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prose-poem

Frozen Yellow Rose

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Frozen Yellow Rose

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Is this a prose-poem or an essay or a Sunday homily (the text would be the Good Samaritan)?  I don’t know, but here it is.  Something I heard at church from those who were there.  I mean, were there in Houston.

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here’s what happened in Houston (Texas, USA) yesterday:

most homes do not have fireplaces and instead rely on electricity to power furnaces for heat and appliances for cooking and computers, but the power grid is out, it’s blank in Houston;

in grills or in makeshift places, Duralogs were burned and any wood that could be found or any charcoal left from summer or, indeed in a deep Southern place, the last time there was a barbecue;

the feeling was post-apocalyptic

there was a certain grocery store that powered up enough generators to preserve food and to allow people inside safely, though the numbers who could enter at a time were severely limited (because there is a pandemic raging ‘round the world and through Houston); this meant that there were thousands outside the store in line, waiting for their turn;

keep in mind it’s extra winter there just now, the temperature having gone into the teens during the day;

the manager of this grocery store or maybe it was the owner, walked up and down the line outside and said to folks, if you can’t pay for your groceries just now, don’t worry—get what your family needs, bread and baby food and such;

according to those who were there, this kind of thing was happening all over the city

coda

this does not account or provide sustenance for those assailed by the crisis of collapsing glacial ice in India that has stolen the lives of scores of people; this does not take care of COVID-19 or provide vaccine, something that the world sorely needs; this does not answer all the problems and frankly all the disasters that we suffer with here and there on planet Earth; it is a single story, and maybe we could let it have the power of a single story, which like creation stories or apocalypses or “The Gift of the Magi” or “The Artist of the Beautiful,” can be, well, pretty powerful

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C L Couch

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Power Failure: How a Winter Storm Pushed Texas into Crisis

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/article/Power-failure-How-a-winter-storm-pushed-Texas-15967411.php

Around 2 a.m. Monday, the full measure of the crisis Texas faced began to be apparent. Cold and ice had set in the day before, leading to spreading power outages across the state.

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Photo by Vlad Busuioc on Unsplash

Downtown, Houston, Texas, United States

drone view of a city

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Imposition of Immortality

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Imposition of Immortality

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The tree outside looked as if it were leaning toward the window.  I mean big parts, think branches and the bow.  Black against a gray sky, it all looked dramatic.  Worse, a little scary.  Trees have fallen down before.  In the back, a large one, bringing many wires with it.  In the backyard of the house I grew up in in Pittsburgh, a tall and wide willow.  Fell in the night, covering the backyard to be seen in the daylight.  The first big thing to fall in my nascent awareness.  Will the new tree fall?  I don’t know.  Who does?  The squirrels and dogs walked by?  Qué será, será, the Spanish say (and Doris Day).  It is what it is, we say these days.  All we are is dust in the wind.  I guess that goes for imposing trees as well.

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C L Couch

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Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

By William Wordsworth

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45536/ode-intimations-of-immortality-from-recollections-of-early-childhood

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Photo by Diane Helentjaris on Unsplash

Purcellville, Virginia

Old carved tombstone of a weeping willow tree in a cemetery in the countryside near Purcellville, Virginia in Loudoun County. The cemetery was integrated with the graves of African American and white Americans as was the nearby church.

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Columns

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Columns

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Google places e-mails inside three columns of its making.  There is the inbox, where go what it has decided has some urgency.  Then there is the “Promotions” part with ads for things and notices deemed of secondary or tertiary significance.  Then there is “Social,” where go posts from WordPress, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.  Here is where the blog posts go, which I should respond to.  I’m not sure how Google decides what goes where, since there is overlap and often I get blog notices in the inbox and advertisements, too.  When I’m feeling extra headaches and extra stress from bad neighbors in the building, the kind of stress that presses on my heart when otherwise it needn’t, the inbox is where I go first to catch up on things.  How much I might ignore depends on how bad the added pains might be.  I’ll go through the promotions next, ignoring most, because it’s relatively easy (because I ignore most of the notices for politics or my money or politics for my money of which I have little, anyway).  The column that’s ignored is “Social,” because I should devote good energy there and too often, especially lately, it seems I have none.

I know I’m missing many things.  And sometimes “Social” e-mails are slid over to the inbox, and I deal with them there because they’re there and so am I.  It’s not much of a strategy or a philosophy, because I let Google decide or WordPress (friends, maybe send things through e-mail).  The current time of extra stress and pain has been going on for a while, and it doesn’t help that the new editor at WordPress (the program) is majorly unwieldly.  But I keep up the writing and the posting part (parts), because that’s how it all begins.  And if you have forbearance, I am

thankful.

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C L Couch

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Photo by Alejandro Barba on Unsplash

Rotonda de los Jaliscienses Ilustres, Avenida Fray Antonio Alcalde, Zona Centro, Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico

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