouldn’t that be nice
Wouldn’t that be lovely
To have a day that’s dulled by
Anything but pain
Not to be morose
For what I have
I’ll still wrap around mortality
Until the glorious surprise
Of the next thing
C L Couch
Photo by Michael Anfang on Unsplash
Better
I don’t know much about the world
It seems
I wish it were better
I’m offended
And I’m angry
Who really wants to care?
We have other things to do, less
Pandering to moods
Chosen when something more promising
Could be selected
Another code pressed on the emotion
Vending machine
I wonder maybe we have a number of tokens
And then the rest are gone
For deciding badly
For too-small convictions
When being noble in an un-ranked way
Would make the difference
Would light the factories
Would illuminate
Pockets and portals of prosperity
Nether (never) world
Intentions hide
Give it a chance
A two-step beneath the table
Smiling for no reason
Than
The joy in dawn-split morning
Or romantic night
The splendid times when
In spite of rusted gags and
Chains
Joy breaks free
clcouch123 
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