15 February

(x = space)

x

x

15 February

(1925 to 1983)

x

Today is Mom’s birthday

Happy Birthday, Mom

x

I trust

The birthdays have been

The happiest

Of days

Since you arrived

And for the forever

That you’ve been there

x

Do you have a place?

Is it your own

With neighbors

And community close by?

I imagine walls

Made of bright wood

And a few

Favorite things

And a door that opens

Into spring

x

It is a dream

It is a hope

It is a formless prayer

Against the real joy

Better than my guesses

Of eternity

x

C L Couch

x

x

Photo by daniela de gol on Unsplash

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Each One an Apocalypse

(x = space)

x

x

Each One an Apocalypse

x

I look up to hills

From the valley

It’s not that the rescue

Has to come from there

Though there are climactic moments when

Over the ridges

Everyone needed

And everything

Appears

x

It’s that wherever from wherever

God is there

And it is God who rescues

Who swoops down

To carry us from battle

Takes us to water

Moving just enough

For a hand to fill

From which to drink,

Clean water played

Over wounds

We are better than we’ve felt for days

We are lifted up again

And taken to a home

Whose dimensions have been guessed at

But whose simplicity

In majesty

Is unknown ‘til we’re there

Where living’s perfect

And we are told

To stay

x

Each has an Armageddon,

An apocalypse

The unprevaricated spirit

Manifest

With mortality and eternity

On either side

And through and through

Some have called trinity

But is the nature of the Lord

Relational

And relational with everything

Forever

x

C L Couch

x

x

Photo by S Migaj on Unsplash

x

The Given

(x = space)

x

x

The Given

x

God

Give us this day

One second and the next

The seconds stop

And a new timeline opens

Uncountable

Forever

Light and gold and glass

Given

Owned by no one

And forever

Salvation earned through grace

Which means not at all

Choice and belief

That sometimes overthrow

The tyranny of microscopes

Chained generations

Lines broken by agendas

Made circles

Joined to other shapes

For fantastic exploration

Of heaven’s heavens

Amen

x

C L Couch

x

x

Photo by Genessa Panainte on Unsplash

x

Perpetuity

(x = space)

x

x

Perpetuity

x

God give us

Something that we need

Who knows

‘Cause sometimes we don’t know

Not that random prayer

Is specified

In codicils

Sometimes we are confused

Burgeoning with something

Maybe burdened down

The words are stuck

Specifics unrequested

The angel or the saint

Will have to figure it out

Then convey it

To the proper desk

In heaven’s agencies

So that in-box to out-box

Happens smoothly

The business booming

With clientele

Requests

Resources

And responses

So we may say

Can we get

Amens

x

C L Couch

x

x

Photo by Izabel d on Unsplash [inverted]

x

One More

One More

 

Some might say

Since we are ash

At the end, then

Let us burn now

 

They are wrong

Enough goes up

In flame, not the

Good kind, either

Not the sun

That through the

Ozone give us

Life, that lights up

The moon for our

Remembrance

 

The flame that

Takes, we understand

As Pogo says, this

Enemy is us

 

And yet the comic

Character is funny;

My dad read him

Later quoted him

Year in, year out

 

And he is right:

We know the enemy,

And it is funny

Laughter, sardonic,

Otherwise, does

Drive the devil

Mad, so much so

There’s a rule,

No jokes in hell

 

So breathe and

Do not breathe for

Burning—there

Is more water,

Sometimes with a

Kick, always more

Until the barkeep

Calls last call,

 

There having been

Enough, even if

We are left, human

Will in strange

Partnership with

Eternity, wanting

While we’re here

One more

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Chronis Yan on Unsplash

 

“We have met the enemy and he is us” is a parody of a message sent in 1813 from U.S. Navy Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry to Army General William Henry Harrison after his victory in the Battle of Lake Erie, stating, “We have met the enemy, and they are ours.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogo_(comic_strip)#%22We_have_met_the_enemy_and_he_is_us.%22

 

Holey Week 2

 

And Now It’s Time

And Now It’s Time

(chronos in kairos)

 

And now it’s time

For something spiritual

Yes?

I’ve written about pills and cats

Not written together

I go to the first page each day

Thinking about soulful things

Soulful intentions, anyway

It’s not that I think the

Spirit’s far

Because she’s not

Or that I think I have to overcome

Mortal prevarication

Liking mortality, but I don’t think

It’s that

I’ll take each day I have, thank you

Something supernal’s coming

I have next to

No idea what

I wonder if the spiritual

Is under the skin

And hovering above

Deep enough for blood

In the air for breathing, too

Now I think about it, how distinctive must

The portions be?

 

Not to say against

Those who must have

Food separated on the plate

 

Though I like pushing peas against the

Mashed potatoes

 

I think also to say for me, perhaps for

You that

Spirit and soul, flesh and energy

The kind of energy

By Blake rightly claimed

Eternal delight

All things must be meshed together

Somehow living in this state

Today and I think

In the resolution of eternity

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Frank Zhang on Unsplash

Here we learned how to make traditional Chinese dumplings from scratch. Our group of 16 people each had a task to do and it was an assembling line for dumpling production.  A beautiful procedure . . .

 

T Time

T Time

 

Broken leaves are on the way

To atomized

The shield of fall is broken in with

Winter

It’s always a time of change

Don’t we know that?

 

I like my rituals

And of one kind or another

Know we need them

 

But retrograde is for the Earth

In winter’s northern

Declination

We can’t live angling back

We’ll only know eternity ahead

It’s our way

Don’t like it, take it up with God

If, tremulous, you can ask about the manners

In creation

 

Motion lives

Rest, that’s important

Forward, then, is not that way

But this

 

C L Couch

 

 

By 松岡明芳 – 松岡明芳, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11701874