For Edwin
Evidently
It’s
Hubble’s birthday
Happy Birthday
Your gift
To us
Rendering so many things
More clearly
Maybe our gift
To you
Our continued faith
In the sky
World Children’s Day
Today
As well
If we remember taking boxes ‘round
With
Trick or Treat for UNICEF
Collecting quarters
Then millions of quarters for
The cause
The cause of
Children
Need we say it
Though we forget
We adults
Forget
Leaving children inside schools
Or not counting them at all
(beyond
certain
grids)
Until they’re grown up
Into rivals
For our power
For our love
In the mean time
They are forgotten fodder
Uncounted
In the strategies for
War
Women and children
We still say
Which
Didn’t work
On liners
Any more than battlefields
Inside
And in back of
Loss
Hunger
And
Disease
And worse on them
Than on
The older us
Which we older ones might not
Want
To believe
Even though
The wretched things attack
Hope
In the young
As well as young awareness
Okay
We’ll say
And even mean
They are precious
And
They are our future
And they are precious
And
They are our
Present
Last Work of the Day
I think
Not of life
But
To move on a little
Unzip the sweater
Change
The shoes
And leave the make-believe
Awhile
How about
As is supposed to happen
We take the feeling of the sweater
The softer shoes
And
Made-up imagination
With us
Then meet
With feathered insights
Muscled inspiration
On
As has been said
The morrow
C L Couch
Photo by Lawrence Chismorie on Unsplash
Alexander Calder, the sculptor/mobilist whose work is featured here (in Switzerland), constructed a mobile for the children of Pittsburgh, which floated near the entrance to the Carnegie Museum—a favorite thing for me, when a child, to behold
Pittsburgh references to Mister Rogers, too
(x = space)
x
x
City of Angles and Approaches
x
Steel city
Iron city
City of bridges
Renaissance city
First gateway
To the west
City of immigrants
City of technology,
Once heavy manufacturing
Collapsed
x
City of
Corporate headquarters
Three wide rivers merge
The Allegheny and the Monongahela
Meet to form
The Ohio
Cargo moves from Pittsburgh
Down the Ohio
To meet the Mississippi
x
City of
Great universities
And hospitals
Expensive housing
While expanding
City of neighborhoods
Old
Entrenched in the best way
And changing
x
City of
Triangular streets
(those three rivers)
Midwest
Meets Appalachia
Mines and mills
Mostly closed
With careers and lives
Changing or still
Like statues without hearts
As well as movement
x
Life must move
This great city moves
My childhood home
I leave and return
Come back, it says
Drive through the tunnels
And behold me
Take the funiculars
Again
Gaze at me from
Mount Washington
I am here
For so many people
I’m here for you
x
C L Couch
x
(on the last day while visiting with family)
x
x
Photo by Meriç Dağlı on Unsplash
x
Sunday Matinee
A deep sigh is a good thing
Unplanned
It takes regret
Folds it into wings and lets it go
Not that it will leave
For good but
Might fly out of grasp
Maybe out of mind before
It re-alights
And I have to take it back
Exhalation causes other things
To leave
Molecules we’d rather do without
Maybe some toxic atoms
Elements of life that will work better
Somewhere else
Lead and mercury
Irradiated particles that come from
Life too near a glowing factory
These days
It’s all right
Nothing much more dangerous than
When the smoke rolled out
From Pittsburgh to
Its suburbs
Generations’ mischief
Doesn’t seem to change
Like parents to campsites, we should leave
The world a better place for
Children
We gave up on that
I’m not sure why
C L Couch
“Paper Plane” by Xavier Ríos
La fabrica de nubes – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=68404545
Early Morning Half-Light
I had a dream and in it
A love and I
With a friend were talking about
Seasons
I was asked if I liked the snow
At the time we were surrounded
By it
Nonetheless, I said I liked snow
Fine
And my dear one said so, too
Clearly, our friend at the time
Only wanted to hear
About warmth
So I waxed
(maybe that’s a mansplain)
I like four quarters to the year
With time for everything
I’m sure I had that when a child
In Pittsburgh
Though it’s not like that
Now
Global warning having moved
The even year up north
Somewhere in New York
I looked at the one and thought,
Maybe we’ll go there
And then dreams do what they do
C L Couch
“Vier Jahreszeiten” (Bernd Altenstein) am Holler See in Bremen
JeKr – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14692213
Lent 13
We kill them
in New Zealand.
