Leaf by Niggling
Within days, autumn arrives
My favorite time because
It is cool
I mean, it’s hip, I guess
Though mainly it’s cool
Not frigid
Not torrid
Afire (without heat) in
A gift of color
In the south of south,
Fall will be spring
The warmer path to summer
C L Couch
Leaf by Niggle by J. R. R. Tolkien
Friday Felines
I will see cat-friends tonight
They will ignore me
I’m not feeding them
They’ll act as if they do not play
Though I know it’s different
One friend
Erstwhile Pennsylvania Quaker
Might decide it’s time for
A first-floor chase
Or to jump on me, reach toward my
Ear as if to say
Quietly through sharpened teeth,
Feed me
C L Couch
2 Chome-4-8 Daiba, Minato, Tokyo 135-0091, Japan
Justice for One
I want to hurt some people
No, not that
I want someone else to hurt them
It is a gypsy curse
Or something from a deeper quarter
Of New Orleans
Yes, I might use magic
But then Harry Potter dies
I won’t deserve the stories, anymore
Not encountering them is good
We live in different towns
Heaven help offenders who
Live on the same street,
Even the same side
In wanting vengeance, I change
Nothing but myself
I know a little about justice
The human kind can be corrupt
The divine part is in perfect balance
All the time
I can shake my fist
But God will not change anything
But changeable
In its own time
C L Couch
Photo by Calum MacAulay on Unsplash
The Agrestic Grocer, Orange, Australia
Weasels
I’ve never met a weasel
I hear they pop
Whenever there might be
A mulberry bush close by
And a monkey
I suppose comparing them to ferrets
Would be offensive
For one party or the other
Otters, maybe?
I guess weasels are their own kind
But are they slender and slippery,
Able, well,
To weasel out of things?
I have jury duty coming up
Maybe I could borrow a talent
Or two talents
Not that I mind
Fear of the unknown
I don’t know if weasels have that, too,
Which is why they move so fast,
If they do
C L Couch
Frank Liebig – Archiv Frank Liebig, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=72157122
Wiesel in Röbel
The Metaphone of Pain
He said it was a megaphone
It was emphasized in the movie
(in the play, first)
Then he found love with someone
Who was dying
And I don’t think he wanted to hear
The noise at all, let alone amplified
For there is a quietness to pain
Small cries that stay mostly in
I don’t mean the whimper
Though that’s fine
I mean the part that wants to cry out
THIS HURTS
Afraid to meet an indifferent world decrying
There are problems all over,
Fella
Sista
Get up and get on with it
But this is why
A Grief Observed is better than
The Problem of Pain
It got through
We listen
As we feel
And pay attention
Not to noise
But to a quieter insistence
C L Couch
Shadowlands, a play by William Nicholson
Albert Bridge, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12490512
Tapestry
Times goes in ribbons,
Moving flat, overtwining
Three or more to make a braid
Or some kind of Moebius phenomenon
The writer lives in Spain
Time is different there for him
I live in the Northeast
Time moves incessant
Where busyness is a virtue
Invoke Einstein
The bridging through wormholes
Impedance, or allowance, of dark matter
Making standing still to FTL all
Possible
And in a possible time,
What cannot be invented
What cannot be savored
In all moments
And as a coda, wonder with me
Please
What might be the artifacts
I’ve imagined time, my time
My life as
A banner or
A tapestry
(if a banner, I suppose there is a message
though I don’t know what that is)
All things are kept
All things recorded
The thread might not all be lasting
Some might have come undone
Been burned through misapprehension
Or bad days for
Another reason
But one strand, at least
Maybe two strands
Keeps or keep
The rest
So that there is intactness
To the living
With a record for accounting
Or maybe, only for display
When all is done
And Parousia installs
A great exhibition
I doubt any of my thread is gold
But I do bid for colors
Of all kinds
With bumps and cautionary stitching
Here and there
I don’t know how concerned I am
That the edges be so straight
C L Couch
Time isn’t the same everywhere.
[my emphasis]
You can think about pause as a habit. One executive I worked with would take five minutes to himself, to do nothing in particular, before he left the office. He made it a way to close the day, and leave work thoughts at work, rather than carrying them home with him. You might think about designing longer and deeper pauses for yourself, and how you could create a space where pauses are woven into the fabric of your life or work.
Image by Welcome to all and thank you for your visit ! ツ from Pixabay
Such a Church in Louisville, Kentucky
I hope it is still there
The black church I attended Sunday morning
Louisville in 1983
We were the only white folk there
The service went for hours (yes, it did)
And we were made so welcome
I’d like to have stayed for hours more
For Presbyterians, there was a lot of moving
Clapping and the singing was fantastic
Because they meant it
(it was tuneful, too)
The praying must have gone straight to heaven
Having made faithful conduits
Such an ordinary feature
We would have more meetings
Take our leave and go our separate ways
But we were together, then
Sinews in a toned body of
A holy congregation ‘round the world
When such people meet for such a purpose
Holy, holy, holy
C L Couch
Photo by Akira Hojo on Unsplash
Cat House
Last night I saw
Cat-friends
Allergies notwithstanding
There were people, too
They’re fine, I think,
The cats (I guess the people, too)
The screened-in porch was open to them
In fact, a breeze
And persons to protect the bowls
One cat’s from the other
The skittish cat leaped up
The other flowed like mercury
Upon the floor
Seeking a container of some sort,
I think
The way liquid does
We ate
They hoped
We watched a film
They stayed away
We had to pass through, after
Their insistence came alive again
Furballs of self-interest
That is their purpose
And their lesson
Nature to the rest of us
Not wrong to want our way
Not bad to serve affection
For no reason
Beyond being
C L Couch
Image by cocoparisienne from Pixabay
Still Life by the Window
The light comes through just right
And when it doesn’t go that way
I have the chance to
See it all tomorrow
Next to the air-conditioner lines
There is a work lamp
Good for reading under
There are eucalyptus branches in a jar
Actually, these vibrate
Challenging the lesson of still life
There are candles on a stool
A phone resting in its cradle
A coaster that’s a tile, promoting
Science in Puerto Rico
There are matches in a glass
Some English candy in an (English) tin
A pinecone
An ancient folding chair is folded
Next to these
(ten dollars from a store that whose
stock was old things)
Next to the jar, some crayons in a cup
Reminding me of color in the head
And in the world
No braces of birds or fruit cut in half
No mirror framed in gold
Or furniture I’d find in a museum
Now
This is my exhibition
Of my time
The early twenty-first century
By now, many were expecting
Keys to hovercrafts next
To gloves for flying jetpacks
For now, the guy who few in Lost in Space
Will have to do
We’ll catch up by leaping forward
I have a corner
And in yours
C L Couch
Still Life with Grapes, Peaches and Snail, signed by A. Ruysch and dated 1685
Anna Rausch – http://hoogsteder.com/paintings/still-life-grapes-peaches-snail/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38783341
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