Consider Morning

 

Through closed eyes

There is a day unfolding

The sky is gray, turning pale blue

Maybe the misty parts will

Burn off

The street is dry

 

Opening the eyes

Brings out

A different contemplation

Now objects are seen

In pale light and shadow

Lights left on, under shades

Burnish everything

That is illuminated

 

There is burping from

The coffeemaker, while bread sits out

For the toaster

In the world that strangely has no time

For now, whenever these are served

As much as anything

More than clocks

Begins the day

 

It’s real, it’s not

It’s what there is

Uncertain muscles stretch

Brain cells don’t know yet

Which way to go

Feeling this in modern times when

The world has gone to war

The anxiety is different now

Because the enemy is inside

Not in conspiracy but

Atomic fact

With atoms making molecules and cells

With certain ones, too many, at

War with each other

 

These are the trenches

And the foxholes, now

 

There are those, bravely

On the front line of defense

First responding, second following through

With finding beds and

Other care

Third, treating symptoms where there is

No cure but creative treatment

With logistics

The next line, also at risk,

Who must be brave

Are those who fight the war at home, who

Hold together, maybe where there

Is no thread beyond connection

 

There is a layer in-between

Call it the community

That tries to stem the hoarding,

Who in company

And companies

Makes supplies to go up those lines,

Like rolling bandages

In past time

Maybe rolling them, too, just now

 

Then there are those who bunker-hide,

Meaning beyond reason, who

Make statements from the back

As if

It were the front

Who’ve never read “The Masque”

Or, reading it, forget

The lesson that, like fog inside a city,

Anyone or everyone might

Be touched by this,

Which means all are connected

 

Mere bellicosity never having won

A day much less the cause

 

Love will win with reason,

As it always does

Every time

 

C L Couch

 

 

Rathmannsdorf, Saxony, Germany

spruce trees in heavy fog

 

Advertisement