clcouch123

Crazy Boy

Crazy Boy

(get cool)

Cattails

One word

Cat tails

Two words

When referring to the actual

Cat’s tail

Don’t pull at it

Cattails might not hit back

Cats with tails do

They should

That’s as much advice

As I have for you

My head hurts

And my nose

Yippee-allergens

I know they could be the other thing

I’m hot from moving things around

And I wish I had all my pills

In this uncertain time

There’s sun today

I hear the virus doesn’t like the sun

If it had preferences

But also doesn’t like cool weather

So my MidAtlantic spring might be

Salubrious for a time

Cool, sunny days?

I could wish them ‘round the world

For health’s sake

Light for buoyancy

Of skin and spirit

Enough cold, not too much,

To relax our ninety-eight degrees or so

Inside

C L Couch

recently, I read about the sun and about cold air in two different places where I think crazy people do not write or otherwise contribute

I am not a doctor and don’t play one on television

“Cool” by Leonard Bernstein

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Fenton, United States

April 3, 2020 3

This Is Our Story

This Is Our Story

Finally, there’s wind

The static air can move at last

It could be a carrier

Or a cleansing thing

But with sunshine christening

We’re hopeful it’s the latter

We need good days

And how idle does that sound

Imagining the waiting rooms

The wards, the angled beds

All the suffering from symptoms

It is a ministry of comfort

Nothing more though that is great

For now

And perilous

The problem with the anodyne

Is that it’s ancient hope

And little more

There is no easy cure

And for now there is not an uneasy one

Our prayers and thoughts

Seem not enough

Not to mention less than nothing from

Ones who utter them through angry

Or indifferent mouths

Against instead the real need

Some liquid in a tube

Delivered by a needle, disassembling

The cohorts of the virus

Well, we can think and pray for this

And these

With others or the silence

Of our closets

Asking to bless

All workers who pursue the

Necessary, healing good

There seems little else to say

No other topic pressing

It is a time of plague

Optimism notwithstanding

On all our houses

C L Couch

Photo by Tom Rumble on Unsplash

Melbourne, Australia

The light was fading as I was flying the Mavic back from another shoot and the symmetry of these streets caught my eye. Love me some long afternoon shadows.

April 2, 2020 10

And Can It Be

And Can It Be

And can it be

That on a day when the sun

Shines somewhere behind clouds

Basking indifferently above horizons

That the industrious

And inventive

Will find a way

So that, as she says,

All shall be well

The hazelnut she sees as the world

Will crack, the softness inside

Exuding into earth

To make the world anew

Two parts come together, then

Nature and ourselves

Nature and nature

We could be allies

We could protect each other

Let air

And ground,

Let blue and green,

Let wildness and cultivation be

Admit mistakes on all affected sides

Find solutions that

Don’t kill but use the planet well,

First things first

But never only

I wish it could be a simple song

But the harmony must be

Complex,

Composition worked out carefully

Remembering to consult

With the conductor

It is a vision

That can happen

She saw this

The touchstones matter

We can find our own

Use our words

Apply our talents well

So that all, as she ways,

Shall be well

And can it be

A healthy alliance with the cosmos

And productive

I believe you know

It must be

C L Couch

Image by LoggaWiggler from Pixabay

April 1, 2020 3

Consider Morning

Consider Morning

Through closed eyes

There is a day unfolding

The sky is gray, turning pale blue

Maybe the misty parts will

Burn off

The street is dry

Opening the eyes

Brings out

A different contemplation

Now objects are seen

In pale light and shadow

Lights left on, under shades

Burnish everything

That is illuminated

There is burping from

The coffeemaker, while bread sits out

For the toaster

In the world that strangely has no time

For now, whenever these are served

As much as anything

More than clocks

Begins the day

It’s real, it’s not

It’s what there is

Uncertain muscles stretch

Brain cells don’t know yet

Which way to go

Feeling this in modern times when

The world has gone to war

The anxiety is different now

Because the enemy is inside

Not in conspiracy but

Atomic fact

With atoms making molecules and cells

With certain ones, too many, at

War with each other

These are the trenches

And the foxholes, now

There are those, bravely

On the front line of defense

First responding, second following through

With finding beds and

Other care

Third, treating symptoms where there is

No cure but creative treatment

With logistics

The next line, also at risk,

Who must be brave

Are those who fight the war at home, who

Hold together, maybe where there

Is no thread beyond connection

There is a layer in-between

Call it the community

That tries to stem the hoarding,

Who in company

And companies

Makes supplies to go up those lines,

Like rolling bandages

In past time

Maybe rolling them, too, just now

Then there are those who bunker-hide,

Meaning beyond reason, who

Make statements from the back

As if

It were the front

Who’ve never read “The Masque”

