9/12
The day after
Tolling bells
Half-mast (extra) flags now
Put away
Speeches back in boxes
For the next time
Normal life
The better victory
Goes on
C L Couch
We shot this in our kitchen a couple of years ago. We are always looking for interesting (and fun) ways to shoot our products.
Shot by Stephen Hocking
Photo by Tracey Hocking on Unsplash
Runnymede
(written by hand in the courthouse)
twelve, I think
peers
a jury of my peers
white male
probably I’ll fit
maybe too well
I hope there’s justice
I hope it’s clear
I’m nervous and already bored
there’s a crowd
I don’t like crowds
I have a book
I have this
C L Couch
The Jurors (2015), an art installation at Runnymede sculpted by Hew Locke to commemorate the 800th anniversary of the sealing of Magna Carta.
WyrdLight.com, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=41110769
Idyll
I am half-awake
And, I don’t know,
The part that is asleep
Feels fine
As if all the trouble’s muted
For a while
I don’t have to struggle
Nothing is pressing beyond
Finishing a cup of coffee
Will that wake me up?
Typically, it doesn’t
The branches outside barely move
It is bright green
A late-summer day
Looking hot, though I can
Stay inside, indolent’s agenda
Tomorrow is a waiting story
On-deck as in baseball
Or in a breathing box
(the kind with air holes)
I’ll have to be away
It’s supposed to be the warmest
For the week
I have the quiet of today
And leaving tomorrow
Where it waits
‘Til providence and nature open,
As they do
With or without
My willing participation
Simply a kind of attending
Call it breathing
Then it comes
With a kind of noise
Call it dawn or simply
Night’s-ending
And there it is
I nearly forgot
Sign of a headache that
Will not go away
Idyll’s done
With or without detail that
Painting or other art deserves
C L Couch
Vorfrühling (Schäfer mit seiner Herde im Abendlicht), signiert A. Fink, Öl auf Leinwand, 71 x 104 cm
August Fink – http://www.dorotheum.com/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=51036637
Trite-Time Relief
It was a gloomy, humid day
Hot outside, no rain
We could stand
A dark and stormy night
C L Couch
Washington Irving, Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Madeleine L’Engle, Snoopy
Photo by Andre Benz on Unsplash
Leaf by Niggling
Within days, autumn arrives
My favorite time because
It is cool
I mean, it’s hip, I guess
Though mainly it’s cool
Not frigid
Not torrid
Afire (without heat) in
A gift of color
In the south of south,
Fall will be spring
The warmer path to summer
C L Couch
Leaf by Niggle by J. R. R. Tolkien
Friday Felines
I will see cat-friends tonight
They will ignore me
I’m not feeding them
They’ll act as if they do not play
Though I know it’s different
One friend
Erstwhile Pennsylvania Quaker
Might decide it’s time for
A first-floor chase
Or to jump on me, reach toward my
Ear as if to say
Quietly through sharpened teeth,
Feed me
C L Couch
2 Chome-4-8 Daiba, Minato, Tokyo 135-0091, Japan
Justice for One
I want to hurt some people
No, not that
I want someone else to hurt them
It is a gypsy curse
Or something from a deeper quarter
Of New Orleans
Yes, I might use magic
But then Harry Potter dies
I won’t deserve the stories, anymore
Not encountering them is good
We live in different towns
Heaven help offenders who
Live on the same street,
Even the same side
In wanting vengeance, I change
Nothing but myself
I know a little about justice
The human kind can be corrupt
The divine part is in perfect balance
All the time
I can shake my fist
But God will not change anything
But changeable
In its own time
C L Couch
Photo by Calum MacAulay on Unsplash
The Agrestic Grocer, Orange, Australia
Weasels
I’ve never met a weasel
I hear they pop
Whenever there might be
A mulberry bush close by
And a monkey
I suppose comparing them to ferrets
Would be offensive
For one party or the other
Otters, maybe?
I guess weasels are their own kind
But are they slender and slippery,
Able, well,
To weasel out of things?
I have jury duty coming up
Maybe I could borrow a talent
Or two talents
Not that I mind
Fear of the unknown
I don’t know if weasels have that, too,
Which is why they move so fast,
If they do
C L Couch
Frank Liebig – Archiv Frank Liebig, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=72157122
Wiesel in Röbel
The Metaphone of Pain
He said it was a megaphone
It was emphasized in the movie
(in the play, first)
Then he found love with someone
Who was dying
And I don’t think he wanted to hear
The noise at all, let alone amplified
For there is a quietness to pain
Small cries that stay mostly in
I don’t mean the whimper
Though that’s fine
I mean the part that wants to cry out
THIS HURTS
Afraid to meet an indifferent world decrying
There are problems all over,
Fella
Sista
Get up and get on with it
But this is why
A Grief Observed is better than
The Problem of Pain
It got through
We listen
As we feel
And pay attention
Not to noise
But to a quieter insistence
C L Couch
Shadowlands, a play by William Nicholson
Albert Bridge, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12490512
clcouch123 
Recent Comments