Snow Overnight

(x = space)

x

x

Snow Overnight

(the forecast)

x

Snow in the dark

Except where under

Artificial lights,

Maybe like renegades

Outside the windows

Of our homes

Or business locales

x

Over the runway

Through trees

Sleeping gardens

Flying around steeples

It’s there

It might go well

To turn off the lights

Go outside

I have to recommend

In numbers

x

But let them strike our flesh

Faces,

Wrists between our gloves

And sleeves

x

Small hits, the kind that

Most of us can take

With the cold

In thirties Fahrenheit,

Knowing that heat awaits

Inside

After the dance

Or anything to learn

x

C L Couch

x

x

Photo by Robert Katzki on Unsplash

Stützerbach, Deutschland

x

Antiphon

(x = space)

x

x

Antiphon

x

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

x

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

x

And it is good

As I’m hoping for

Your day

To be

Or, in the uncounting

Time of Genesis,

Become

x

C L Couch

x

x

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)

x

Night Is Gracious

(x = space)

x

x

Night Is Gracious

x

I can’t think of what

I deserve

Because I deserve nothing

Too well I understand

(with Protestants)

The wages of sin,

Not

Because I’m criminal but

Because I’m sinful,

Maybe in the way

Of all who’ve sinned and so

Deserve extinction

x

But sinful state and actions

Might be

A prelude unto grace—and so

Some say there must

Be evil on the way,

And I wonder

x

They don’t really go by halves,

And shadows are not evil

Evil isn’t natural

Though insistent

And when we think

The evil life is

Shadow life—they don’t combine,

Not really

Decide what you will

x

Let evil sublimate for now

But shadows can delight

At night

Or teaching about night

In day

x

In daylight we’ll have Parousia,

I suppose

Thought at night perhaps

We’ll celebrate,

Then rest

The rest we should have had

In Eden,

Now a rest

For all to merge

To bathe of goodness,

Leaving all distinct

Forever

x

Each one a player and a part

(not the player without

an upstart part,

as Jaques laments

an irony of stasis)

In everything revealed

By light, by shade

All shades of existence

x

Under the sun

(evil abrogated)

While always under stars

Belonging to night,

Where we also

Always

All belong

x

C L Couch

x

x

Photo by Tom Barrett on Unsplash

Wisconsin State Fair Park Exposition Center, West Allis, United States

Taken from the Sky Lift at the WI State Fair, August 2017

x

When Day and Night Knew Each Other Well

When Day and Night Knew Each Other Well

 

We had a solstice over the weekend

And a new moon

 

It was easier

To live in the dark

A hundred years ago

And a hundred more

Maybe a hundred more

Not to equate darkness with ignorance,

Not at all

 

Imagine how the stars must

Have been,

For certainly they’ve changed

How secret was a secret

When extinguishing a candle

Could blow out the gathering

Make unreadable

An agenda

To send us home, instead

 

The greater darkness

Wasn’t bad or good

It was

It was the setting

And the means

Maybe we paid more attention then

Our night-vision was better

When ambience was lightless

In the distance

Or up front

 

It might have been generally possible

Not to see the hand before the face

And not to be afraid of that

Maybe darkness

Was a friend

To the criminal

And carpenter, alike

The darkness said

Slow down

Don’t move without

Knowing where you’re going

 

It was a signal

For the rest

For rest

(yes, maybe in a forest)

Maybe for rehabilitation:

Come the new day

You will be needed with

New muscles

And a readiness

In attitude

To contribute to

An ever-new, new world

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Gabriel on Unsplash

 

Tree-Thinking

Tree-Thinking

 

There are trees

Blues between the branches

Angled yellow lights

Slicing shadows

Day’s possibilities

 

At night,

The shadows, you know, will be longer

Sky’s light will change to silver

Trees will seem rougher

And the buildings,

Though they’re not

The night has

Possibilities

Remembering

Not the daytime but its own

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Mitchell Luo on Unsplash

Melbourne VIC, Australia

Tree Bark

 

The Best Is Yet to Come

The Best Is Yet to Come

 

The best is yet to come and, babe, won’t it be fine?

 

Dancing, crooning

Love songs

Ties and gowns or overalls and pinafores,

Doesn’t matter

There is glitter in the air

The lights of romance

There’s music from a combo

Ain’t it all fine?

 

There has to be more of this

Not an increase

Or exaggeration

But ongoing

The laughing, dancing, crooning combo

Always at hand

To have and have again

Not a party without end

But reasons to

Celebrate that last

 

The kind of work

(exertion of energy)

That heals

The smiles from musicians, which

Can say

We are free at last

And we love you

And an audience

In equal measure grateful

Taking part

Tomorrow there will be other things

And there will be tomorrow

For now,

There’s confidence

In this place of music

Fancy lights

(not the kind that blind)

Hands clasping on the dancing floor

 

Maybe we’ll go outside

Not because nature is tame

But because

It tames us

With its own lights of night

And gift of rock

For a dancing floor

 

This is a vision

Of necessity

Because the flesh that hears,

Touches, and responds

Should go on in some way

Call it paradise

The life renewed

That hasn’t lost a note or a step

 

C L Couch

 

 

“The Best Is Yet to Come”

written by Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh

Frank Sinatra and Count Basie performed and recorded for the album It Might as Well Be Swing (1964) and performed and recorded by many others.

 

photo by Manuel Inglez on Unsplash

Parque Natural de Sintra-Cascais, Sintra, Portugal

 

Long Day’s Journey

Long Day’s Journey

 

It’s late on a long day

I have to go to the bathroom

I learned not to while a teacher

Not that it’s been a bad day

I got my car from the body shop

It had been hit without me in it

Some weeks ago

Now it looks shiny

(‘cause they washed it)

I’ll learn to use the clutch again

Since the rental was an automatic

I’ve been watching horror movies

Because it’s the end

Of October

‘Tis the season, as it were

I’m not a child

I didn’t watch with popcorn

I had some crackers with some Coke,

Which I tell myself

Is good for my stomach against

All the pills I take

At the moment, I feel too tired

To go to bed

Do you know the feeling?

I’m thinking you do

So Good Night, when we get to it

The clock has turned to 1-1-1

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Frankie Lopez on Unsplash

Night in Motion, Downtown Tucson AZ

 

Microcosmic

Microcosmic

(9/14/19)

 

I didn’t see the micro-moon

Last night

I think it was too small

I think it was bounced around

The points of stars

Like the silver ball

In an arcade machine

A comet might have caught it

With its tail

And shooed it to

Another side of night

 

Perhaps the Milky Way gave way

To make a berth of its fluidity

For a small moon to rest

Off the path

 

The moon must rule at night

That is a cosmic dictum

But every now and then

(it takes an apogee)

There is a smaller size

And there is room among the lesser

Lights

A greater sky-democracy

That gets everything up there

To partner up to grace

‘Round and as

All the spheres

 

It was cloudy haze and haze of clouds

But it was fun to think another night

 

C L Couch

 

 

Image by esudroff from Pixabay

 

Trite-Time Relief

Trite-Time Relief

 

It was a gloomy, humid day

Hot outside, no rain

We could stand

A dark and stormy night

 

C L Couch

 

 

Washington Irving, Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Madeleine L’Engle, Snoopy

 

Photo by Andre Benz on Unsplash