Or, reading it, forget

The lesson that, like fog inside a city,

Anyone or everyone might

Be touched by this,

Which means all are connected

Mere bellicosity never having won

A day much less the cause

Love will win with reason,

As it always does

Every time

C L Couch

Rathmannsdorf, Saxony, Germany

spruce trees in heavy fog

March 31, 2020 3

Benevolence in Apocalypse

Benevolence in Apocalypse

(4 parts)

God,

I wish you’d take us out of this

The way you took us out of Eden

Bring us back

But all of us, please

No one on the world’s side of the gate

Except maybe so many angels

Restoring everything

To where it was

No, where it will be

Maybe it happens every age

A garden and a promise of plenty

And forever,

Then we ruin it

Because will is more important than

Whole people

Eden is closed off again

The angel with the flaming sword returns

While we are exiled

On the other side

‘Til in the next era, Eden is offered yet again

While human discretion

With all good and bad proclivities

Cannot work it out

Especially in numbers

We are cast out again

Comes an age, there must

When human will

Becomes a complement, at last

We understand we have a place

It is not owning everything,

Which is too jarring on creation

And creation will,

As it does,

Push back

But we knew we are a part,

It is sufficient, and there’s always room

To have what we should have

And to grow

Throughout the age so that

There is no need for the next one

All will not burn in fire

Or die upon the ice

We will have instead

The drama of a fitting universe

With enough unknown to hold us

Wrapped-up wondering inside

And should there still be

Curiosities, even evil, out there

Should we be surprised?

There was a war in heaven, after all

Maybe it will not have been worked out

Everywhere we go

Meaning pre-heaven we will have

Important things to do

Discoveries to make

Victims to rescue

Cosmos, maybe cosmoses, to save

C L Couch

Photo by JR Korpa on Unsplash

scratching the sky

March 30, 2020 3

Updating

Updating

There is a virus in the world that’s

Killing people

(there are other things that kill us, too)

Some people, many, most in fact

Have responded well

Quietly, not so quietly

Watching after

Each other

Enduring hoarding that is

The villain’s privilege

Governments have

Responded, some much

Later than the others

Some are doing well, though the more

Fractious institutions

(not so much the scientific ones,

we hope)

The more the stumping

As if this were a matter more

For Indifferent reelection

Than the health

Of nations, cities, villages, and

Outlying—families, one

Person by one

So more will die

And the privileged

Will not take credit for this

In the scientific places,

Teams are working hard, to say the least,

The right kind of aggression

Understanding that

There are no politics in molecules,

That a virus doesn’t care

Who gets elected

Who stamps harder in

The podium floor

Like Rumpelstiltskin, until disappearing

Molecules don’t care

The molecules of viruses simply

Want to thrive

C L Couch

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

Kras-Driven Lung Cancer. Created by Eric Snyder, 2015.

March 29, 2020 6

Play Day Stood in a Hundred-Acre Wood

Play Day Stood in a Hundred-Acre Wood

It’s a dark and rainy day

But Christopher Robin wants to play

If Pooh and Piglet can find a brolly

Then all will have fun, and all will be jolly

They shall have tea and toast and honey

Much more fun than pots of money

Then they’ll go home by Mister Sanders

Having good times from all their wanders

And England shall have a sunny day

When Christopher Robin will want to play

C L Couch

Christopher (Robin) Couch

Photo by Mary Sill on Unsplash

March 28, 2020 2

Want

Want

I want a quiet gentle day

I will not have it

Neither will the soldier on the frontline

Nor the persons alleviating pain

While diagnosing

All our ills in hospitals and other,

Medical places

Nor those whose designs

For profit

That is profiteering as another verb

Distract away all better drives

And who know peace only

As a cardboard place

Propped up for a time through addictions of

One kind or another

Nor will the parents who have

Noisy houses,

Who wouldn’t have it any other way

(nor I)

Nor those for whom conflict

Tears apart the skin of life

With open wounds that may

Or may not heal

We won’t have a gentle day

Or peaceful

Maybe tomorrow

So much depending on

Convictions that we know

Close as intimacy,

Surprises that we don’t

With what it takes

In between and all together to

Cleanse and keep the wounds

That can get better

Though, mortally speaking,

Will not completely heal

We can have peace

The kind that rests

Just fine on scars

C L Couch

I think Want stands next to Ignorance in A Christmas Carol. Ignorance that is not intelligence, though some would say it must have intelligence, we must have, in order to be un-ignorant. I disagree. We see the world, we read a book, we listen to the conversation we are having. Then we learn. We grow. Our ignorance is challenged.

We are trained for a job. We save. We grow. And ignorance again is challenged. The world becomes more knowing, more prosperous, and peaceful.

Want is challenged this way, too.

Photo by Carl Cheng on Unsplash

Hong Kong

My dad just finished his eye surgery.

March 27, 2020 0