3 poems and each might stand (I hope) though together indicate a consequential process


What It Takes

The clock
Caught my attention
Because the hour
Had just turned

I prayed
Some praise
Some gratitude
Confession
Both for what I did
And what I should have done

An asking
Words about love
More thanks
A kind of pledge
About doing better
Then
Amen

I prayed what I meant
To pray
And looked up
Caught by the clock again
Four minutes

Four minutes
Maybe a hundred words
Out of this hour
And this day
Of such greater length
God willing


Imbalanced

I know
Terrible things have happened
In the past
And in the present
And we could guess into the future
But we’re taken up with
Wounds
And hunger
Inside ruins
Newly made

And if we could only keen
For natural disasters
Eruptions
Other explosions
Fires we say that rage
Winter storms
With hail

Sudden deprivations
From what developed
Unexpectedly
Then fell
Or rose upon us
Destroyed some of part of us
And will try for more next
Time
And time again

We could devote our science
And our military
Toward prevention
Preparation
Rescue
Restoration
And it would be hard
And often would be sad
And worse in tragedy that
Tears at us

As wars compounded
And the crimes we make
Tear at us
Even deeply
More bloodied
Threatening to take out
All the vital things
That make us
Us

The awfulness of now
And how we do things
Though not everything
Revealing
Promise
In an hour of today
When we let the fields and towns
By plan or by surprise
Be silent
And then we let in
Aid
Or help each other
Anyway

There’s hope in us
You see
Some want annihilation
Crazily
Some go for anarchy
Alike
And some are merely profiteering
On which side
Every side
That buys

But there’s that part
That quiet part
That then protests
That stands in front of weapons
Without weapons
Teaching us
Reminding us
Of how to stand
And how to act
To give ourselves a chance
All of us
The human race
To be
Simply to be
And then do better
With better
Vital
Parts of us


Don’t Forget the Two Parts Out of Three

Then
Or in the midst of it
There’s time
And willingness
To play
Even on a square we find
And sticks
And fashioning round things
For our
Projectiles

Or with time
We go to our closets
Root around
And
(funny)
Root for roots
The ancient games
With gloves and such
We used to play
And might not fit
But we’ll use
Something
And we’ll recreate
Which also might recall
How we had been made
To work
To play
To rest
The first
Time with
Our families
Or friends we met as children
On the street
(urban
suburban
sural)
And then picked up
The games
And rested after
In the shade

And then
Took jobs
And thought the rest
Unnecessary
Even rest
(in the shade)

Though we can have that
Now again
And should


C L Couch


Photo by Callum Hill on Unsplash