Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                Let’s go for Coffee -- Grab Your Flak Jacket

Some give their sons semi-automatics and hate
Instead of family and purpose and love
Instead of guided study and structured faith
Instead of fishing poles and summer afternoons

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                              In Memoriam – Ayden Rose



                 Eternal rest, O Lord, grant unto your daughter

                                           Ayden Rose

                  and make perpetual Light to shine upon her



Ayden was a neat, funny kid in my 9:00 o’clock class
Hard-working and smart, and more than a little bit saucy
As eighteen-year-olds are supposed to be
She grew up to be a triple-threat teacher and coach

And on Monday night some hero shot her in the back


When stupid people ask me about Viet-Nam

                        (“I guess you seen some action, huh?”

I tell them that for our children here in America

It’s much worse

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                   Prisoners Working in the Early Morning Rain

We have all worked in the rain – building fences
Getting up the cows for milking twice a day
Sloshing through the muck to make deliveries
And usually with some choice in the matter

Prisoners have choices too – cells or a work detail
In designer costumes with horizontal stripes
Not much of a choice, but the work is needful and good
Picking up the litter of freedom and patching the road

Through the wipers I wave. They wave back. Rain -
We have all passed by our fellow man in the rain

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

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Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

               Encounter with an Aging Hippie Benedictine Tertiary
                                    at the Church Door

The old man’s tee said QUESTION AUTHORITY
In the narthex, where we lay our scene
(Shakespeare lay his scene in Verona, but this was not Verona)
I joshed about deferring to seniority
For he was a tertiary Benedictine

He raised his quavery voice as best as he was able
To squeak that all teachings can and should lay
Upon some sort of philosophical table
And then he rattled his walker and clattered away

I do not know what any of this might mean –  
But I think I was dismissed as a Philistine

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                  My Great Replacement Theory

                       (or maybe just a lesser replacement theory)

Teenagers opened the doors for me at Mass
Which used to be my job, but they stepped up
And in stepping up they are replacing me
Which is good - I miss my youth but delight in theirs

A boy and a girl giggled and whispered
In a language I don’t know except that
Having once been young, I know it well -
A perfect translation was in their eyes

All languages come from Old Solar, Lewis says
And to Old Solar will someday return
We must all be replaced someday
For in Creation’s Great Dance that is a step

Teenagers opened the doors for me at Mass
And God will open another door afterward



Cf. C. S. Lewis, *The Space Trilogy

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                            Orgiastic Screaming from Below

           Those who called for Nonsense will find that it comes

                         -C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength

We have seen Milton’s Pandaemonium
Choreographed on a wide palantir
Fallen angels praising the Great Fallen One
In a High Council of electrified lies

Great thunderings of fire and rolling smoke
Issuing from a shiny plastic throne of power
The Great Fallen One framed in Elvis lights
On the floor the lesser ones screaming in ecstasy

The Great Fallen One has a plan for us
After all the balloons, too, have fallen