Ode to Small Things
The toast has jumped
Thank you, toast and toaster
Those who made you
Then
Those who made you
Let’s have an ode to
Every small thing that’s good
Typing
Lids that unscrew
Peanut butter
George Washington Carver’s inventions,
The ones that were never made
You and me
And each one of us,
Small upon the planet
Large in worth
And skill
And gratitude
For being made
And someone of us who
Might fix everything
C L Couch
https://pxhere.com/cs/photo/590878
Blue Rhapsody
If someone should take a sword
And stab me through the head
And I don’t die
What am I
I press my temples, narrowing the blade
Closer to the center
Nothing much happens
The pain implodes
The bleeding is inside
A Shakespeare-like character might say
I am undone
I am wounded
I am slain
Yet to look at me,
I’m altogether
Naked the blade
An alloyed monster from the sky
Maybe it’s an allergy
Maybe it’s a growth
May I am too tired
Too taken to read more
But I can open a blank page, one
Without text for now
As I have opened here
C L Couch
image
High Level
There is a mourning dove visiting
Outside
Have I mentioned that,
He or she?
It pushes its tail feathers through the
Padding I pushed in from the other side
Next to the
Baffles of the air-conditioner
In the afternoon, the bird is gone
I push the padding
Back
In the morning, it returns
To push the foam strip through
With the tail again
I want to negotiate
The bird may stay, but I need
The air
It’s hotter than the season typically
Affords,
And I write on my side
For now, it’s only us
I’m not sure what it’s doing, she or he,
Building a nest maybe
Mourning doves
Aren’t good at that,
Though I’m impressed with the
Chartres-like, circular
Labyrinth design
Of round, broken sticks
Arranged, frankly, more like a coaster
For my mug of coffee than
An avian home
For old or new
We’ll work something out
If not, winter finally will
Drive
Us both away
C L Couch
photo by Terry Johnson
Apology
Sometimes I look into sky
There can be clouds
More viscerally when it’s stars
We see bucolic things
And we should
But sometimes it falls back on me
The sky, the stars
And if one can feel vertigo
When sitting still
Well
I’ve tried to imagine it all
And it has smacked back on me
The universe, as if I’m told
Cannot take me now
Don’t even try
It’s not yours
Someday, maybe
You’ll know your place
And your way around
C L Couch
(too beautiful, too much)
https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1707a/
Half-Shut
It’s Sunday, and I’m tired
Somewhere the Gospel’s being read
And someone’s teaching from it
Good words, I’d like to think
I am here and writing differently about
A story that won’t be read in church
Not to sour-grape it
I don’t mind the anonymity
My story’s sad and uninspiring, unless
One needs to hear about
A mundane struggle, mostly secular
The seeking of good news inside one’s head
Though it’s not there
Not in the neighbor’s heart, either
It’s in the book
It’s in the neighbor’s heart
It’s in my head
(My heart, too)
But I have to hear
With two sets of ears that hear
In case the first set’s not so functional
(If you didn’t know, the deaf tend
To hear better)
Until something is opened
Nothing is going to happen
That’s the capacity that’s missing
And the action
They are there
It’s simple access, really
Like most things, altruism, sympathy,
Or sacrifice,
It’s made
It happens
With a choice
And on a tired day
When Sunday best is not enough
(It rarely is)
When the soul is split between awakening
Or remain embraced within the monolith
Half-shut is still half-open
And sides are being called for
Final play
Choose this day
Choose, this day
C L Couch
image courtesy of Charlotte Zoller
https://www.mfa.org/programs/music/millennium-gospel-choir-1
Premature Burial
Terrifying
To end life before its ending
To box up everything we were
Tie it off, put it away
Other things we
Stack in front
Accumulated memory
Acquisition of scar tissue
Threatening open sensations go
Beneath
When we were young
Nostalgia doesn’t kill, though
It hurts
It has to
Though we have days
Years
Minutes
I can’t count your seconds
Though maybe leaving some
Uncounted has merit
Leaving open
Room to grow
C L Couch
(good page to read)
Prismatic
It’s math, you know
Yellow on blue and green
Make joy
Black and white equals
Good
All the colors are from God,
And they are gifts
That harmonize
The promise of a rainbow
The sign of Noah
A pledge not to
Destroy but leave things
To build
C L Couch
Lord,
I don’t know what I’m doing
I know I often act misdirected
But where is the magic
The spotlight that tells me
I’m in the right place
And on the good way?
Came out of nowhere
I just heard that phrase used to
Sell something
A cliché, but it’s poetic
Really
Out of nowhere, ex nihilo
Philosophy
But isn’t that how you create?
Out of nothing appears
Matter
To set new flesh upon a wound or
Fill a gulley in the desert with
Water unheard-of in the
Season
Out of nothing I was made
The spark in emptiness that fused
A spirit to new cells,
And I am here
Though you’ve always been here
And I can’t say I understand that
How you are in the charges
Of my neurons
And the pulses of my heart
And over Earth
And through the universe of chances
Although I still feel useless
And pathless
For the Gethsemani contemplative
It was enough to know
Random instincts somehow speak to
Providence
That isn’t me
I’m not so smart
Or self-sufficient
Maybe
He wasn’t, either
We both want to know
And what do we find out?
We wander an agnostic landscape
Step toward uncertainty
An answer in a
Moment
And for the next,
Maybe
Will that do?
For us, it has to
And bold enough, if cautious
To go beyond the mortal shell
To tread in a fossil sea
To take a walk on Mars
C L Couch
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap040628.html
Philemon’s Pitcher
I wished for more
I prayed for miracle
A job, a home
Companions
A car to get me there and
Back again
For clothes that set and
Looked good
Well, good enough
Food that might hold me
And I might enjoy
And what happened
With these petitions I don’t
Know,
But I think when at I’m the gate or
Once inside
I might be told:
Did you not notice the extra
Potato in the bag
The extra gasoline already in the tank
The fifteen minutes more
Than should not have been available
The one who held the door and
Was never seen again?
The miracles of stories must be large,
I guess
Miracles as molecules
Go uncounted
Unconsidered
And those in between
Not for the book but nonetheless
The provenance of angels who
Entertained us unaware
C L Couch
http://www.icollector.com/ancient-greek-wine-jug-300BC-2280081_i8229518
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