Open Air
(a day for independence in the offing)
The wars go on
The war at home
Matters of manipulation
Clearly
We are way too comfortable
To bandy with the truth
Rather than considering the need
In each other
Then
Over there
Wherever there
We know
Might be
And if we don’t feel right
Inside/outside
And
What have you
We could always pause
Easing up
To take a breath that isn’t pressed upon
Free to assess
Who’s and what’s important
To find it isn’t politics
Pretenses toward power
But that the real
That isn’t on a screen
Or in an ad
Involves
Instead
A word
An act
Toward love
The smallest thing to do
To make a difference
Sometimes accumulative
A cascade formed
Like the surprise
To hear in water
Over rocks and such
Inside the forest where
Truth is kept
Inside the given
Green and blue
The authenticity in
Nature
Even though it claws
Sometimes
In truth
For protest
Of destruction
Life
Actual hurt
Real need
We can live for these
To answer these
With practicality and
This
Not politics
Or profit
Except
To serve
Rather
To call it love
C L Couch
(on 2 July)
Photo by Bri Tucker on Unsplash
(Holland, Michigan)
(x = space)
x
x
Plain
x
Sigh
It’s Friday morning
We’re told
The heat is crested
So low 90s today
Which still is hard
For those of us
From here
Above equators
(there are two
you know
tell Ecuador)
And the tropic lines
x
We’ll breathe into Saturday
Be grateful
When it rains
Maybe too much
But they will break
The drought
As well
x
And these are
My
And our
Issues
Over here
How is it where you are
How is your health
And your family
How is your neighborhood
And any community wider
You are
Or must be part of
x
I am perforce
American
Though America is huge
And we tend to take the name
And then apply it
To one part
x
You are French
Or Nigerian
Or Indian
Chinese
From idealized Tibet
From Ukraine
From Russia
x
You might be from the South
Or the Northwest
Or the Northeast
Maybe all the way up
(we say)
To Maine
Maybe you know
Or encounter at the supermarket
Stephen King
x
These are places
In the USA
In France
You have
The Côte d’Azur
In Greece
Santorini for an island
(that might have been the home
of Atlantis)
In Egypt
The upper Nile
Into Ethiopia
That was Nubia
In China
There’s the Gobi
The severest place on Earth
x
And there are the people
We are people
There
x
Inhabitants of the world
The team of Earth
One people
Now we’re leaving it
And shall need identity
x
Should we live in peace
Appreciating our diversity
All
The shapes and sizes
In our making
And our choosing
The lives we have
That is
The lives we make
x
And we should make them well
And have the freedom
To do so
Too direct
Too easy
Maybe
x
But too bad to be good
Sometimes it’s easy
Put it down
The weapons
And the prejudice
Evil conditioning
Perhaps
Somewhere inside
Take up something better
Food to share
Safe water
The love of life
You know
That someone else
A group perhaps
Might need
x
C L Couch
x
x
Photo by Yuriy Bogdanov on Unsplash
x
Psalm 6
Lord, why must the world
suffer? why must we
suffer? why must I? self-
centered questions but fair
for it doesn’t seem right
that in a cosmos of choice
if ruled over by you
that suffering should be so
intense or exist at all—why
is this so? well, of course
there’s choice, and it is
ours; it has to be
since we are not puppets
of the divine but must
make choices that matter
and so choice itself must
matter—with real form
and consequence
or else this is a game
and God must be a sadist
and it is not
and God is not
we have an open life
with liberty to choose
(and if not, then not: that is
the consequence
of the power lent the world—it
can be wondrous or horror-filled)
and that’s it, I guess: suffering
is real because it has to be
clcouch123 
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