Feel like I'm in a glass house
Brain is tethered by wire
& ephemeral fog

Id hug every one of my enemies if it meant salvation
Id ride into dusk unadorned.
I am truly at a loss

& so it goes

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                         As You Sometimes Gently Remind Me…


                                One day I'll suddenly recall:
                                The sun exists!

                           Pasternak, “About These Poems”1


When the world focuses on a sheet of paper
In a little room where hopes have come to die
The pen can’t write out a prescription for life
Or limn the remedies for a fallen world

We begin our days as did Pasternak
A cup of tea against the fear, the fear
Unsure of the conflicting daily edicts
The babblings about ballrooms, tariffs, and arrests

Pasternak opened a window to light and fair

And to the children playing in the snow he cried,
“My dears, what century is it outside?”


1Translations vary

darling,
it hurts too much
to watch
as you chase
someone else's dream,
as they chase
someone else's dream,
and no one's
chasing their own.

darling,
it hurts too much
to watch
you pass through
the valleys of life,
as the shadows
stretch further
with every step,
and the valley
stretches too.

darling,
it hurts too much
to hear you
say to me,
in that crystalline voice
that warms my heart,
"the only way
is through",
while I stare back
and whisper to you
"the only way
is through".

darling,
it hurts too much
to look up
and face the sunlight
with eyes
that've only
tasted the dark.

darling,
you love
sunlight.

We're born, we live, we die.
That's called life. What is life
about? For so many, it's just
about survival. For a tiny number,
it is about acquisition of things.
For the blessed, it is about love--
love of self, love of another,
love of all. I wrote once that
the greatest thing you can ever
be is your real self. To be true to
your real self is to be true to all
others, true to the Cosmos.
Fame is a social cosmetic.
Wealth is unconscious com-
pensation for lack of self-love
and thus for lack of love for
others;  political power much
the same. Leadership is an
amalgam of real power, self-
love and love of others, and
the courage to do the right
thing. It is uncommon and
precious. To live your life
fully, you must be fully
your real self.

TOD HOWARD HAWKS

...but love is not reason
    most of it is imagination

ninety mile an hour winds
garden stripped and ravaged

the eight sentinels, Sycamores
ragged and torn

all the red Fuchia flowers
gone

hardly any Bee food
left

there will be starvation
this winter.

I've no money
but can write poetry
despite  owning very little
I'm totally happy

if I were to
have money
but can't write poetry
that would be my misery

so I conclude --happily:
between being wealthy
and writing poetry
the latter I'll celebrate fully!

I found her in the vapor of a summer dream
She was standing in the door to Paradise
When I asked if I could see her in the sunlight
Her laughter matched the sparkle in her eyes.

Her smile was like a sunlit pond at twilight.
Her eyes resembled sapphires at high noon.
Her hair was like a swirling touch of midnight.
Her voice as sweet as birdsong heard in June.

Her appearance gave me cause to stop and wonder
If who I saw was really standing there
Or was it just my wild imagination
Creating loveliness from smokey Summer air.

I crept a careful step or two towards her
My pulse was pounding madly in my throat
She frowned at me then edged a little backwards-
And suddenly between us was a moat.

There was no bridge or any walkway over.
She was securely on the other side.
It seemed as though she couldn't let me join her
She made that clear no matter what I tried.

I wrote a note of love on parchment paper
And sailed it to her in a little boat
She reached down to fetch it from the water
And read while lumps were forming in my throat

She tucked the folded note into her *****
And wiped a forming teardrop from her eye
She smiled and then she sadly whispered to me
The only word I feared - it was Goodbye.

The moat became a little stream of water
The doorway, two tall Jacaranda trees
The paradise that somehow she had come from
Transformed to smoke, soon taken by the breeze.

And I was left alone to stand and wonder
If everything I’d seen was truly there
Or was this just a middle-aged delusion
Providing me a thrilling tale to share.
ljm