Tim Kochems

For Crying Out Love

Creations

Oh, Empathy (an excerpt)

 

Police and Dog Attack (1993) by James Drake in Kelly Ingram Park, Birmingham, AL. tt evokes the police response to the Civil Rights Movement marches there in 1963. (Photo by Alexis B 2/1/2020)

I didn’t even want to take a photo of the sculpture
I didn’t
I didn’t want to remember it
I have
I didn’t want to walk through it
I did
walk
Single file, alone
the only way through
I didn’t want to feel it
I did
feel
I didn’t want to talk about it afterward
I didn’t
 
Until Montgomery
a black woman, my age, asked
 
You visited Birmingham?
 
Yes.
 
Did you see the sculptures? The one …
 
Yes, I haven’t been able to …
 
I couldn’t, she said,
walk through it.
  
Only then words seeped from our hearts
released
Different, yet shared
Released, not freed
Not yet
 
But met
So much left
to do
to heal
now with some hope


    ©  Tim Kochems (2025)

Hear me read aloud this excerpt from my poem, Oh Empathy, at https://www.youtube.com/shorts/LKy2OvuHJmc

What Then?

Walking beneath yellow splotched green leaves
dripping from their stems in the slightest current of air 
the too bright sun is close enough for me
to feel its wet warmth beneath my shirt
 
yellow flashes gold in that light
green is translucent
 
Shadows dropping from the leaves above 
spray willy-nilly onto the tops of those below
and I see their fluid shapes 
from the underside 
of suddenly dark green leaves
as if shadows 
saturate them
in a moment 
and just as quickly
evaporate
 
Glancing down
shadows
strike
me
too


    ©  Tim Kochems (early autumn 2025)


There Is So Much Magnificence

When alone, even feeling good,
say, with the magnificence of the ocean,
my longing can be painfully intense
with no one to share 
that ocean, that magnificence
how they touch me
how I can
burn with longing
scream as if seared 
and cry
 
But in this moment I see 
that ocean, that magnificence,
is given to me
the waves are coming in
the waves keep coming in
and I am not alone
Love appreciates
how they touch
can ignite 
and burn
to be shared 
 
Oh what a sweet
convulsive cry 
comes then
as I hold on
shaking
 
Hallelujah
hallelujah
over and over 
 
    ©  Tim Kochems (April 2025 on retreat)

I wrote this poem after sitting amidst huge rocks beside the Atlantic Ocean and then back in my room being moved by a song I remembered. Here is a beautiful, short version of the song that companions my poem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4kHGnkg9W0

Battered

Battered

The rocks
since the beginning

My 98-year-old mother
dying for over three years

And I
trying to protect her

Frothing

The swirling milky surface after each crash

Her agitation, her confusion 

My anticipation and the consequences of each call

Currents

The flow of the depths under the surface
slowly taking her out to sea
sustaining me 

© Tim Kochems (April 2024, while on retreat)

Arriving at Emmaus (again)

Before we last parted
I was sure I was full,
greater and more whole
than when we first met.
I was more
with you with me.

Since then, well,
I wasn’t aware of breaking
And I know I didn’t shatter,
but I am missing pieces 
carried off imperceptibly 
or lost
gradually or suddenly
missing:
me without you.

Now as we recollect
I remember
me with you
feel our reunion
of parts and pieces
again and again.

© Tim Kochems