Trite-Time Relief
It was a gloomy, humid day
Hot outside, no rain
We could stand
A dark and stormy night
C L Couch
Washington Irving, Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Madeleine L’Engle, Snoopy
Photo by Andre Benz on Unsplash
Night Study
I just heard
A study shows
The work of studiers
That trees sleep at night
Circadian life
From the sometime home of the cicadas
And, you know, I don’t think I ever climbed
My treehouse at night,
Which has nothing to do with anything
Except that if I had
Disrespect now showing
I might have felt them rest
And had more of my own:
A web of branches overhead
My father’s skill beneath
And the noise of night
Singing as it should
For the child’s ears
C L Couch
Photo by manu schwendener on Unsplash
Münsterplatz, Basel, Switzerland
Antares lights at the Christmas market in Basel. More here https://manuschwendener.ch/2016/12/04/antares
First Snowfall
It’s a muffled Sunday morning
That started late last night
With the first snowfall of the season
I brushed off the car as best I could
And started the slow drive back
From friends’ to my apartment
It’s the kind of snow that gathers as it falls
The kind that quiets everything
Except reports of shovels on the walks
Especially at night, these are louder
Once inside, I heard them for a while
Counting out the measure
Of a post-lapsarian world
C L Couch
Moderate snowfall in parts of #Estonia this evening 19.03.2018. #libetee #lumi
Ghost Walk
The past haunts it,
Doesn’t it
It walks with us at night
Well past the witching hour
Sometimes I am awake
On my side
Fearing that my heart might sometime explode
Figuratively but
A crisis with literally arrhythmic parts
It can be a problem
How do I stay awake
(too easily)
And how might I fall asleep again
(that’s hard)
There is an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show
When, for fear of something, Laura doesn’t want to
Sleep, and so she flips up
All the switches in her house
Plays music and the television
And gets the neighbor to stay up
With her
And there are other alterations
And, you know, I’m sure
There is some resolution
(it’s a half-hour show),
Though I have no idea what that was
But the black-and-white imaging is invoked
When I can’t sleep or think about
The lack of sleep
In the middle of a night and wish for rest
C L Couch
CC0 Public Domain
https://pxhere.com/en/photo/697047
Autumning
On a Sunday night,
we walked some streets in Cambridge.
It was fall. The streets were wet; the
air was chilled.
We actually found a small place
that served chowder. It was cheap,
and it was good. And I
imagined a hundred places like it in
the town. I think I
was right.
That was my first and so far last trip there,
though she came once to me. But
at the time, we were set at odds against
each other; there was no way
we could get it right.
C L Couch
Bicycles in the Rain
Mark Hornbuckle
Morning Dark
morning dark
it’s longer now
and night arrives
earlier—the
longer time for
black sky to have
its way
and in equinox-
thinking, this is
just
for we should not
fear the dark,
since there is
dreaming there
C L Couch
Fall into Night
Having slept late,
Perforce,
To my condition
It’s too soon
Now, the three-o’clock
Time when
The day turns
As it must
Toward autumnal
Night
And we notice,
If subcutaneous,
The knowing
Sense of
This;
Inside autumn leaves
We face
Alternatives:
To go dry-wilting
Into brown days
Or to
Flame like novae
In glory of
Expiring red,
Yellow tears or
Tears,*
Last bright orange
Bleeding
Dwindling into
Joyful or stressed
Evenings
Of our
Distinctive seasons
*reader’s choice
Notte
Italian night
In Umbrio, in Amatrice
At six-point-two—and now
Rest is something
Else
It is what remains
After all has
Fallen and a
Victim people
Try to rise
Nature has
Split the nation
We must go there
To reach into
Rocks and
Open earth
To remove
Into airy day
Those who must
Exhale still
In order to
Remove or rebuild
Notte bianca o in bianco,
In sleepless night
clcouch123 
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