Rainy-Brained
I don’t know what to say today
As our flood waters rise
The water’s in the wall so tall
I see the damage with my eyes
But I unlike the waif am safe
Though here or there’s a crack
I will not risk my life (a knife)
Here I’ll be should you come back
C L Couch
Photo by Herrmann Stamm on Unsplash
A Hop Among the Tombstones
Stayed there while I wrote
The graves go back to colonial times
One of the graves is under the church,
Which makes it a crypt, I guess
There is a low, stone wall
Everything is gray except
The grass in sunlight
And the robin
Brown and red
And still for now
So I might know it better
And, oh, so alive
You are now
I’m thankful
C L Couch
Not the robin I saw, this is a chick. I like its attitude, if personified (maybe not).
Galawebdesign – photographer (Wikimedia Commons)
Invocation in a Parking Lot on a Saturday in Spring
I’m here
You’re here
You’re where I was
Even when I don’t know
Or might choose otherwise
Such is sin
You do better than the
French
And the Pimpernel
You don’t hide
It was Adam and Eve who hid
For vanity and shame
Pointing everywhere
But to the heart
Wake my heart, O God
Goad me to love, as you must
Because I won’t have it any other way
C L Couch
(drafted there)
Photo by Hendrik Morkel on Unsplash
Gelnhausen, Germany
watching an old horror movie
was it a wolf i heard
or the growling of my stomach
the monster shrieks
i’m out of popcorn
the mummy beckons
a creature is remade
i keep you alive
yes
i do
i protest
i’m awake
the sun is up
all nether things this side of oz
are done
time for living color
time for bed
until tomorrow
after sunset
when things that make no sense
come out to play
with popcorn
c l couch
bunny sidhu – own work, cc by-sa 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=59650633
Machine Learning
I should be ashamed to say
I looked them up
Not for contact
No
Simply to know a little
I didn’t learn much
Evidence of lives lived
For which I’m thankful
Penury is not a thing to know
I keep you from mine
C L Couch
Control panel for UNIVAC 1232
Steven Fine, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46966916
Normal Life
I wake up early because I’m stressed
It’s dark, and I can’t tell if it’s
Because the power still is off
I want coffee
We are in a land of coffee, but it’s
Been hard to keep at hand
Bread?—sometimes what we can make,
When we find ingredients
The children might have school today
We never know
Dios mío, I don’t know if we’ll find toilet
Paper—toilet paper!—today
My phone sometimes works;
I’d like to find out how the rest of the
Family is doing
Though if poorly, what can I
Do for them?
I might get some news, but it will be all
Bad
And, you know, I want it to be bad
I don’t want to hear how celebrities are
Living, when we live perilously
Least of all, I don’t want to know of politicians’
Lives: they have failed us,
And until they live like us
I don’t want to know about them
We used to be rich with oil and coffee
Cacao, plátanos, other
Things
The children learn in school
Angel Falls
I’ve never been
Crops, decent houses, and safe cities
Even trying to live outside
Shadows of the carteles
I’m almost sorry I remember all
The good things
But I would go mad without
The hope that something good
Will return or something new will happen
Help from outside is something
We can’t always
Trust
But today I do not care
I want my family to be safe
I want to have food, the plainest kind
And plenty of it
Too much would be a blessing
I want to go to sleep tonight without
Fear from all there is
To fear
I want to know that in the morning
We can have hot water
I can turn on the lights,
The microwave, the computer, or the TV
If I want to
C L Couch
Photo by Jonathan Mendez on Unsplash
Caracas
Where V Means Wild Geese
I wished I lived in someplace cool
It’s relative, I know
Cool to me would mean, well, cool
A northern clime, I suppose
But cool in the other way
James-Dean cool,
Which for me means a plethora for metaphors
The kind that blesses Mary Oliver
In her turn,
One season followed by another, each day
Therein a chance for some new bird
Or amphibian
Or wild flower, unbidden, that rises
I live in my small town with brick surroundings
I like it well enough
And, if I must say, there are worse places
Sometimes the days go gently by
Sometimes there is a thrill
Inside all right angles
C L Couch
Canadian Geese in Spring
Rennett Stowe from USA – Canadian Geese in Spring, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26301433
Teacher Appreciation Day
I wait outside a cave
I’ve been inside before
Whose walls of glass
Might check my surer movements
Behind which resides
Never sleeps
A mentor
Awaiting my response to
The invitation to attend again
Magic waits
I’m in
Here are friends
And how did such a cave get
Such big windows?
I can see the world
C L Couch
Large Amethyst Geode
Maatpublishing – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=76050970
Man Bites Dog
(that’s news)
Somewhere it’s been said
That news isn’t dog-bites-man but
When it’s
Man bites dog
This morning police came
With a heavy knock on my door
It was loud, I was asleep
So everything happened fast and fuzzy
A muscled officer, the kind
I want when on my side,
Told me urgently and kindly
That a tree was about to fall on my car
I guess we had a storm last night,
Which I did not hear
(sometimes I take a pill)
I pulled on jeans and left
Pausing I guess because we had to
For some official information
To pass from me to him
Outside it’s mid-morning, gray and
Dim with rainfall, lights off of
Firefighting vehicles not really changing things
So much
There was my car
My hobbit car
Tall but narrow, close to the ground
I had taken my keys (where
was my license?) and knew enough
To start the car and move it forward
Now there’s buzz-sawing for the tree
Though I hear nothing for the moment
(I’m nothing like a gawker and have been
inside), so maybe
It’s done
And with the tree
Our being in the local news for Sunday morning
C L Couch
Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay
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