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clcouch123

In conversation, I prefer Christopher. My mom named me after Christopher Robin, after all. In writing, I use “C L Couch” (or, more simply, “c l couch”) because the form is genderless and also frankly easier to use. I have awful writer’s cramp. I am an educator more or less retired, more or less due to disability. At present, I live in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania (USA). My writing here I mean to be occasional and also devotional. Either or both. The banner and profile photographs are by my friend and peer Debra Danielson. More of Debbie’s work to be enjoyed is at debradanielson.org. Thanks to each of you and both and all for coming to my blog.

White Night, Black Morning

(two poems)

 

 

White Night

 

A single truck moved through

Last night

With the covered sound a snowplow

Might have made

It is winter, but there’s nothing

Wintry happening yet

I’m fine with that

The problem, you know, is extremes

Zeniths of summer have

This problem, too

That it will be too much

People struggling already

Wrestling more with life

I’ll be inconvenienced

They’ll be killed

Many will try to help, I know

And in the midst of it will wonder why

If there’s an answer, I hope you find it

All of us between

The depths and heights

Should be busy only

In the best of ways

Waste saved for parties

The few dollars and the items it will take

To celebrate

But who can have a party while

Breathing through liquid

Without artificial, which is to say,

Human help?

 

Contrary to our practice

To be poor,

Help us restore the rest

Of hope

Hope for today

Bright hope for tomorrow

Finished for now

In another night

 

The last words are yours

Before we all can speak

The truth through lips

No longer dry,

No longer hungry

 

 

Black Morning

 

You are so beautiful

Yes, she is

He is

You are

In ways we don’t begin to understand

Like the moving parts of diamonds

That don’t move at all

Unless we have some help

To see

 

Somehow, the lovers have to live

The stories try

To make that impossible

That’s what they serve

In worldly expectation

And it’s the twist

The turn in the dark

A sprig of hope

Against the scabbed tree-trunk

That give us spring

That keep us reading

 

That keep us believing

Things we really need can happen

 

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Hermes Rivera on Unsplash

 

5

Let Those Who Have Ears to Hear, Hear

Let Those Who Have Ears to Hear, Hear

(remembering the literal deaf hear better than most)

 

It’s odd to look outside

And see warm darkness

It should be colder, it’s December

In the immediacy of it, I don’t

Mind so much

It’s cool, my favorite kind of time

And whole cool days and nights are the best

But it feels like October

When October felt like August

It’s a good thing there’s no climate change

Those with no authority (the authority

of observation, anyway)

Have said so

 

But it is warmer

And after the convenience,

The warmer polar weather and

Elsewhere will turn catastrophic

There will so much evaporation from

The ground that in the air

There will be greater condensation,

Which leads to cloud cover

That can introduce another Ice Age

Earth had not been planning for,

Not yet

 

The irony of global warming,

We will have planetary winter

And unending

So what do we do?

You and I? I do not know

Listen to the scientists, the ones

Not in departments, ‘til they

(and they)

Are freed

Challenge corporations

Not because they are evil

But because they can be good

A new Earth-winter won’t serve

Them, either

 

Nations and industries will have to work

In tandem, and we mean it this time

We can make new jobs

And offer living wages, too

No real reason not to

 

If we remember that the Earth should be

Blue and green, mostly

All the other colors in their places

It really is a splendid sphere

That shines uniquely in the local heavens

 

If we decide that

Breathing air outside is good

Drinking water, too

Having grass and leaves to walk upon

Stones to climb

If we reason that a living planet’s better

Well, there is no better start,

Is there?

And now to join

Talk and move

Breathe and drink

Live as the Earth we need

And want

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Fenton, Michigan, United States

Frozen Lake

 

3

Mis’ess Claus Testifies

Mis’ess Claus Testifies

(spelled out via T. Hardy et al)

 

Christmas got away from me

I still believe

You know who must be killing it?

The corrugated companies

It’s an expression, and I wonder

Please say you’re recycling

In some places, it is Boxing Day

In Sydney, that means kangaroos punching—

Kidding!

There will be boxes

There should have been enough

Yesterday

But receiving needs receiving

And in too many places

There was nothing

So as tradition and sense tells, give

More than that,

Give more

There are still too many dreams

That should have something

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Vince Gx on Unsplash

Pyramiden, Svalbard et Jan Mayen

Factory in the Arctic

 

0

A New God

A New God

 

We hear

There is a new God in the world

And we’ve been told it’s jealous

Human words testify,

But there is supposed to be citation

This God promises to mete another kind of

Justice

 

The older things will happen, finally

Fire and damnation

Things you already know

But there is something first,

Something deserving awe for being new

To terrify the agenda-holders who believe

They have it all, and it is right to

Want the rest

 

Before their destruction, there is a surprise

Offered quietly, persistently, even with fragility

It is love

Obviating Armageddon

For a time

 

The merest wish for this

And it will offer to take charge

At least to guide

Sublimate all misdirected sense of

Dignity in righteousness

(though dignity itself is good)

To make, in fact, the person whole

Gently bring one to the altar

There to cry the truth

Then to reach for something better,

As it’s offered

All the time

Rather freely

 

The who have arrived in faith already

Know already about this

Try to live, fall, live again

An uneven, promising, frustrating

Celebratory kind of life

Whose delight in giving will give out

Just in time for paradise

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

 

0

A Tired God

A Tired God

 

There are days when I think

God must be tired

They’re days when I’m tired,

Naturally enough

But I get to wonder

If a God is allowed exhaustion, too

I guess not

God must be always ready

Always perfectly to take

Though we act as if we’re bored

Though we want God out of the picture

Or the action for a while

When we decide

There isn’t anything

We thought so, must have been

Peripheral shadow

 

