time

Antiphon

(x = space)

Antiphon

I hope it’s

A good day

You might be at dawn or

Well into tomorrow,

However the sun

And moon

Are moving

One place or another

On the world

Our count of day

Is relative,

While the actual

Ebb and flow

Of tides and

Of day and night

Move in

Real relationship

Without

Our measure—that’s

The way it is

And it is good

As I’m hoping for

Your day

To be

Or, in the uncounting

Time of Genesis,

Become

C L Couch

Groume – Le Cadran de Dalí, uploaded by Paris 17, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23114485

Cadran solaire de Salvador Dalí sur la façade d’un immeuble de la rue Saint-Jacques, réalisé pour des amis qui y habitaient.

(sundial by Dali)

October 27, 2020 0

Finite

Finite

When we exhale

Things go out

We no longer need,

Which is all right because

Parts of the world need them

That, in turn, give up what

We need

And so inhale

To say the least, it’s a good arrangement

We should keep it going

Oxygen doesn’t come from

An artificial tube

We borrow it

And sometimes

Too often, really

Don’t give anything back for it

Let’s not begrudge astronauts

Someday maybe

We’ll make our own sustenance

For breathing

Though really everything we have

Is borrowed, molecules from

Someone else

Call it Mother Nature

Father Time

Or random, hexagonal arrangements

In the universe

Finally, it’s what we’re lent

Of substance and of time with

The energy to use them

C L Couch

Photo by Moses Lee on Unsplash

Richmond, BC, Canada

Comet NEOWISE over Iona Beach through tall grass.

August 3, 2020 11

July

July

(pandemic time)

Just is going by so quickly

Soon will be the ides

And yet how can that be?

We’re inside in pandemic time

The days are blurred

The hours should be slow

As if marked

By a Gothic clock

That ticks without relenting

In a ruined house

But here it is, half the month

Is nearly done

Maybe the problem is

Each day is rushing by,

Losing pieces

As an airplane hull in a comic book

Crashing craft before the superhero

Comes,

Lifting up the plane

Restoring those of us inside

To safe living on the ground

What we’re used to

Isn’t happening

All the things we’re told need doing

In each hour

So the hour slides

Collecting in a bin, somewhere

Maybe we think the hours

Will be called back into service,

Though really I think we know they’re gone

And with them,

All our former expectations

We want time to wait

So we might catch up what has gone

Bring it back into our time

That it might rush again

But we’ve heard the occasional

Voices

Like soft-spoken prophets

Telling us that normal will have to be

Redefined,

And then

It’s all right

We will have it

Back and for the first time

Hello, I must be going (Captain Spaulding)

Time will be back

To fill more as we wish

Though there is a call

In the air

Or on the tables with our alarm clocks

Inviting us to be more woke,

As we’re saying,

For the day

A day of work

A day of home

A day of work at home

School out there

Jobs out there

Keeping them inside, too

Inside us

The Earth is a busy place,

Though not so much in nanoseconds

As in seasons

Seasons of life

And letting go of life

When we return,

We’ll have the chance to keep some things

Old things and new

Making a fuller way to live

A fuller way to understand

Ourselves, our families, our friends

The world we’ve been given

And still have, for now

Intertwining life

With more threads for the loom

More strands in the weaving

Valuing some things

We always said

We’d get around to

Such as lifelong learning

Family really matters

Well, it’s turning into a banner over town

Relax, enjoy the day

Fill it with what you will

Or let it go

But here is a chance

For an awful reason

To repack our lives,

Leaving what’s no longer needed

Along an existential road

Backing into what we’ll call

Another time

That now is past

We’ll walk straighter in the now

(straighter however we go)

With vision, other senses for today

And some toward the future

Tomorrow hopefully will grow

And then a little more

But have today

A first day in July,

All the hours in a day and season

Count them slowly, count them fast

Count them not at all

Let time be a blanket

Rest or play or work upon it

Savor

Breathe fully

A gift of air from the sky

And the host above, below

The maker it works for

Who will, as we will,

Keep the time for us in

What happens

And what happens next

C L Couch

Photo by Ian Macharia on Unsplash

Kargi, Kenya

Took this on a trip to Kargi, a remote nomadic settlement in Kenya. It’s been a while since I got to experience a people so constantly happy and full of joy as the people of here.

