More

More

 

There’s something more

It’s here

Inside the pale blue

Between the yellow light

And the branch’s skin

There is green, too,

Dark in the shadow

 

We can make it human

I suppose we always do

But there is another planet here,

A world whose talk

Is in the leaves

Whose senses know the light

And every color

Every texture,

Each thing that moves so that

Another thing might live—

It’s all cooperation

 

Learn from this

Don’t make it human yet;

It’s intimate already

It’s conscious because energy

Has wisdom

And gravity a story

 

The tree is a tale that moves

And also waits

So much to tell

More so than mute artifice

We should know this

And as we don’t

 

So wait!

All things are here

Enough for life, because it’s life

A history if

We could pull the sunbeams from the

Earth to read

We can’t for now

 

So listen, please

With all concrete senses

Best that we can do—

Please, listen

To the story that could save us

Every day,

If we don’t destroy

The binding and

The pages

Let ink run as blood from entropy,

Our self-made ruin

Of whole things,

Run into empty land

And lifeless water

 

Reclaimed by

An angry universe

Having expected

So much more

With all that had been given

Every word in nature

 

No wonder why

The angel kept, outside

Of paradise,

A flaming sword

Pressed by what’s inside

Ignited by protection of what’s true,

True stories, more

Than what we wrote

And what we wrote that we forget

 

Still having a last chance to hear

To receive

If only by the gateway,

A last chance to learn

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Erico Marcelino on Unsplash

The Wanaka Tree, New Zealand

 

Dialogue with Demons

Dialogue with Demons

 

I imagine sitting beneath

Pale columns

Fronting an ancient building

Awaiting wisdom

From ghosts

Who will come near me

Bearing questions

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Micheile Henderson @micheile010 // Visual Stories [nl] on Unsplash

 

Cat House

Cat House

 

Last night I saw

Cat-friends

Allergies notwithstanding

There were people, too

They’re fine, I think,

The cats (I guess the people, too)

The screened-in porch was open to them

In fact, a breeze

And persons to protect the bowls

One cat’s from the other

The skittish cat leaped up

The other flowed like mercury

Upon the floor

Seeking a container of some sort,

I think

The way liquid does

We ate

They hoped

We watched a film

They stayed away

We had to pass through, after

Their insistence came alive again

Furballs of self-interest

That is their purpose

And their lesson

Nature to the rest of us

Not wrong to want our way

Not bad to serve affection

For no reason

Beyond being

 

C L Couch

 

 

Image by cocoparisienne from Pixabay

 

Prescribe Contemplation

Prescribe Contemplation

 

Forgive me

For a fat mind

And soul leaden

With lethargy

Crowding out the angels

Pressing leaves of better notions

From a wisdom tree

I’d do so much better

Reading these even if I can’t

Hear heaven’s language

While living low to

Ground

Unearned wings

Plus siren’s wax all

Impeding taller clarity

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by veeterzy on Unsplash

 

Seventh-Inning Stretch

Seventh-Inning Stretch

 

God

Help us

I think God will

I believe

You don’t have to

Not because I’m better

Never that

No

But because belief

Infects at different rates

Like a desirable disease

And some are never touched

Some are cured

Or forestalled

By degrees of nihilism

 

But it’s fair to understand

Faith as sick

The world doesn’t welcome it

Many take remedies, so to say

For me,

Welcome the infection

Feed the fever

Starve the cold

Once the heart is hosted

All other major organs

(yes those, too)

 

The wisdom of the world

Is foolish to believers

We are fools

To its wisdom

 

C L Couch

 

 

Mask of a fool dancer; Kwakwaka’wakw (Kwakiutl); North America department, Ethnological Museum, Berlin, Germany (Jacobsen collection, 1881)

By User:FA2010 – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15334105

 

Planet Nine from Outer Space

Planet Nine from Outer Space

(the sequel)

 

It’s out there

Will we see it

Will we be looking back

Before it hits us from behind

I have a name for it

Minerva

Because more wisdom should not hurt

Unless a planet can wage judgment

On another

 

It’s relative, I guess

If not ironic

When

We look for something new

In outer space

While on the inside

Do we hear the cry for

Something more

On Earth

 

A cousin to our planet

A source of helps and agencies

If willing

Maybe not,

To make us glad we’re not the only ones

Who can say

We’re here

 

C L Couch

 

 

By Tomruen, nagualdesign; background taken from File:ESO – Milky Way.jpg – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47105354

 

Planet Minerva

Planet Minerva

 

Except for Earth and

Uranus (a Greek divinity,

Parenting gods as well),*

We name

 

Our planets for gods of

Rome, perhaps stabilizing

Legacies

 

X, Y, Z—Planet X (not

Roman ten, since Pluto’s

Demotion) might need a

Name

 

If (say it “Iks”) Ix won’t

Work for (new) planet

Number nine,

 

I recommend Minerva,

Imposing wisdom on

Our solar notion that we

Are done meeting our

Planets

 

(*finished here or read

the note below

 

And on a profound-less

Note, if Uranus,

Pronounced either way,

Still leaves the

Audience dying, then

We could take the

Roman form for that

And call it Caelus or

Coelus, more sonorous

In transliteration)

No Time for Corruption

No Time for Corruption

 

Hell, no time for disagreement

The Kurds need recognition

Identification as a community

Militias need discipline

 

If they’re going to exist at all

Iraq needs to find its center

If it’s going to overwhelm ISIS

And not defeat itself

 

What do we do, we from the

Outside?

 

We have resources, maybe we

Have time, we have perspective

 

More importantly, we can care

 

Stratagems and de-stabling

Agendas aside, sixty-six persons

Died—were killed—in a bombing

In Sadr marketplace

 

I know we don’t know this place

We might not know how to say

It

 

But sixty-six

 

How many families is that

 

I swear, we should invoke the

Real Isis, god of wisdom and

Brother to the god of the dead

 

Let her sort it out, if we cannot

Find the wisdom in ourselves

 

 

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/11/baghdad-car-bomb-kills-dozens-sadr-city?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+USA+-+morning+briefing+2016&utm_term=171647&subid=16706344&CMP=ema_a-morning-briefing_b-morning-briefing_c-US_d-1

W is for Wisdom

W is for Wisdom

 

Wisdom sayings, wisdom verse

Aesop, the poetry of Donne

 

What Winnie the Pooh never

Learns from sticking his tummy

In a honey tree and, before that,

Rabbit’s house

 

What is wise to you, dear one?

Would you write it down?  Or do

You believe in show more than

In tell?

 

Which means I’ll learn from

Watching you more than in

Pitiless, didactic discourse

 

I will look to you for wisdom

 

Other times in the book we know

We find out back—made of living

Page-leaves,

 

Bound in round tree bark, etched

By wind and ice, illumined by

Nature’s hand

 

 

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