When we’d rather curse

Then speak in love

Cheat our neighbor

Rather than uphold

Destroy parts of the planet

Because we’re not certain yet

How to destroy another

Though we’re practicing

And launching

 

I think with all this going on

God may be tired,

If she wants to be

Surely, he’s ready to give up

It might be time for another conversation

With a mortal

About how many might be righteous

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Antônia Felipe on Unsplash

Borghese, Roma, Italia

 

1

A Response to “Cleon” by Robert Browning

A Response to “Cleon” by Robert Browning

(which has stuck with me for years)

 

Yon swimmer is an ode

Cleon says so

I paraphrase

To Proteus or something in authority

A tyrant in the Classical sense

A tyrant who knows virtue

They had those back then

And a patron

To the speaker of the poem

The writer of a letter

 

That does not hesitate to compliment

But also makes the case

For what is true

In your tyranny, perhaps

Argues Cleon

You might be missing something

When you elevate my art

Not that I don’t mind the support

Artists need that

But in understanding why the art is there

To tell you in itself

That life is better

 

Our art records and re-expresses

Interprets who we are and what we do

But the actions so much better

All the attributes that make us

They are real

Poets know this

Beyond an abstract exercise

So we will write

Sculpt words on paper

Into pieces that might find you

Whole, more whole for this

 

While replacing nothing

Enhancement, we hope

Greater clarity

A lesson, if we must

Learning in other ways

To trust

 

I recall because it comes to me,

Now and then

Having looked up nothing for a while

(the swimmer is a rower,

and Proteus is Protus

while English majors smoosh words to pass

the comprehensive)

But the epistle goes on meaning much

To me

I try to keep it real

Real enough,

As Cleon’s maker trusts

The last apostle who wrote letters

To the faithful

 

C L Couch

 

 

(from) “Cleon,” Robert Browning

. . .

The many years of pain that taught me art!

Indeed, to know is something, and to prove

How all this beauty might be enjoyed, is more:

But, knowing nought, to enjoy is something too.

Yon rower, with the moulded muscles there,

Lowering the sail, is nearer it than I.

I can write love-odes: thy fair slave’s an ode.

I get to sing of love, when grown too grey

For being beloved: she turns to that young man,

The muscles all a-ripple on his back.

I know the joy of kingship: well, thou art king!

. . .

I cannot tell thy messenger aright

Where to deliver what he bears of thine

To one called Paulus; we have heard his fame

. . .

 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43749/cleon

https://www.public-domain-poetry.com/robert-browning/cleon-6646

(two places easily to find the poem)

 

Photo by Quino Al on Unsplash

Puerto Marina, Benalmádena, Spain

Momentos antes del inicio del Triatlón de Benalmádena.

 

 

0

Life Out There

Life Out There

 

We can only imagine ourselves in space

Place ourselves there

Somehow the blackness would be air to breathe

The planets reading lights

With far-flung stars become the neighborhood

With home a house made out of gravity

Some kind of place we might deserve

Among the stars

 

Planetoids might greet us, once again

(Pluto’s back)

Asteroids carry our messages

Faster words in comet-tails’

Skywriting

For something faster, send a meteor

But I think, when balanced right,

Dark matter will tell us all

We need to know, between each other

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Arnold Zhou on Unsplash

 

0

Uneven Day

 

Uneven Day

(winter solstice)

 

What did Merton say?

I don’t know where I’m going

I don’t know what I’m doing

And Frodo something like

I will take the ring to Mordor

Though I do not know the way

Indecision is a funny thing

Because it doesn’t have to stop us

We can pray

We can wear the ring

As a blessing or an onus (as in probandi)

We can go to Gethsemani

(Kentucky)

Then on to Mordor

 

Tomorrow the day and night are split

Their most unevenly

It won’t be a celebration, then, of symmetry

Rather infinity, for we’ll be wanting

Hoping

 

We’ll want longer days

The chance for life in light

Maybe a bargain,

If we do our part

We’ll say

And many of us mean it

 

How do we move from darkness into light?

Shouldn’t that happen, anyway?

What if we stand still?

Sit in a quiet place

Where we won’t be noticed

Won’t be bothered, either

 

Well, we don’t where we’re going

And we might stay in place

Though ongoing inaction doesn’t plumb

Right in the sounding of our nature

I don’t mean not rest

By all means, rest

But take care for the new year

That for many starts tomorrow

When division is uneven

When balance won’t accomplish much

For months to come

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Kamesh Vedula on Unsplash

Cupertino, United States

 

0

Regarding the Earthlings’ Case

Regarding the Earthlings’ Case

 

Winter is a freezing time

Up north

Down south, when it’s time

Though there seem to be extremes

Among, inside

The peaks of the Andes

The ice-steppes under which

Somewhere is land

This is Antarctica

Wide colonies of wildlife

I’m not saying we don’t have these

In the north,

But often they are left alone down there,

And a meaning to keep it that way

 

I don’t know,

Eventually the Andes will wear down,

Which is natural

But the shelves around the South Pole

That slip away in parts

The breakage in icebergs

Bigger and bigger

And ill-timed

Don’t you think there might be

An irregular reason for these?

That we, in fact, precipitate all the early

Slides affecting

Millions of square meters?

 

I ask to be polite,

Though there is no courtesy in wreckage

On the Earth

By our fair hands

Become dirt-ridden

(the dishonest kind of dirt)

And plastic

The profit of pollution

While we’ve stopped talking about ozone

And the protections

We are ruining

Until they go elsewhere

Care for another place

While well-received

 

Soon we will need rescue from ourselves

By whom, I also do not know

If there’s a Martian league

Or on blue Venus

Might come over to assist

Then exact a price, because

There must be justice in

The Solar System

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Alexander Andrews on Unsplash

Andromeda

 

0

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