Tree-Thinking
There are trees
Blues between the branches
Angled yellow lights
Slicing shadows
Day’s possibilities
At night,
The shadows, you know, will be longer
Sky’s light will change to silver
Trees will seem rougher
And the buildings,
Though they’re not
The night has
Possibilities
Remembering
Not the daytime but its own
C L Couch
Photo by Mitchell Luo on Unsplash
Tree Bark
Narby Not of Narberth
(though his human mother once lived nearby)
Narby’s gone
I’m sorry
And I’m sad
He was a foundling from the beach
Community of the Outer Banks
He lived for many years, cat-wise
He was the definition of
A scaredy-cat
New people in the room caused him
Not to be there, anymore
He had a strident yell,
Maybe so that he could cross distances
Telling his human family
Hey, I’m in this part of the house
Come take care of me
He was blackish and small
He had an older brother from the beach
A year before
This cat was more a dog
He loved to eat food
For cat or people
Probably for dog
He was huge and round and gray
I figure that
The two cats had the
Jack Sprat and his wife thing going,
Though they were boys
Narby received a yurt one year
That’s what it was called
(it was for cats)
He liked to live in it
I think imagining
He was on the roof of the world
In Nepal, that is
Wishing everyone away
Except when he was hungry
In recent days, he had declined
And today I got the phone call
He was not my cat,
But I will miss him
Sometimes I cared for him
Sometimes he almost sat
Upon my lap
He had a quiet purr
Sometimes invoked,
Which also quieted the
Catly rebel yell
As I say for all I know
Departed
Narby, welcome home
C L Couch
Photo by Bekky Bekks on Unsplash
long live the life street art cat
Moonwalk
I’d like to walk
Along an empty shore
It’s been a while
The matter of
The ocean and me
There might be a ship out
Toward the horizon
It could be morning or afternoon
At night would be okay
Though on this side
The Atlantic’s glory is in morning
The sun rising behind
A water world
The ocean owning everything
The land a sprit behind me
Now is everything
Remade with primordial clarity
The best that it can offer
Or maybe in my eyes
Creation’s lines are blurred
That’s all
C L Couch
Photo by Yuriy MLCN on Unsplash
It wasn’t intentional. This mask we wear is a consequence of being born into this culture. We all got one. And while we like to believe we were born into an enlightened set of values and aspirations, many of which are written into the founding documents of this country, in fact we are born into a capitalist system and society. It is those values that have largely and disproportionately 
shaped our masks through the influences of materialism, abuse of power, egoism, greed, and enemy consciousness. Yes, our core values of equity and social justice and knowing that all life is sacred are still there. It’s just often hard to see them behind the mask.
So many elders, especially indigenous elders, and wisdom keepers around the world are telling us that COVID19 is not an enemy but a messenger. And the message is highly spiritual. We are being…
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The Funeral of George Floyd
I knew a man
Named Jerry who
After a funeral said,
I look at it this way
He’s gone
And I’m still here
His wife tried to shoosh
Him, though I suppose
There was truth in
What he said,
If not the saying of it
He’s gone
And we’re still here
Prayers to heaven might
Release him into
Further bliss, so some
Doctrines say
We can do that here for him
But all the rest
Is us for us
To take part in a life after
The fact, the death
Of all we could have known
We’ll acknowledge
Even celebrate
Laugh a little
Wish we could laugh a lot
We’re no good at this
There is an expression
To choke the life out of it
A program
Or a promise or a pledge
To take it literally
Upon a person
Outside of stagey melodrama
A Darth-Vader move
Is never having been sublime
But move the
Ridiculous to an absurdity
Of evil
Might we be
Angry at a funeral?
I think we might
But be sad first
Make crying space
For tears and any keening
Let him go
And never let him go
C L Couch
Photo by William Rouse on Unsplash
Painting by Numbers
(pandemicism)
I’m unsure what to say about
Those who die today
Saluting nothing
No cause but the spread of a disease
We will number them
We’ll try
Then we’ll try to
Turn them into issues
On platforms
Of lies,
Of anything but names and
All the parts
Of lives
That some carried
And bear now
C L Couch
Photo by Pierre Bamin on Unsplash
Call to Worship, Invocation
Good morning
It is good we’re here
To worship God
A day that God has made
And placed us in
And we are here
Not all of us
Not all of us within us
Our better hearts or minds
But it is a hard time, you know
You know
There is illness
That has taken us
That we’ve fended off
By sheltering,
Those who can
There are fires across the nation
We’ve been burned
Assaulted, robbed
Hurt in inside places
Where the wounding is
Harder to bear
Everything
And how we’re here is mixed
Some met in the distanced room
More with a technical
Connection
How shall we worship you today,
Across imagined wires
Or separations where we sit
When we are, in fact,
So many parts?
God understands
Our attitudes,
Who better
Who better to forgive
And with perfection
God takes us, one by one
Now altogether
In our twos and threes
Or larger groups,
Unified by unreason
Since we cannot shake each other’s
Hands, which is hard for
The Presbyterians to order
Welcome us,
Our presence into you
This time
And always, when it’s harder
In the challenges come after
We worship you
And if we don’t know how,
Write us notes in the sky
Or scratch a gospel in the ground
Or help us with what we have
We’ll try to do our best
Finding humility to face you
A cessation of agendas
We’ll speak
But, O Lord, righteous Lord
And all perfection,
Help us listen
Selah
Amen
C L Couch
Photo by Daniele Levis Pelusi on Unsplash
The News
(for those for whom there’s something new)
Are the fires out?
Where are new ones rising?
We could say vigilance
But not, I think, so much
Against our own
It is democracy, still
When there are good decisions
Made (listen,
politicians)
And we should listen to
Our neighbors
Excusing ourselves not
To talk so much
There is freedom
To be rung
If all the bells are silent,
Now
There is a time to mourn
A time to repair
A time to do things better
And to celebrate
Memory is fine
Remember them
Who died, and we
Are here
We have the present to repair
With children to look after
Teens to slide into involvement
Or-and they’ll do it,
Anyway
And should—though they
Should also be allowed to
Adolesce
That’s natural
Do you camp
And leave it better than you found?
Try doing that with Earth
And all the parts we tread
And take
There is a future
Or there better be
Earth-crimes against children
You don’t think the cosmos
Is keeping track?
It is,
And before there’s heaven
With a judgment,
There will be accounting
From all things behind the sky
A reckoning for all
Materials lost,
Lives wasted by other lives,
A universe securing
All there is
From what we had
From what we thought we owned
C L Couch
Photo by Mike Marrah on Unsplash
She shares with us how it is, and I hope she is persisting.
I wonder is racism okay, until it doesn’t kill someone?
Is it okay if it just makes you cry at 3 a.m because you felt so ugly and humiliated as anyone refused to sit next to you because they find you appalling because of your complexion and don’t find you enough to be friends with?
Is it okay if it just makes you question about your worth day in and out?
Is it okay if it gets you removed outta a play because the heroine needs to fair and lovely and not dusky and ugly?
Is it okay if the lead actress for a dusky character had to get herself painted so that she can look dusky enough because either the industry doesn’t have enough dusky heroines or they prefer a fair-skinned over the one who actually is dusky, defying the whole purpose of the film?
I wonder is it…
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