July 11, 2020 4

Floating Illusions

Floating Illusions

(title in the pile of stories to be read)

The confession of it is

That I’m glad to be here

And for the moment, for today

Don’t have to be

Nowhere else (I play with

the negative)

Or elsewhere

Even if it’s Christmas every day

The good parts

I’ll stay in my mortal place

Where time rolls

And I think I’m on the stepping stones

C L Couch

Photo by John Spencer on Unsplash

February 20, 2020 7

Peace for All Time

(a three-part cycle)

Machine Language

Each moment’s a decision

To exhale,

To circulate some blood

To let the body stir for a while longer

To let the synapse burn

Brightly with mind-fire,

Transactions between what’s happening

And memory

Much of this is done for us

But there’s a partnership, I think

Between all parts

The automatic will take over for

The temporary

When immediacy of thought and movement

Are tired out

Call it sleep

Call it the second cup of tea

Taken on the porch

When for a time there’s nothing else to do

And this has been invoked

Because needed,

The ending of which we’ll debate

Peace an invention,

A transaction

Between all partners

Serving on the inside

Contrition

I won’t take it back

Not yet

I need to know the outcome,

Did I get anything I wanted

If penance is a prayer,

I’ll do my part

If it’s in bad feeling,

I’m already there

And counting

A return to normalcy

And what is that

It takes me out of this

Otherwise, I want

The special moments back

But it’s the future, now

Plu-imperfect

Please

Say them with me, maybe

All the prayers,

Then let’s move on

The Answer Is in Someone Else as Well

Inner peace

That’s cool

It’s not enough

If I’m in my chrysalis

And have no sight of yours

Or time

Where is my peace

If not in you?

This is cheating an invocation,

For it’s not a talk to God

But to you

The one nearby

And not inside

We need transaction, too

And more

You need to carry me

And I a part of you

A magic story in which twins

Keep a gem lit by the light force

Of the other

And there’s responsibility

In our story,

We will partner differently

That is, for real

Not to prevaricate conditions

But to say push on

Make peace because

We know each other now

To arbitrate

And there’s no other way

To build the day

That each must have

Into a present contract

As the future

C L Couch

Photo by Jarrod Reed on Unsplash

January 8, 2020 0

Stopwatch for Genesis

Stopwatch for Genesis

(1 January 2020)

How do Arabs count the new year

How do Jews

How does China of

A billion tens of fingers?

How do those who know only seasons,

Who count days as

One traversal of the sun,

Then of the moon?

A change of feeling in the year

To favor birth or harvest?

It would be fair of all of them

To ask of us

The people of the nanosecond

Why there is counting and, once-measured,

Presumption to ownership

How does God who with better reason

Owns the days count them?

We guess a lot about this

A day

A day that is an age

I don’t think God can be bound

Held by our computing

Any more than the bars of an abacus

Should make a cage

Or calculators calibrated to electrocute

(maybe watch out for

servers serving)

There is even scandal in census-taking

For the king rather than the nation

It’s in the Chronicles and Samuels

People dying for

The autocrat’s close ticking

Now’s a fine and healthy time for remembering

God’s of chaos, too

And if we want, if we will

We can be held ourselves

(by God or ourselves)

To keep it either way

C L Couch

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

hide and seek

January 1, 2020 0

Book of Hours

Book of Hours

There’s dawn

It comes on gradually

With time to say

Hello, new day

I appreciate the civility

Dawn is polite

A spot of deeper yellow

Almost orange

With pale light on top

Kind tones of gray

On the other side

Maybe this is why

The sun is our brother,

Moon our sister

The sky offers sibling intimacy

Closeness with Earth

Is promised

Lessons in real hours

Given

C L Couch

Photo by Artem Sapegin on Unsplash

Saxon, Switzerland

Saxon Switzerland sunrise

November 29, 2019 0

Tapestry

Tapestry

(https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/aug/31/if-you-want-to-get-things-done-pause-taking-time-out-is-crucial?utm_source=pocket-newtab)

Times goes in ribbons,

Moving flat, overtwining

Three or more to make a braid

Or some kind of Moebius phenomenon

The writer lives in Spain

Time is different there for him

I live in the Northeast

Time moves incessant

Where busyness is a virtue

Invoke Einstein

The bridging through wormholes

Impedance, or allowance, of dark matter

Making standing still to FTL all

Possible

And in a possible time,

What cannot be invented

What cannot be savored

In all moments

And as a coda, wonder with me

Please

What might be the artifacts

I’ve imagined time, my time

My life as

A banner or

A tapestry

(if a banner, I suppose there is a message

though I don’t know what that is)

All things are kept

All things recorded

The thread might not all be lasting

Some might have come undone

Been burned through misapprehension

Or bad days for

Another reason

But one strand, at least

Maybe two strands

Keeps or keep

The rest

So that there is intactness

To the living

With a record for accounting

Or maybe, only for display

When all is done

And Parousia installs

A great exhibition

I doubt any of my thread is gold

But I do bid for colors

Of all kinds

With bumps and cautionary stitching

Here and there

I don’t know how concerned I am

That the edges be so straight

C L Couch

Time isn’t the same everywhere.

[my emphasis]

You can think about pause as a habit. One executive I worked with would take five minutes to himself, to do nothing in particular, before he left the office. He made it a way to close the day, and leave work thoughts at work, rather than carrying them home with him. You might think about designing longer and deeper pauses for yourself, and how you could create a space where pauses are woven into the fabric of your life or work.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/aug/31/if-you-want-to-get-things-done-pause-taking-time-out-is-crucial?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Image by Welcome to all and thank you for your visit ! ツ from Pixabay

September 3, 2019 0