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
Leaf by Niggling
Within days, autumn arrives
My favorite time because
It is cool
I mean, it’s hip, I guess
Though mainly it’s cool
Not frigid
Not torrid
Afire (without heat) in
A gift of color
In the south of south,
Fall will be spring
The warmer path to summer
C L Couch
Leaf by Niggle by J. R. R. Tolkien
Friday Felines
I will see cat-friends tonight
They will ignore me
I’m not feeding them
They’ll act as if they do not play
Though I know it’s different
One friend
Erstwhile Pennsylvania Quaker
Might decide it’s time for
A first-floor chase
Or to jump on me, reach toward my
Ear as if to say
Quietly through sharpened teeth,
Feed me
C L Couch
2 Chome-4-8 Daiba, Minato, Tokyo 135-0091, Japan
Justice for One
I want to hurt some people
No, not that
I want someone else to hurt them
It is a gypsy curse
Or something from a deeper quarter
Of New Orleans
Yes, I might use magic
But then Harry Potter dies
I won’t deserve the stories, anymore
Not encountering them is good
We live in different towns
Heaven help offenders who
Live on the same street,
Even the same side
In wanting vengeance, I change
Nothing but myself
I know a little about justice
The human kind can be corrupt
The divine part is in perfect balance
All the time
I can shake my fist
But God will not change anything
But changeable
In its own time
C L Couch
Photo by Calum MacAulay on Unsplash
The Agrestic Grocer, Orange, Australia
Weasels
I’ve never met a weasel
I hear they pop
Whenever there might be
A mulberry bush close by
And a monkey
I suppose comparing them to ferrets
Would be offensive
For one party or the other
Otters, maybe?
I guess weasels are their own kind
But are they slender and slippery,
Able, well,
To weasel out of things?
I have jury duty coming up
Maybe I could borrow a talent
Or two talents
Not that I mind
Fear of the unknown
I don’t know if weasels have that, too,
Which is why they move so fast,
If they do
C L Couch
Frank Liebig – Archiv Frank Liebig, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=72157122
Wiesel in Röbel
The Metaphone of Pain
He said it was a megaphone
It was emphasized in the movie
(in the play, first)
Then he found love with someone
Who was dying
And I don’t think he wanted to hear
The noise at all, let alone amplified
For there is a quietness to pain
Small cries that stay mostly in
I don’t mean the whimper
Though that’s fine
I mean the part that wants to cry out
THIS HURTS
Afraid to meet an indifferent world decrying
There are problems all over,
Fella
Sista
Get up and get on with it
But this is why
A Grief Observed is better than
The Problem of Pain
It got through
We listen
As we feel
And pay attention
Not to noise
But to a quieter insistence
C L Couch
Shadowlands, a play by William Nicholson
Albert Bridge, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12490512
Cat House
Last night I saw
Cat-friends
Allergies notwithstanding
There were people, too
They’re fine, I think,
The cats (I guess the people, too)
The screened-in porch was open to them
In fact, a breeze
And persons to protect the bowls
One cat’s from the other
The skittish cat leaped up
The other flowed like mercury
Upon the floor
Seeking a container of some sort,
I think
The way liquid does
We ate
They hoped
We watched a film
They stayed away
We had to pass through, after
Their insistence came alive again
Furballs of self-interest
That is their purpose
And their lesson
Nature to the rest of us
Not wrong to want our way
Not bad to serve affection
For no reason
Beyond being
C L Couch
Image by cocoparisienne from Pixabay
Still Life by the Window
The light comes through just right
And when it doesn’t go that way
I have the chance to
See it all tomorrow
Next to the air-conditioner lines
There is a work lamp
Good for reading under
There are eucalyptus branches in a jar
Actually, these vibrate
Challenging the lesson of still life
There are candles on a stool
A phone resting in its cradle
A coaster that’s a tile, promoting
Science in Puerto Rico
There are matches in a glass
Some English candy in an (English) tin
A pinecone
An ancient folding chair is folded
Next to these
(ten dollars from a store that whose
stock was old things)
Next to the jar, some crayons in a cup
Reminding me of color in the head
And in the world
No braces of birds or fruit cut in half
No mirror framed in gold
Or furniture I’d find in a museum
Now
This is my exhibition
Of my time
The early twenty-first century
By now, many were expecting
Keys to hovercrafts next
To gloves for flying jetpacks
For now, the guy who few in Lost in Space
Will have to do
We’ll catch up by leaping forward
I have a corner
And in yours
C L Couch
Still Life with Grapes, Peaches and Snail, signed by A. Ruysch and dated 1685
Anna Rausch – http://hoogsteder.com/paintings/still-life-grapes-peaches-snail/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38783341
Tentatively Yours
If we are to heal,
There has to be a hope
That someday it will be complete
That all the things that festered
Will have finally unwound
From the brain, the heart
Any infected organs
That persistence of pain will
Be replaced
With something like assurance in
Confidence of being well
That the counting that has met
Each day
Now useless
Will give way
To errands, nothing much
A nothing kind of day
Wouldn’t that be nice
Wouldn’t that be lovely
To have a day that’s dulled by
Anything but pain
Not to be morose
For what I have
I’ll still wrap around mortality
Until the glorious surprise
Of the next thing
C L Couch
Photo by Michael Anfang on Unsplash
clcouch123 
Recent Comments