two poems of blessings


make me a world

the combination
old and new
forget the wineskins
(use them)
we’ll have inconsistency
in what we have
and use

old things for nostalgia
or because we say
some good left in them
then
something breaks
beyond repair
falling in with our national attitude of
disposability
moving the economy
and then
perforce
there’s new

or new because
and likely
we want something new
believing there is virtue
in a shininess
that someone else has made

that new-car smell
say

new food
certainly
from the garden that we know
so well
and count on
year by year
in the propriety
of seasons

so with age and youth
let something new
be built on
something old
and old foundation
like the Earth
itself

and there’s enough amelioration
treaty-making
for a day
having agreement that
again
bring in extremes
to love all forms
uneschewing norms averse
and plans

to build a city
or wherever
we might live in
with
and naturally
reasonably
needed diversity
the old
and new
for love


God bless and sing America
(which might mean north or south for jazz or all the rest)

I rhapsodize
without the blue
without the cool
of jazz
or jazzy notes
that Gershwin found
even
frenetically applied

so that we have
some music
for the nation
having co-invented gospel
then bringing home
with marching saints
New Orleans
then Memphis
and
Detroit

we need some music
for a country
as countries have
their own
and share
Olympically
also for normal moments

who should last a day
without some
music
and who should want
to

play on
having composed
and also improvised
then crazy-legs it
song and
dance
for all
outside with hats on ground
inside in
the ticketed way

but must be for democracy
music
free
and even
freedom-ringing
yet the gospel
emphasize
the freeing part
the part that plays
release
from tyranny

refrained
only
in freedom
composition’s
notes
we play on 


c l couch


photo by Nathan Bingle on Unsplash