creation

A Song about Creation

(x = space)

A Song about Creation

I am a Calvinist who

(enough of a Calvinist

who)

Believes the world has

Fallen with the first

Sin we decided to take on

The world should

Be different, though there

Are reminders everywhere

In nature, in the

Morning, in the soft way

That evening falls

Sometimes

Maybe it’s in newborn

Life that we have

The promise of creation

To be constant if not perfect,

Wonders in asymmetry

Science and religion

Taken over by

The awe that greets us

In the mornings of

Every hour, every day

Hexagons and spirals,

Nature seems

To favor these

(bee cells and nautili,

for instance)

And nebulae sometimes

Look like one-celled wonders

And for all the shapes

And sizes

In leaves and roots,

Mitochondria, and the

So-much larger flesh outside

Above and under all we know,

There is amazement

In waking to creation

Remade in amazement

Until “Earth and all stars”

Be renewed perfectly

One day,

A moment

Signaling forever

C L Couch

“Earth and All Stars,” a hymn composed by David N. Johnson

Photo by Gabi Scott on Unsplash

Denver Museum of Nature & Science

July 6, 2021 1

Carbon Copies

(x = space)

Carbon Copies

Sometimes I don’t know

Why I believe in God

Because God is unaffected

By my question

Or the doubt

God’s existence being

Unpredicated by my

Belief in God

It’s not the best start

To philosophy, though Voltaire

Speaks of our need

To invent God, where the

Need seems to have been

God inventing us

The universe

Cosmos, anyway

Might be a random

Set (set randomly)

Of chemical reactions

Given the first state

Of ephemera

Something or place we

Might have called

Etherea

Without a place

Or calling it,

God could be

God of random

We set the first

Dichotomy as chaos

And order,

When it might have been

Void and substance

Our having what we have

Through design

Or the lack thereof

That could explain the

Platypus or

Emu

Genesis

Out of genesis,

More than ex nihilo

While God cogitated,

Then declaring to the host

That more

Company was needed

Like the first,

The universe before

The universe

C L Couch

Photo by Michael M on Unsplash

June 11, 2021 0

Crazy Earther Kids

(x = space)

Crazy Earther Kids

How heavy

Is God’s hand?

Quarks and canyons,

Oceans

And neutrinos

Cosmic and subatomic

Creation and

Creating

God is clumsy,

And a ridge

Is formed missing the

Mountain top

Designed;

God sneezes—there’s

A platypus

God can be funny about

Making things;

When

We get there,

We might receive requests

To teach

The angels humor

Based on

All our

Earth experience

C L Couch

Image by pen_ash from Pixabay

January 22, 2021 0

Antecedents

(x = space)

Antecedents

I told my students,

Not so many pronouns

Making sure the subject is at hand

And it agrees

Not for the writer’s sake

But for mine

And any readers—

Say, a boss

Or those who must approve

The presentation with

The recommendation

Yet here I am, often

Making a mystery of it

I want you to work a little

Sorry

To track the subjects

And to understand

How often they are intertwined,

And that’s real

We have antecedents, too

Those who came before

And sometimes it’s a mystery

That we work out

With records and with words

To have something

Of a story

The genealogists with

Wisdom

And best-guessing

Giving answers so the rest of us move

On in the present

Where we come from

Is Earth

In a gorge that was a garden

In a crescent

By three rivers

It’s a story and a good one

Whether Genesis or

The Silmarillion

Or Gilgamesh or

Theogony (when he believed)

Or Metamorphoses (when he did not)

Or the God

Who placed a hand down from the sky

To Earth

To spread the plains and, around the edges,

All the mountains

Or one who came up from below

Closer to the ground

And loving it

Did make mortals when going below

Was needed

To sort out all the hot things there

(I made this last one up)

But all (real) depictions

Seem to contain a fall

Divinity or demons

Or our bad choices

They all live with us

(divinity, demons, choices)

Not only for the Calvinists

But as a reason

For the failures in a day

In an hour of time

Under the sun

Or in the argent light of moon

Wherever we trip,

Try to right ourselves

To dance again

C L Couch

Photo by Matt Nelson on Unsplash

Vonore, United States

September 5, 2020 0

Not a Game Day

(x = space)

Not a Game Day

(maybe another day)

We’ve had dark days

(two days’ packed clouds

and rain)

And that’s all right

We don’t soothsay

The weather, anymore

Storms are a nuisance

Comets intriguing

Too many withering days

Does not mean

God is judging us, though

God might have another

Idea, not about

Judging us through

Weather (God might be

glad we’ve outgrown that)

But keeping count

Regardless over

How we’re doing with

Created places

There could be a book

Maybe a computer bank

Maybe angels tasked with

Keeping score

Except there are too many

Teams to count

And Earth and each day

Is not a game

(sorry)

Most of the time

C L Couch

Photo by Zhu Hongzhi on Unsplash

September 1, 2020 0

The Originals

The Originals

We create and re-create

We must do this,

I think

The way animals return

To reproduce

It’s close work and

Intimate

Actions in a studio

Or on the line

What might tragedy encourage

Into making

Or a comedy?

