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
2 poems about presence
Quantum Theory
God
You are around
Visiting nuclei
Somehow
Also gliding with
The quanta
Inside
Colliders
In the air
Presentable
In earth and sea
All the igneous
Layers
Of creation
Riding the rings
And showing where they meet
Between
Well
Galaxies
Connected by comets
As Hermes runners
With
You know
Cosmic messages
We’re still
Trying
To interpret
So that one day
We might message back
Words that Rise
I am alive
So are you
You might be reading on my shoulder
Waiting for the final words
To calculate
And then
More importantly
Go outside to play
Then later on
More words
Inexorable
For you
Inexorable
A readership
A friend
A nemesis
When
Necessary in revision
Or keep it
To yourself
And we’ll discuss
The other things
Inside
Or outside
Should it be
A fall day
Accommodating
Certain kinds
Of ease
Enough
Between us
C L Couch
Photo by NASA on Unsplash
Jupiter as Seen from the Hubble Space Telescope
Salvation Chair
Really
Now
And should the Spirit
Come to call
After the dancing
For the sky
After all the lights released
Half
A world on
That’s felt
One’s own half of the world
After ingesting
All petitions
In all the other continents
Even on the
Needful
Melting fields
To the south
And north
Between the poles
It stops
To dwell a while
In my
Clay house
And maybe find a room
For me
In a truly quiet hour
While I give all the rest over
To
Possession
And renewal
At the same time with
All other crises
And the stretched-out needs
So
Casually asked
Sometimes
Please
Sit
Have something
While I work out with you
How to have
My own
On both sides of enigma
That is
Mystery
Of faith
That is
Saved
When given over
C L Couch
Anne Bradstreet, a prominent Puritan poet, employed the “clay house” metaphor in her work. In her poem “As Weary Pilgrim,” she reflects on the impermanence of the physical body and the longing for spiritual rest. Here are some lines from that poem:
A pilgrim I, on earth, perplext
wth sinns wth cares and sorrows vext
By age and paines brought to decay
and my Clay house mouldring away
Oh how I long to be at rest
and soare on high among the blest.
https://www.poetry.com/poem/3075/as-weary-pilgrim,-now-at-rest
(the note before the excerpt by Copilot)
Photo by Asim Hamid on Unsplash
inexactitude
1
first full day of summer
the solstice
slides around
though it’s our calendars
you know
and the inexact nature
of the world
as is
and maybe as should be
as
you know
the foundation
of everything
our math is built on pi
our philosophy
inexactitude
uncertainty
plussed or minused
into everything
we cannot count
without
knowing there’s less or more
the rings of everything
aren’t worried
about the x and y and
z axes
shall work
in angling somehow
off other
they work
it works
we work
and that is
all we know
and all we really need to know
2
who came up with this
uncertainty
some might say
the devil
though I think it was
the Lord
everything
a thing
and everything in motion
all the time
we measure
we presume to stop the thing for
numbers
but the thing keeps moving
everything keeps moving
so what can we know
okay
okay
well
maybe enough
for jazz
here is the formula we made
plus or minus jazz
3
the glory
by the way
that jazz is
a syncopated tribute
to creation
in a day
of
twenty-three hours
fifty-six minutes
plus seconds
for change
or the day
of an age
say
the jazz age
or how about
a day
as in the day
of thunder-lizards
or the day
of Arthur
of Morgaine
c l couch
photo by Igor Omilaev on Unsplash
Blameless Solstice
Sun
With clouds
And lightning
Animate the forecast map
At noon
And I’m thinking
On line
These are the days
Of our lives
To come
Starting
Tomorrow
While today is
Simply hot
Well
“Steamy”
In the Southern
Or the tropical
Way
That is the grid
For the next week
Or so
We’re sliding
Into summer
So we might
Wonder
What is next
In our
Region
Relative
To the world
C L Couch
Photo by USGS on Unsplash
Maur Adrar Desert
(we might become a colorful desert, too)
written on the occasion of--well, yes--the heat but also a local town that declared a drought emergency today; what's ironic to me is that the town is set where a wide creek pours into a wide river (always strikes me odd when that happens)
clcouch123 
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