Solstice 3
Because something smacked the Earth
Billions of years ago,
We lost our axis to ninety degrees
And gained the seasons
Everything we sing about
All the agriculture,
The seasons of our labor
The romance of tilting under windmills
(axis upon axis)
We have what we have because an alien thing struck
Us
Sometimes intrusion
As cosmic intervention
(how would life be without its turns)
Can be wonderful
C L Couch
Land of Treats and Water
Old Dachshund and Old Poodle
Will one day find this
They look for it all the time
I hope in the kairotic way of keeping divine time
We will be there to meet them
To walk on grass that rolls just right
Up to the edge of heaven
C L Couch
Before the Formal Feeling
When there’s pain,
Everything enwrapped that might be good
‘Til sight is pushed down toward the ground
And placing arms around
Takes nothing but
Dust and air
And ashes that rise to sting the face
And render bitter tasting in the mouth
What then is left
That’s hale or promising
The hope of life for
Tomorrow or even in time that remains today
I think I’ll have the drink that bites
And chew on some bread that’s burnt:
Salt and ashes
Herbs that sting,
Spells of ordinary stuff
Quotidian magic
The miracle in the day might be a breeze;
Some of the dust of flesh
Cobwebs
Might rise off the nightmare,
Lets gazing up to see some yellow light
Falling on new leaves
Caught in early spring
First breaths upon the earth
C L Couch
Chechnya
Where, reportedly,
Our sons are murdered
They will not sin anymore
Or commit the crimes
The states say are capital
They will not bring
Us down with them in shame
And loss of standing
Though we are prostrate in
Outrage and
In grief
C L Couch
Crime Scene
She was asleep
And it fell upon her
Trapped from life
That left her never
To wake again
It is a still scene, now
Xes on the trees
Still riddled with disease
But will not
Fall now except to mortality
Her home crushed
She will not live there again
The roof is gone, and
The better home will not have her
Again
Unless haunted in memory
The bitterness in life
That will go on
If in arrhythmia
A halting step to pace
The life that will persist
That must
C L Couch
http://abc27.com/2017/05/01/tree-falls-kills-child-at-lancaster-county-campground/
Sliced
I shouldn’t write when sick
I shouldn’t do much of anything
I shouldn’t commit myself to what
Might need defending
From ignorance, later on
But
When I write some truer part of me leaks out
Anyway
And that seems good
Maybe healthy—I don’t know
Because I am not whole
Because I breathe in parts
C L Couch
Look
I know the children
And I know the children die
It happens every day
All the time
In real fires and in our strategies
Denying food
Denying safety
Denying home
Do we turn away to say
Not mine
Or do we look at it
To say
All ours
C L Couch
Housesitting
I open the cupboard
It smells like meat and spice in there
Does the bread turn into meat and bone
Flesh of my God?
God under the sink
It is dark with known and unknown faces
On cartons and bottles
Pipes that traipse and current on
To who knows where
A filtration plant
So that water might return someday
Water, wine, and blood
The earth weeps I know in
Native sadness
Lands bleeds into water
Ocean’s tears and sadness of
The distance from creation
When molecules
Were shiny and new
And compounds yawned themselves
Into existence
The car is outside
Waiting to carry me temporarily
Somewhere
There is a crease in back
Over which “forgiveness” in a decal
Declares pardon for the small
Collision that nonetheless
Threw me into the intersection
With enough brake force
Applied so that
Only I, my car, was hit
Where is God in this?
God is in the civil conversation
That we had after
In the gears and fluids of the car
That still work and convey me
Thence and whence
In the shadows of the house
Whose objects I don’t
Know so well
God is in the corners
And the spotlights
Of our lives
C L Couch
Easter Saturday 2017
Grey house near a sodden hilltop
Under a sky of ashes
We all live there from time to time
One by one
Our own Golgotha
Gehenna, Calvary
Our own ordinary crucifixions
Bereft of hope
And faith
Waiting for life
C L Couch
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