I’m not saying it’s a law

It’s not

Sometimes a commission

Even patronage

Sometimes, though, merely

A happy accident,

As is said but really happens

Call it invention

Or an invention

Making and remaking

What is made a complement

And compliment

To a living and a breathing

Sometimes fierce, sometimes

Fanciful

Planet Earth

With places in the cosmos

When we’re ready

Though we’ll probably

Leave too soon

To find the faces

That have been

Quietly challenging

Wizening with age

Maybe waiting

For the far more mortal

Upstart young

To launch

To find our way to you

C L Couch

Photo by Jenna S on Unsplash

“Painting the Summer”

June 20, 2020 11

Born Ready

Born Ready

There are two

Quite often

And some more

We work in company

Best of all,

It seems

I guess we’re made that way

Porous, with no corners

But with openings

Ready in the making

To receive

Atomic intentions

Molecules that move

From skin to skin

One by one

We each remain intact

But space and matter have

Determined

All the places on

Each one of us that

Are ready to receive

Like sponge to sponge

Life like water

Fuller for the moving

And arriving

Tidal pools that live

Along the shore

Of every cosmic

And each metaphoric

Ocean

C L Couch

Photo by Marcelo Rivas on Unsplash

Tide pools, La Jolla, California, USA

June 18, 2020 9

Take Down the Cosmos from the Shelf

Take Down the Cosmos from the Shelf

It might be morning

Sing us a new day, please, O Lord,

And ministrations of the angels

Slough off dead leaves

From trees

And unliving skin cells from our bodies

Renew everything

And let all organic detritus

Feed what is living now

Maybe it takes more than miracle

To renew the Earth

Let alone start new life on other worlds

We won’t know until we get to these

Or receive their emissaries

Maybe in meteors and microbes

For a start

Is it all expanding,

Then what happens next?

Who’s to say it doesn’t slingshot back

To start it all again?

Or that something won’t be surging

From the center, once there’s

Room

Like black holes we have found

In the middle of known galaxies,

Which might be feeding

Something that will birth among the stars

As stars

For introduction to new layers

And new ages

Bright leaves as pages

For stories we would have never

Otherwise conceived

There is some faith

And magic of belief

In all that’s startling

Ancient tome and

What is behind that

With a virtue and a prayer

We take it

Songs inside muscles

Here is creation

C L Couch

Photo by Maarten van den Heuvel on Unsplash

October 16, 2019 1

Gifting

Gifting

I have words on deck

Nervous words, maybe

Never having been at bat before

It’s a spring day, looks to be warm

And humid

Cloudy for the outfield

We play on grass, of course

But I don’t know

I’d like to ask for something new

That would be a prayer

Not in desperation

Not as in I haven’t got a prayer

(what does that mean, anyway—

who came up with that?)

But a petition with some savor

Since it’s offered on the plate

The paten

Both with words

Might I add something new

To the drafts of yesterday,

Yesteryear?

What I’m wondering on this hazy

Day is about the gift

Of time, of weather, gravity

The air I breathe, the water I hope

To drink

What food I’ll have

And maybe something valid or

Viable to do

All these things,

A gift for me?

Why?

I am no worthier, and I think that’s the point

Pulled out of eternity and time

There are things for me

Because there are things for you

The largesse of the cosmos is

For all of us

It has to be

Not to own but certainly to use

Not to twist and tear into submission

We know that nature will not stand for that

There will be repercussion

That will

Ruin the unrighteous

And take all of us along as well

A gift that is judicious

A gift that is not kept

More gifts will come tomorrow

If we do our part receiving

The universe is ready

C L Couch

NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) – http://hubblesite.org/image/3471/news_release/2015-01, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38165284

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has revisited the famous Pillars of Creation, originally photographed in 1995, revealing a sharper and wider view of the structures in this visible-light image. Astronomers combined several Hubble exposures to assemble the wider view. The towering pillars are about 5 light-years tall.

May 23, 2019 0