We kill them
in Pittsburgh.
We kill them when we leave
disasters go unplanned.
What is wrong with us
that we must in living
(dying)
ways deny the worth
of each of us
in every moment?
There is an answer:
maybe it starts small
within a verdant nucleus
and then another.
And then we make something like
synapse so that
the network of humanity
cannot function in any other way
but connected.
C L Couch
New Zealand Mosque Massacre Live-Streamed
“Let’s get this party started.” Those were the chilling opening lines of a now-viral Facebook live video streamed by the gunman who casually and methodically killed at least 41 people at a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand Friday. Eight more people died in an attack at another mosque, but it’s unclear if the same gunman was responsible.
Split Apple Rock in Abel Tasman National Park, New Zealand
Split_Apple_Rock_Abel_Tasman_National_Park_New_Zealand.jpg: Alexander Klinkderivative work: —kallerna™ – Split_Apple_Rock_Abel_Tasman_National_Park_New_Zealand.jpg, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6428938
in the neighborhood
in the neighborhood of make-believe
it’s always a beautiful day
blue, sunlit (spotlit), houses even
trolley rolls making celestina music
it could not be otherwise, since
it’s make-believe, and we would imagine
only ever placid scenes, i guess
the studio was in pittsburgh, home of
contrary weather, snow, ice, deep
temperatures cold or hot
and much is changeable throughout
the day, though i don’t think this means
dissembling—
after all,
we make this up
for and by our host, the
peaceful man
i might wish for different days,
something cloudy for a change
maybe an unobtrusive rainfall or the
kind of snow just right for angels and
snowpeople or the kind of hot that takes
us joyfully to swimming pools
or inside icecream shops
this would make my make-believe, i guess
different skies for different days
without destruction caused
by anything, and that
would be made-up, indeed
eschewing tempests of reality
taking only friendly patterned skies with us to
meet the king of superstitious days
c l couch
TARS631, Attribution, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20684319
Linie 43, Wien
L’Simcha
It happened in my one-time town
It could happen anywhere
We’ve known that for a while, now
We like the violence we have in
The arenas
Until we have to pay
A prayer service
Affirming spiritual courage
A coward’s assurance of easy
Semitic targets
Let’s go to church and kill
Brings his guns
What is the time
What will we do
The news mentions “a search for answers”
But the answers are all over, everywhere
There’s no mystery here beyond the numinous
The life of faith that the synagogue enjoys
The people there
Their guests
And anything by way of intercession
For the rest of us
Confirm
That eleven people died
We have to say so far
Worshipers and officers who are wounded
And more
In need of mortal healing
And more
The killer still alive
Pray for forgiveness sometime
Not today
Sorry I don’t have a bigger feeling
Not today
C L Couch
Where a 3,000-year-old tradition meets a 5-year-old’s curiosity.
Tree of Life or L’Simcha Congregation is a traditional, progressive, and egalitarian congregation based in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood.
We offer a warm and welcoming environment where even the oldest Jewish traditions become relevant to the way our members live today. From engaging services, social events, family-friendly activities, and learning opportunities to support in times of illness or sorrow, we match the old with the new to deliver conservative Jewish tradition that’s accessible, warm, and progressive.
If you haven’t visited us yet, we welcome the chance to introduce you to our community!
The End of the Story
My Pittsburgh neighborhood of Aleppo
Is dying
The last reports are terrors
Military action lost strategically
To killing
Civilians who lived there only
Or came to help the ones already wounded
Final words are spoken through
Electrons, visiting upon the world
The revulsion of the void
Of life, which is all that is
Increasing here
Wait, my mistake, it’s Aleppo
In Syria
The first city
Still dying, still dead
Still a message to those of us
Who read and pray
And politic and must go on
The last Marx brother
In a raucous comedy turned horror story
Convicted, we establish
A new front for life
In places we might own for
A while longer
Otherwise, there might be nothing
All around
C L Couch
Pittsburgh Last Night
Pittsburgh where I grew up
Five persons killed by two others
Using guns for the sole purpose
Of murder
The victims
Hoping without conscious
Thought to take part in the
Open—a backyard festivity
Homiest of parties
Home belief destroyed
Celebration as a cause
Never believed in again
Debates will go on
Who cares
The sides were answered
Yesterday
Talk is over when bullets
Tear through people
Debate done
clcouch123 
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