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The Best Is Yet to Come

The Best Is Yet to Come

 

The best is yet to come and, babe, won’t it be fine?

 

Dancing, crooning

Love songs

Ties and gowns or overalls and pinafores,

Doesn’t matter

There is glitter in the air

The lights of romance

There’s music from a combo

Ain’t it all fine?

 

There has to be more of this

Not an increase

Or exaggeration

But ongoing

The laughing, dancing, crooning combo

Always at hand

To have and have again

Not a party without end

But reasons to

Celebrate that last

 

The kind of work

(exertion of energy)

That heals

The smiles from musicians, which

Can say

We are free at last

And we love you

And an audience

In equal measure grateful

Taking part

Tomorrow there will be other things

And there will be tomorrow

For now,

There’s confidence

In this place of music

Fancy lights

(not the kind that blind)

Hands clasping on the dancing floor

 

Maybe we’ll go outside

Not because nature is tame

But because

It tames us

With its own lights of night

And gift of rock

For a dancing floor

 

This is a vision

Of necessity

Because the flesh that hears,

Touches, and responds

Should go on in some way

Call it paradise

The life renewed

That hasn’t lost a note or a step

 

C L Couch

 

 

“The Best Is Yet to Come”

written by Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh

Frank Sinatra and Count Basie performed and recorded for the album It Might as Well Be Swing (1964) and performed and recorded by many others.

 

photo by Manuel Inglez on Unsplash

Parque Natural de Sintra-Cascais, Sintra, Portugal

 

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More

More

 

There’s something more

It’s here

Inside the pale blue

Between the yellow light

And the branch’s skin

There is green, too,

Dark in the shadow

 

We can make it human

I suppose we always do

But there is another planet here,

A world whose talk

Is in the leaves

Whose senses know the light

And every color

Every texture,

Each thing that moves so that

Another thing might live—

It’s all cooperation

 

Learn from this

Don’t make it human yet;

It’s intimate already

It’s conscious because energy

Has wisdom

And gravity a story

 

The tree is a tale that moves

And also waits

So much to tell

More so than mute artifice

We should know this

And as we don’t

 

So wait!

All things are here

Enough for life, because it’s life

A history if

We could pull the sunbeams from the

Earth to read

We can’t for now

 

So listen, please

With all concrete senses

Best that we can do—

Please, listen

To the story that could save us

Every day,

If we don’t destroy

The binding and

The pages

Let ink run as blood from entropy,

Our self-made ruin

Of whole things,

Run into empty land

And lifeless water

 

Reclaimed by

An angry universe

Having expected

So much more

With all that had been given

Every word in nature

 

No wonder why

The angel kept, outside

Of paradise,

A flaming sword

Pressed by what’s inside

Ignited by protection of what’s true,

True stories, more

Than what we wrote

And what we wrote that we forget

 

Still having a last chance to hear

To receive

If only by the gateway,

A last chance to learn

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Erico Marcelino on Unsplash

The Wanaka Tree, New Zealand

 

7

For Those Dying Last Night

For Those Dying Last Night

 

 

I can wonder

How many died overnight

And I do:

From fires, murder—way too many guns out there

To make it easy

Earthquake without preparation

Before catastrophe is imminent

Volcanic flooding and

The killing funnel winds and so much more

 

Death from lack of funding

Lack of food

Water without sickness caused in

Drinking as we have to do

Death from addiction

Let’s pass fault like drawing fault lines

All around

 

It’s the death unnecessary

That is maddening

As in angering

And thinking that our planet’s people

We are insane

For valuing a life over the next

For execution

Or reward

And a temporal plutarchy

(as in for the moment)

Abrogates decisions from the rest

From the most

The vast most

Of us

 

Blame nature, if you will

It is so strong

But at worst indifferent

With signs drawn almost in miracle

That it would just as soon

Lavish Earth with green and blue

Morning mist of romance

Evenings of wind-song

If only we’d stop destroying all the sense

All the delight

Even the magic in

Everything we should know

Do better

 

No, frog—isn’t easy being green

When your world wants to wither you

In fact, find new places to do so

And turn a profit in the air

Made black before nightfall

And there’s a prophecy

 

We keep living to hate nature

It will find a way to act and show

It hates us back

 

 

addendum

 

Was it taming nature?

Or negotiating,

Beseeching it not to break

Our dams or roads

Or anything for which

We lay foundation?

Did we not ask for mercy

When we lay the track

And dredge the harbor

Back from where

It had newly settled from

Whose effort, I wonder?

Do we not beg the

Earth as we split it with our

Dredges, channeled water

Wide, fractured slate

Not to hate us but

To give us our reward?

Have we ever sought to understand

Balance, agree with

How it sets and how it turns

And how we might live well

With it?

If so, then

That’s the song to sing

 

 

C L Couch

 

 

 

Photo by Marc Szeglat on Unsplash

Hawaii, United States

Lava from Kilauea on Hawaii flows into the ocean. I shot this picture in October 2017. More on my website volcanoes.de.

