Look
(listen)
Creation’s green
And blue and yellow
And by extension
Brown the tree
And gray in shadow
Black the city street
Red the bricks across
Silver steel
On buildings, too
I’m not sure what to say
About the color glass
No colors
Or all
C L Couch
Photo by Jessica Ruscello on Unsplash
Treasure Island Flea Market, San Francisco, United States
Attending
God speaks
Through storm
And through the rising flower
Listen
For the goodness
And, if it has to be, chastisement
Before all love returns or
So it seems
From a place it never left
The human will and mind and spirit
Love of all
Excelling loves
Perfection so near
In moving water and the fire that for now
Is contained
Inside dissolution
Ruin or old age
Waiting for will to turn so that
The paradox
The ears to hear will hear
C L Couch
Photo by Ganapathy Kumar on Unsplash
Comet NEOWISE seen from Rio Rancho in New Mexico, USA.
It Doesn’t Toll for Thee
Wrong people get the message
Wrong ones think they’ve
Wronged—
Things are so awful,
What did we do?
Those who ask typically deserve
Nothing of an answer, for
Nothing did they wrong
God does not wring the faithful,
Even if grayed
Might be the faith
Those who have worse-wronged
The people and the planet
Rarely ask after
What they’ve done
Or realize the reckoning is for them
While the faithful, like
Lazarus,
Own paradises, now
C L Couch
Photo by Ashwini Chaudhary on Unsplash
Bell at Tungnath temple – highest Shiva temple.
The Year When We Do Nothing
(pandemic time)
This should have been
The year when we do nothing
When we live with fear and boredom
And are resolute
When we soberly keep up with the news
And mourn the passing of so many
When we sing from window to window
As was done in Italy
Finding all the gestures that we can
Safely to say we’re here
We’re counting
We weep
And we maintain hope as bravely as we can
A year when we remember
Prioritize
Keep perspective
Love each other, those who are leaving us,
All who remain
As carefully as possible
In a year, we can have expectations
We’ll be smarter, then
About how to live
C L Couch
Photo by Artur Aldyrkhanov on Unsplash
Bokeh in Lavender
Conversation with a Pop Star
You don’t like pop music?
Not so much
What do you like?
I like jazz
I like the symphony, too
But jazz brings music to life
So you don’t like new things?
No, I like them
Experiments in jazz are cool
As long as they aren’t atonal
Jazz already masters
Notes, half-notes, and dissonance
Not to mention syncopation
Jazz accepts chaos in the world
To wonder why
In saddest beauty
Do you have a favorite?
The one I heard last night
C L Couch
Photo by Sash Margrie Hunt on Unsplash
New York Subway Jazz Musician
Loving Cup
Is there more to say?
Certainly, every day
Let’s keep on talking
And let the silence speak as well
All the moments in between
Grace for punctuation
C L Couch
Photo by Thanuj Mathew on Unsplash
Thoothukudi, Tamil Nadu, India
Tea makes everything better. This photo is from a trip to Tamilnadu during November of 2017. The cup always used to fascinate me, as an object that keeps the liquid and helps us consume it.
Only Wednesday
(in pandemic time)
I think we need a good day
And being sensible
About it
Try to avoid the stupid world
And wrap around the smart one
Our friends, I think, are
Counting on us
Not to build a platform
From which to sell whatever
Made wherever
I think they want to count on
Honesty
While in politics none is expected
Maybe because cheating
There
For too many is like breathing,
Reaching for a wallet
To spend
Someone else’s money
The rest of us
Can be smart
In real daytime life,
We can take precautions
We wash our hands in life
Every day
Masks are hot to wear
But we can breathe through them
If we can’t,
Then that’s an exception
We can still drive and ride
We’re fortunate not to be stopped
At borders,
Locally
As and if we’re well,
We can get out of cutaneous shells
To make or remake ourselves
Aware of those who will take help
With the means
For
All the troubled places
C L Couch
Photo by Mélissa Jeanty on Unsplash
The News
There’s a vicious edge
On everything
Jobs, relationships
Jokes, games
Living in our neighborhoods
Like adding blades to shoes
Not for skating
But for slicing into Earth when
We walk or run,
Until the planet bleeds
C L Couch
Photo by Isi Parente on Unsplash
To the One Who’s Typing Now
(regarding futures)
I mistype a number
And it’s 2029
I mistype again
It’s 3029
Maybe 3129
Let’s make it 3159
So each number’s new
Now let’s consider our world
Should we still have it
Should we be here
A thousand years to get it right
Maybe we’ve refined
Profit at last
A personal fruition of one’s
Skills
The happiness of that
Is a profitable life
Each one contributes out of joy
Not that we won’t make mistakes
We will
And I’m not sure where
Ego’s gone
We’ll need more materials
Stop wrecking Earth to have them
We might be digging into Mars
And asteroids
Still needing to learn
The cosmos is not for digging
And for slicing up
Maybe other leaseholders
Will have shown by then
To live that
For us
Despotism might be a deserved
Anachronism by then
Democracy gain such momentum
That we will have it
And no other way
Maybe there was
A final fight for freedom
Last and only monuments
Only to us
And worth remembering
The state of the human soul
Might not have changed at all
We might have evolved so that
Ancillary things such as those
At the ends of fingers
And of toes
Might have grown off
Nature evolving, too
Harder trees and rocks
Like crystal steel
Water that will no longer
Be prodded
Nature’s having learned as well
That living with us
Is inimical
We will be peers
If never really allies
We might have learned that
Nature’s soul deserves
Respecting, too
As for God
No need for changing there
Immutability required
Maybe Armageddon,
Maybe no one came to play
Maybe God will have reason
To smile a little
All the time
Weep less for Earth and us
Maybe show up, now and then
Because divine invisibility
Will have lost some
Of its doctrine
With its need
Will we be happy,
Feel fulfilled?
Goodness, I don’t know
Once everyone is fed
And money doesn’t mean
Withholding shelter
Banks off our backs
Having failed at climbing on us
To deceive with interest
(not only banks—the corporations
so this way and politics)
Maybe when we understand
That lunacy means not providing
Water safe to drink
And we don’t want to be lunatics
Anymore,
The world will, what do you know,
Be a better place
Commercials and song lyrics
Have it right
We’ll still be dying,
Actuarily
But letting go will be done
In a circle
With fewer things to worry over,
After
We’ll be a thousand years ahead
Human nature adapting
One can hope
Yes, I know, everything could go
The other way
The devil be in charge, at last
Though that be madness, too
Over non-corporeality
We might have even learned through games
That the body is important
(learned sadly by the wrecking of it)
That matter is
A crucial count of atoms
That heavenward means substance
Hell has none of
Not even an electron
No covalence there
Both abstract and solid mean something
Something wonderful
We’ll have our fears
To face
Maybe at last we’ll face them
Some challenges might be greater
Maybe you wouldn’t
(I don’t know)
But I’d like to see, to hear, to touch
To taste, to smell
To sense the future
Maybe it will be part of the tour
An astral orientation
For what truly happens next
C L Couch
Photo by Jorik Kleen on Unsplash
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