Timing Isn’t Everything
When we pray
There is listening
Because God is infinite,
Which means
There’s plenty of time
C L Couch
Finite
When we exhale
Things go out
We no longer need,
Which is all right because
Parts of the world need them
That, in turn, give up what
We need
And so inhale
To say the least, it’s a good arrangement
We should keep it going
Oxygen doesn’t come from
An artificial tube
We borrow it
And sometimes
Too often, really
Don’t give anything back for it
Let’s not begrudge astronauts
Someday maybe
We’ll make our own sustenance
For breathing
Though really everything we have
Is borrowed, molecules from
Someone else
Call it Mother Nature
Father Time
Or random, hexagonal arrangements
In the universe
Finally, it’s what we’re lent
Of substance and of time with
The energy to use them
C L Couch
Photo by Moses Lee on Unsplash
Comet NEOWISE over Iona Beach through tall grass.
There Are Way Too Many People Dying
There are way too many people dying
Yet we, the living, complain
Because we’re still here
With masks and keeping six feet or
Two meters apart
Staying not in a factory or prison
But at home
From where we live and work
Unless you have to go away to work,
And we thank you
And (everyone) get by hopefully without catching
Anything,
Such as the nineteenth COVID virus
We have to get outside,
And so we protest in Berlin
And politicians in Ohio
And D.C.
Hawk a malarial that not only
Doesn’t work but harms in other ways
If Madame Cleo came back
And recommended something,
I’d be more inclined to listen
This should be the year of doing nothing
I’ve said it elsewhere
I’m saying it again
This should be the year of doing nothing
But getting better
Next year we could try it
Without the disease
C L Couch
(image from Unsplash)
United Nations COVID-19 Response
Frontline. Inspired by images of exhausted doctors and nurses. Image created by Kevin Kobsic. Submitted for United Nations Global Call Out To Creatives – help stop the spread of COVID-19.
Snoopyism
Take out the “stormy” part,
And “It was a dark night”
As most nights are,
When it happened to rain
Snoopy went for this
(the words appear above
his doghouse, when
he’s typing—how does
the typewriter stay perched
along the top
like that?)
But the words were borrowed
From other sources (more
than one writer claims
the cliché!), and we
Smiled, because we were certain
We could do better
It was night; there was rain
Okay, now your turn
C L Couch
(see, Snoopy is a beagle character in the Peanuts comics and cartoons, and Snoopy like to write while on top of his doghouse (Snoopy’s always on top, not in, his doghouse), and the famous words he quotes are “It was a dark and stormy night” that have been used now and then by writers who evidently had nothing else to say
and I keep forgetting that Madeleine L’Engle uses the phrase intentionally (knowing it was cliché) to start her novel A Wrinkle in Time)
Photo by Grant Durr on Unsplash
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