 

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The Tell

The Tell

 

In the future, should we have it

We might gather into upper rooms

Keepers of technology

With those of bread

To tell a story of

What was lost, was kept

Not forgetting that we write

New chapters in

Our saga

 

Rising, falling passages like

Exploration of an ocean

Something like discovery

Reconquest when we call for it

Removing home

 

There is a center with

A monument to keeping

We gave away so much

Forsaking clarity

We held too closely, crushed it

Everything that was a gift

Finding we had no real talent in

Adding to creation

When there could have been alliances

 

Finally, nothing’s lost

If it must change again

And we with it

We’ll have what we have

In keeping up with prophecy

Fields we didn’t have to fight. for

Nature in benevolence to share

 

Partnership with

The ground at last,

The sea and all its colonies

We have a place, if regulated

By our betters whom we knew

And would not recognize

And the better us

In time for staying

And for leaving

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Touann Gatouillat Vergos on Unsplash

Lake Louise, AB, Canada

On the ice. Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/touann.gv/

 

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Solacing

Solacing

 

I’m tired, but it’s the kind

Of tired that comes from sleeping for

A while,

Waking up and wondering what time it is

The clouds and unspring-cool help

This along

But it’s not unpleasant disorientation

I know I’ll rise

And this day will happen

 

Coffee and toast,

The closest thing to routine

It seems allowed

A normal day, what’s that?

I couldn’t tell you

I don’t fear boredom but

I fear being dull

Like the poor boy Jack

 

Life should have sharp edges not

For cutting but for

Carving toward brilliance

As if whittling wood could

Somehow make a diamond

 

Nature says hello

Me, too

I hope we both cooperate

I’d like you to have this day as well

 

C L Couch

 

 

(smoky diamond, public domain)

 

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Paean

Paean

 

I don’t know what time it is

I mean, it’s mid-morning

Not in an hour of

Dramatic dark or anything

The sky outside’s a wash, in fact

Enough light for movement,

Nothing added

 

But I have slept, at last

And feel the thankful fullness

That comes and lives inside

For a while,

When the right kind of unconsciousness

Has happened over hours

 

There are images of nature on TV

Some kind of early-winter story

In March, I can afford

To let it be romantic

All the layers

That they wear

And that nature provides

 

(later on I look;

it’s ten fifty-nine)

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Jaanus Jagomägi on Unsplash

 

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Learning

Learning

 

I wish I could capture nature

Which isn’t right, I want to cooperate

To live in harmony,

Which modern poets say we cannot do

I want to find the metaphor

That catches all I see

And it must come through nature’s voice

And ear and eye

 

Not mine

For the mentor is out there

To tutor me inside

 

The sky, the leaf, the chlorophyll

The classroom of a cell

Time is the tuition

Finding what is ultimately real

The assignment

 

I know what is in the room is real, though

The cells are stable, and so

Much never moves

I can learn here, too

Through darkness on pale leaves

And don’t think that I’m ungrateful

To have life and the moments

 

But, yes, the better teacher’s out there

So the transcendentalists thought, and they

Were right

I should be outside

Playing

Walking if not running

Or sitting still to let the air present a better lecture

Than I’ll ever hear inside

 

I’m learning

I’m in love

The world and I will never be the same

Catch me

I’m on a current, and

The wind will make it hard for me to return

 

 

C L Couch

 

 

(image–“404” when I tried to track for attribution)

 

 

3

Tomorrow Look for Litany

Tomorrow Look for Litany

 

Quiet nature

And it’s not

It’s noisy—screeching, scratching,

Tearing, flapping, crying out

In pain or loss or delight

 

It’s an uneven, all-textured

Unbalanced affair

Not all spheres are smooth in space,

Not every nest has beauty

 

There are scars and broken limbs

That bespeak mortality

But could we have it any other way

 

There is math in the nautilus

And harmony when mourning doves

Begin the day in need

Conversing with each other:

 

Come, join me

In this tree, set with me

 

C L Couch

 

0

Science News

Science News

 

I write in quiet, almost

in secret, based

on a news story about

our arctic ice

 

we have less of it now

because the Earth

is warmed

 

in response,

there will be cloud cover

widening to blanket

all our works and

worlds,

 

which will then be

colder, the frigid air

of a new ice age

that, in

fact, we will

have ushered  in

 

front seats to

a winter’s theatre;

 

is nature vengeful, we

might ask—and

we may not live

to know,

 

which is why I like to

keep it silent,

as it really shouldn’t

know our

 

plans consorting newly

with

the cosmos;

 

nature there and

here—I

am certain they send

messages to

each other,

 

while we float on

unrest

inside the heavens

 

 

https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/science-ticker/arctic-sea-ice-shrinks-second-lowest-low-record?utm_source=Society+for+Science+Newsletters&utm_campaign=16c1b6a2fc-Latest_From_Science_News&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_a4c415a67f-16c1b6a2fc-104669493

(9/20/16)

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