Interdependence Day
(4 July in pandemic time)
In the USA
It is a day
I wish we’d take it
Safely
But the things
That think (without thinking)
They’re in charge
Would rather
Have displays than safety
And noise
Whose irony inside
Will only waken the disease
We can celebrate
In other ways
The disease knows no politics
Neither should we
Today
C L Couch
Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash
Unbelief
(in Mark, chapter 9)
My favorite story from the
Christian New Testament
Isn’t easy
A father brings his son
(a parent brings a child)
To Jesus, saying
A demon throws his son into
The fire or the water
Anything destructive, for
The demon wants
To kill the child
To the father, Jesus says
That with faith, the boy
Will be cured,
The demon itself thrown out
To which the father says,
I believe
Help my unbelief
He had been told what to do
What was pat, even a guarantee
But the father’s honesty
Precluded the code
He bravely and with broken heart
Told Jesus what was real
The crowd pressed in
There was no more time for
Conversation, not even for proof
Of faith
But what we know is that
Jesus healed the child
If there was a test
The father passed,
Though there wasn’t
And he didn’t
Was Jesus surprised?
Was the father?
What is authentic was not
Surprised
Faith will out
And doubt
They both had their turns
And they
And theys did well
They made healing
They made good
C L Couch
Photo by Paweł Czerwiński on Unsplash
Humilitas
And does he have the shoulders
For the world, and shall
We place a wheel and turtle
Under him as well
Maybe add a hazelnut
The world on an axis,
On a pin
Where angels dance
And wait for orders
To Megiddo and apocalypse
And is everything so fragile
A speck of virus brings us down
Remembering that vanity
Leads us to the feet of Ozymandias
One day
Maybe today
And should Atlas need some help
Before his feet have slipped
And all the foundation
Maybe what we have in orbit
Could help
If not, we might also
Ask what we are doing there
I’ve left off
The marks, signs
Of use and abuse,
Because they stand
As statement, too
There is a quality should save us,
If we understand
Its works
It doesn’t mean stop everything
Or ball up into fetal uselessness
In fact, it calls for greater
Energy and effort
That simply will not pay
The same
But will save the fragile, spinning Earth
Of us
And all we’ve done to
Knock it off its pinions
And platforms
And should it have a course
To meet faces of other worlds
And the face of God,
Should all or any have us
C L Couch
Photo by GMB Monkey on Unsplash
Chin-Up on Rings
Step Sessions
We have a journey to go on
Called today
I don’t know how many steps we’ll take
Maybe we’ll travel like Thoreau
Considering the cosmos in a walk to town
Maybe one place will be literal
The other living
Where stars are born
The nebula inside
Cradles of thought
To set us on our way
Until the dark of night brings out the offspring
Literal nebulae
A star for each thought born out there
A universe of mind, as it may
Marking a journey
Like our own,
Roaming energy
Through two sets of cells
Two trips going inexorably
No competition needed, no going to war
We can have quiet or make noise
Any media for growth
Though I will say
Maybe going gently’s not so bad
In a night of stars
As thoughts and ours
How many steps a journey?
Some might want
To know,
Which is okay
Let the universe and us
Decide
C L Couch
“Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas
Photo by Aldebaran S on Unsplash
Heart Nebula
Same Noises at the Window
Might the birds
Be back again?
Another nest to go?
I shouldn’t think so
Born in spring,
Training over summer
Wild living in the fall
(cool the blood)
Sleep in winter
Well, maybe they’re
No more systemic
Than we are
We think we know September
But birth happens
Anytime
Not to mention sex
That typically goes first
(though there are
other ways of having babies)
They are with the bees
That have their seasons, too
Their own calculations
Maybe they follow
Birds
So there are cycles,
And there is each day
Today I think maybe
The birds want to try again
And why not
Living, we may understand,
Is secure in birthing
C L Couch
Photo by Robert Thiemann on Unsplash
Halcyon
It’s a beautiful day
Sometimes, I guess, that’s it
Outside
Everything allies to make it
Grand
Bright blue sky, punctuated with
Big balls of cloud
Yellow light is playing on
Green branches
The brown trunks look gussied up
For square dancing
With their partners
Once the night has fallen
And there are no humans watching
James Weldon Johnson might approve
It’s a day for Aesop
Or for Tolkien
Mary Oliver
Or Gerald May
Or anyone who has a porch
With chairs and a pitcher
Of the family favorite
(we won’t judge)
At night in June
There should be fireflies
And we’re allowed to watch them dance
While other things are secret
(see above)
C L Couch
Photo by Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash
Adelhausen, Rheinfelden (Baden), Germany
After
When everything is done
With all the apples and the oranges
The sixes and the sevens
All the things that didn’t merit
Placing on a scale
Of our making
You and I will look out over
A silver sea
Hoping to see a fin or tail
The nose of something
Welcoming that says,
There’s still living here
We’ll hope for the best
Skip fearing for the worst
There will be life or won’t be
Maybe we’ll have
A part in it
In spite of all our peers have done
We can live along the edge
Recalling everything behind
Until
All memory has changed
Opposites are lived out
As they should be
Amen
C L Couch
Photo by Thomas Lipke on Unsplash
Sailcone’s Grizzly Bear Lodge, Mount Waddington A, Britisch-Kolumbien, Kanada Columbia Canada
Pacific white-sided dolphin (Lagenorhynchus obliquidens)
Fahrenheit 151
It’s over a hundred degrees
In the Arctic
Down south, that gets a lethal warning
Don’t go out in this, especially if
One is old or young or has something of
A medical condition
This is the Arctic where
Santa dwells
With elves, all making toys
Inside a house and workshop underneath
The snow,
Where mastodon bones are found
Maybe with flesh and DNA once
Inside the permafrost
Science is excited, and
Science is concerned
About microbes
That were frozen
Newly released by melted ice
I know Siberia can be
Occasionally temperate
But now it’s over a hundred degrees
In towns
And I imagine the investment in
Air-conditioning has been sparse, over
The years
I hope they are okay
After the Antarctic
Falls
(guess what—its sheets of ice
are already breaking, sliding into
the ocean in ways
they’re not supposed to)
Maybe some more will say,
Hey, there might be a problem
While the seas are rising
Democracy is drowned
And we are facing
Final, savage years
C L Couch
What a 100-degree day in Siberia really means
The record-setting high is much more than a quick spike for the Russian Arctic, where months of extreme heat may have dangerous consequences.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/06/what-100-degree-day-siberia-means-climate-change/
Photo by Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash
The Monster Speaks
One thing the movies miss
Nearly all the time
Is to let the monsters speak
I’m hearing gargoyles talking
They make scary sense
They’re vicious and
Want to be left alone
If you want to see Frankenstein
Then read it
It’s not long
The most humane speeches
Are from the creature
Made by Victor
Who abhorred his work and then
Abandoned it
An ugly, powered creature
Left to roam the Earth
A child in a Golem’s body
With no control
Or advice to live
But when it speaks
The words are articulate
And passionate
Having been made by a human
Why can’t there be something of
The humans’ own?
The parent’s own and
Something of companionship
The words show us who
The monsters are
We slip into barbarity of action
While the best words remain
The creature’s own
No mistaking, the creature-made
Commits atrocities
There is a tragedy in the making
In having been made
In human vanity to make
But forestalling
Or destroying
Might have happened early on
As it is, the monster (so we way)
Is left alive
I know, for sequels
While the human maker
Frankenstein
Pursues his own destruction,
Which is no kind of justice
She knew what she was doing
C L Couch
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash
Peloton Cellars, Front Street, Avila Beach, CA, USA
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