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

                                    The October Squirrel Festival

                              For Jerry Nobles, of Happy Memory
                              Our Town Pharmacist and a Joyful Friend

Squirrels!

They’re up the trees; they’re down the trees
They swarm each other just like bees
They’re up the oak; they’re down the pine
They really need a traffic fine

Dachshunds!

Our outraged pups – they yap and bark
While chasing squirrels all over the park
Dachshunds are usual merry and curious
But with squirrels they are fast and furious

But not fast enough

Cats!

Tuxedo-Cat, all proper and prim
Disapproves of the others with a face all grim

My apologies for leaving this empty earlier. Last night I wrote a bit of doggerel criticizing unhappy men who obsess on weaponry. Then the news about the horrors in Lewiston, Maine was broadcast and I withdrew the lines lest the words appear to be frivolous and thus hurtful. I stand by my no-nonsense thesis, though: no one needs one of those ////ed semi-automatic testosterone compensations that fire military rounds.

And no thoughtful man or woman need tolerate for a moment any whatabouts and all the pointless arcana about assault rifles vs. civilian rifles, automatic vs. semi-automatic, magazine vs. clip, and blah, blah, blah.

I was in Viet-Nam.

I know exactly what .556 and 7.62 rounds will do to an adult or a child, and the name of the gun (yeah, I know, "shoulder-fired, gas-operated, blah, blah, and blah") doesn't change anything.

Your grandfather's old J. C. Higgins shotgun is a wonderful thing for bagging supper and eliminating predators. A shiny (they come in Barbie colors now) .556 is good only for inflicting death and suffering on our fellow pilgrims on this earth.

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


                                Alexander the Coppersmith

                                             2 Timothy 4:14

We don’t know much about the coppersmith
(Indeed, we don’t know much about each other)
The works of an artist’s hands may serve the Lord
Or else they serve Ephesian vanities            

If a man is going to mold metals into idols
Diana of Ephesus might be pleasing aesthetically
But better to dismiss Diana and other trumperies
And joy in the gold of the Servant’s words

For power and jewels and golden toilet bowls
Are baubles that blind our eyes and darken our souls

(But still, I hope Alexander made things right)

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

                             The Stone, the Shell, and the Lance

       -Wordsworth, The Prelude, Book V, lines 70 and following

Mathematics were always quarried stones to me
A chaos of integers, carries, and sums
Cascading down a dusty, crumbling *****
And piled up as a useless heap of rubble

But words, layered words, curving and dancing words
Are shimmering shells in stilly tidal pools
There waiting for my eyes, my thoughts, my speech
To play them, work them, hold them as chalices of truth

And the lance? The knight, he wields his wicked lance
Only to herd poor prisoners into algebra

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                             Creation Sings Hatikvah

The Torah unrolls in a soft, whispered wind
The wanderer finds shade under its protection
The scholar refreshes himself with its words
The nations sit and attend to its truths

Creation sings Hatikvah, sings our Hope

The voice of God is in the whispered wind
His Words from before the first ever dawn
Flowing through the Beginning and even now
A blessing upon Jerusalem, upon the world

Creation sings Hatikvah, sings our Hope

Our voices too are in the whispered wind
The Torah unrolls for us in a whispered wind

Creation sings Hatikvah, sings our Hope

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

                   But Mom, All the Cool Kids are into Genocide!

                       “Students! Be the Fuhrer’s Propagandists!”

          **** poster ca. 1933, per Library of Congress: [Studenten seid
          Propagandisten des Führers Hoch-u. Fachschulen bekennen
          sich am 29. März zur Deutschen Freiheitsbewegung /
          (loc.gov)]

All the cool kids are into genocide
Slogans and posters and bullhorns and cries
Abandoning their studies to march outside
And scream the same 2,000-year-old lies

The InterGossip commands, and they obey
Blocking the streets and clenching each fist
Waving misspelt signs and yelling all day
Never pausing to ask if there’s something they’ve missed

Am I a hollow echo for some sycophant’s squall?
Will I fail to think for myself at all?

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

                              Dostoyevsky and Applesauce 2 / $5

                                        Literature in the Supermarket

The nice young man who bags my purchases -
He spoke to me of Notes from Underground
And who the unreliable narrator is
And how he anticipates the revolution

The pharmacist who jabbed me against the ‘flu –
He spoke to me of Robert E. Howard
And how Conan’s psychological issues
Anticipate the author’s death by suicide

A surprising conversation in a small-town grocery
But even more in a modern university