Open Air
(a day for independence in the offing)
The wars go on
The war at home
Matters of manipulation
Clearly
We are way too comfortable
To bandy with the truth
Rather than considering the need
In each other
Then
Over there
Wherever there
We know
Might be
And if we don’t feel right
Inside/outside
And
What have you
We could always pause
Easing up
To take a breath that isn’t pressed upon
Free to assess
Who’s and what’s important
To find it isn’t politics
Pretenses toward power
But that the real
That isn’t on a screen
Or in an ad
Involves
Instead
A word
An act
Toward love
The smallest thing to do
To make a difference
Sometimes accumulative
A cascade formed
Like the surprise
To hear in water
Over rocks and such
Inside the forest where
Truth is kept
Inside the given
Green and blue
The authenticity in
Nature
Even though it claws
Sometimes
In truth
For protest
Of destruction
Life
Actual hurt
Real need
We can live for these
To answer these
With practicality and
This
Not politics
Or profit
Except
To serve
Rather
To call it love
C L Couch
(on 2 July)
Photo by Bri Tucker on Unsplash
(Holland, Michigan)
The Shape of Day
(especially for anyone who’s disabled)
God keep
Us
This day of
Blue-white moderation
A day for
Breathing well
Unlike the closeness
In the hours
Of a heatwave
I drove
I walked
My limitations easier
For a while
I got some farmer’s food
Came back town
Right-angled through
The traffic grid
Not knowing
Any other mindset
Over the wheel
Set aside
Behind
And all the walkers
On an official summer’s day
Though this day was good
Breathy
Flavorful
Easy on robotic work inside
If in a fancy
Over the life of batteries
I have a year or so
Until
Sources must
Be switched out
But for now
I have today
Before we’re told
The next heatwave
Should arrive
By
Thursday
Sigh
C L Couch
Photo by Matt Artz on Unsplash
The Ascent
Creation
Foundation
Re-creation
What remains the same
What changes
We cycle through
We break the cycles
Or they’re broken
For us
Inventions all around
Adaptations
Also what is newly made
With materials of Earth
Sometimes of us
The controversy
What might we interject
Though we haven’t changed a generation
On our own
Except in that
We have more things
Sometimes for more time
And then fill the time with
Pursuits
Playful
Progressive
Or vainglorious
Are we stages
Phases
Headed toward a final place
A seeing place
A hearing place
A place to touch
And on
Which could be battlefield
Or a launching platform
To meet divinity’s wider hand
As we are
Able
Having chosen virtues
Carefully
And as a better planet’s people
A world
That we made better
Also
Maybe first
In
And of ourselves
C L Couch
Photo by Michael Dziedzic on Unsplash
Out of Cosmogony
(that is, 2 poems from out of the arrangement of things, however fancifully)
The Place of Drones
Should someone set me
Atop
One tower or the other
Of the gate
On the bridge
That is not golden
Save in metaphor
Well
I better be an angel
Delighting in
The lack of restraint
Being so high
And so perilous
A perch
That I could slide
Down the cable
Or merely leap
Into the Lord’s
Good atmosphere
Between the particles
The humans
Tragically
Provide
And is this how
The angels
Who aren’t demons
Do it
Which is
To set themselves high
Or low
To have the better vantages
Scouting for assignments
Maybe the demons
Lie this way as well
With
Or without wings
Sacrificed
Mything Pages
And
Do I have
Anything for you
Today
How about
A word of God
That was a word
In the beginning
To make
Everything
Thus
Setting precedent
For spells
Inside fantastic
Stories
About making smaller
Things
Admittedly
Though wondrous
In eldritch hue
And timing
All the same
That
Someone said
Is the meaning behind miracles
The usual thing
And yet
The timing
Is extraordinary
Is saving
In fact
Of dwarves in trees
Or the royal child
Trapped in
The tower
Before
An evil pretender
With forces
Breaks into
The easily
Barricaded chamber
While such
Are stories
And creation
Is a story
Too
Recalling
That the myth
Is grounded
In the real
And our fantastic tellings
Overdone
Or undertoned
Are actual
When happening
Before becoming
Passages
And chapters
(John 1:1)
C L Couch
Photo by Syd Wachs on Unsplash
suburban childhood
Saturday morning
cereal
doughnuts
cartoons on TV
trying to forget there might be chores
(we had
done a week of school
after all)
Sunday would be church
and then who knows
the rest of homework
fretting
over Monday
c l couch
photo by Pawel Kadysz on Unsplash
For
June is
For
The end of spring
The summer of surprise
June is for
Berries
For first imagining
Of an adventure
All again
In green
C L Couch
(MidAtlantic USA—you could write where and how it is for you)
Photo by Julie Blake Edison on Unsplash
Wondrous
I love you
Says the Lord
Which is
Why
I made you a world
With stars around it
And isn’t it
Grand
The starlight
To give you something
Wonderful
To dream
C L Couch
Photo by Tengyart on Unsplash
Kind Brief Invocation
O God
Be our Tuesday help
Forgive us our
Mistakes
Our other-side-of
Edenness
‘Cause
Sometimes
We let fall
Or we forget
Without malice
But our flaws
Pervade
There is
The Kintsugi of wisdom
Help us fix
And even beautify
The scars
By
Gold understanding
C L Couch
Photo by Brian Pappel on Unsplash
[sun and dew transform—goldify, as it were]
(maybe) it’s not that easy
we find
an abstract
verdant image
is it a meadow
or a forest of
a hemisphere's summer
(someone) looking
up
or
(more) fancifully
is it the capillary network
in a frog
sometimes it isn’t easy
being green
sometimes with any number of
means
by interests
it’s easy
(well
if) with being hard
having green
lives
hale
on green worlds
c l couch
there is referenced the song “Bein’ Green” by Joseph G. Raposo, famously sung by Kermit the (green) Frog
photo by Artur Łuczka on Unsplash
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