Remembrance of Things and People Past

(x = space)

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Remembrance of Things and People Past

(Memorial Day 2023)

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My grandfather was a doughboy

Another one

(I knew him more)

Cooked for the

Army in

The second war

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My father served

In the war that followed

The war no one remembers

But cost lives

Of bodes and the souls therein

And for lack of

Remembering

Because remembering

Matters much

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It’s a thought

A salute

And a parade

To visit flags on graves

Before we shop

Before we picnic

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Mind you

Shopping and picnicking

Ain’t bad

Rights and privileges

Secured

Silly to you

Perhaps

There’s also watching war movies

On TCM

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Arcane remembrances

We still make war movies

We still shop

And eat outside

Save rain

To drive companionship

Inside

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Be inside

Be there

Be aware

Remembrance is a near miss

From experience

What follows war

Was bought for us

Our own secular

Allegiances

And promise

In significant

And blessed silly

Existence

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God bless peace

And forestall war

And keep us faithful

To each other

More so to you

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C L Couch

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Photo by Wesley Mc Lachlan on Unsplash

Corning, Corning, United States

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Someone Said a Pearl for a Harbor

(x = space)

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Someone Said a Pearl for a Harbor

(7 December 1941, an invocation)

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Whom shall we honor

Today?

The citizens of Hawaii

Who died then

For strategy

On two sides

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The crews

Of small submarines

That tried to get through

And sank somewhere

Close by

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Mostly, the soldiers

We should honor

For the loss of life,

By the by material

That could (by the by)

Cost a war

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Honor convictions?

How shall they be

Dispersed?

On either side,

There might be recognition

Even under actions

Worse for horror and

A lack of declaration

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I don’t know,

There were people everywhere:

Many termed the enemy

Who were not in any way

An enemy

Taken to camps

Frankly

For looking different

(I say exotic and

of the USA—the

ubiquitous they

say the difference

lay in espionage,

so we became

the creepers

and the judges);

We hadn’t done so

To the urban Germans here

Or in our suburbs,

On the farms

Or to the Italians

Though I wouldn’t be surprised

To hear

They weren’t treated well

In the environs

Of duration

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We sent to camps

Then tried not to think

Some more about

Walled and shadowed camps

Turning into

Many of our own

For racist reasons;

We could have tasked

The FBI, the OSS

Instead

For their investigations

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There is a danger

That the battleship memorial

Might slide into the water,

As it placed one way or another

Over tombs

Of flesh and rust

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I’d hate for that happen,

For we need remembrance

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We need to remember

Many things:

God and our conscience

Make it so

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Recalling sudden loss of life,

A shining, lethal campaign of

Surprise

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Oh, we should be careful:

Watch our shores,

Keep our early systems

Early,

Though we need no longer

Look to the right and left

For enemies

Since looking right and left

Shall land on every one

Of us

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And what’s left of united?

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My families

Fought inside this war

That we remember;

Some could still

Tell stories

That tend to

Try the young to hear

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On this day remember, then—those

Who could see and hear

And taste and touch,

Who suddenly

Lost all the senses

Along with mortal life,

The joy of daily living

In a paradise

We tried to covet

For a paradise

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Farewell, we may salute

And say

All those

Who cannot call out

Except for memory,

Call out

For each other

In the fire

And the smoke

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And the few remaining

Now

Who would

Can tell us

Of the hours

And the aftermath

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Times and

Experiences

That

Soldiers, sailors, flyers—on

The ground, on deck, or in the air—

Mechanics and KP,

Bystanders

Try not to talk about

So much

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C L Couch

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Photo by Kyle Chicoine on Unsplash

Birds by the Bay

Ocean Shores, United States

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For All Souls

(x = space)

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For All Souls

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Soon

And very soon

It will be time for

Remembering

The dead

Los Díos de los Muertos when

Graveyards light with

Stunning light in

Some places,

Other places

Less so

For remembrance

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There will be candy

Other foods

Meals shared beside

The stones

It is Latino

Latin-x

Other groups have other ways

Of memory

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For some, this becomes

A party

Like a wake

For others, city-wide

Express or digress

There will be something

It is for

Everyone

Para todos

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To Latin-x

The community

In thanks

The ones who inspire

A lighted way

For shadows,

A way to catch our tears

But for love

In remembering

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C L Couch

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Sugar skulls before decoration.

[image b]y Jonathunder – Own work, GFDL 1.2, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=63912646

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(sorry, I add a hyphen to Latin as a help in my pronouncing)

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The Dead and the Quick

(x = space)

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The Dead and the Quick

(9/11)

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It is a day we lived

Through,

Those who lived

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Like D-Day

Like Hastings

For the English

Or the entry of the Nazis

Into Paris

For the French

Like the storms in Indonesia

That killed thousands

In 2004

Like the killing

Of a good man

In Haiti

Recently

Wrecking the nation

For a time

Upon hurricane

And earthquake

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They are history

Beyond the idiom

And by those now gone

We rebuild and build

And sometimes pledge

Anew or new

We will take greater care

Cosmic care

Next time

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We might learn

If we should learn something

From allegories that were

Flesh and bone

And blood

Except that being found

Is good

Being remembered

Parochially,

Sometimes globally

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Forever with a double

Meaning,

9-1-1

How peaceful to be by

The memorials

A quiet place to count

And then to cry the names

Peacefully

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This place

These places

Are all over

Hopes we might be united

Everywhere

For once

An hour and a day

And then for keeps

For keeping

All the Earth

And us

For longer

So much longer than

The bugled ceremony’s

Time

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C L Couch

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(9/11/21, 11/9/21)

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9/11 photographs exhibition at photography festival Rencontres Arles 2019

Photo by Fred Moon on Unsplash

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Ghosts

(x = space)

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Ghosts

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I don’t mean

The kind that haunt

In stories

You know what I mean

That haunt for different

Reasons, sometimes

Only memory

Without any fright

A different kind of pain

In remembering

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Have I lived too long?

I can’t count

The number who have died

I used to know them well

And they are,

You know,

Gone

Holes in my life remain

Small ones that expand

On certain days

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I think the question might

Have to do with

How to keep them all

How to bear mortality

As well

So much by default

Makes it happen

All mortality,

And I won’t say I’m ungrateful

I am satisfied to be here

And for you

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Some things will come in memory

And when everything wakes up

Greeting begins again

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C L Couch

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Photo by Nolan Issac on Unsplash

Upstate New York Chapter, Rochester, United States

My best friend and I got some great shots in this abandoned place….I miss her.

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celebration of the season 3, Ghost

Ghost

it is like us because it was us
breathing, living once like us
ghost become, be-turned in death, untimely
and unfinished

are they real?—we are real, and
we’re the ones who make the ghosts, for
they were us

we know a ghost of one kind lives
we meet it every day: anything that
haunts us in our daylight lives, the
choices and the acts we want to leave

behind but carry with us in a lingering
way not finished

we make our ghosts, and they haunt us

the other kind?—well, why not, since
so much of us is left behind, undone
so that we carry it in some
unresolving way

after dust, before heaven
what we leave that’s extreme and
exigent persists

so we make the ghosts, and they persist

is it bad, then, on one day a year, we celebrate
the ghosts this once?—and then again next year

Happy Hallowe’en
while remembering

they will be