Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

  One Does Not Pre-Imagine Pre-Edward R. Murrow Pre-Babbling

                         A Lesson in Clear Writing for Journalists

Hunker down, swath of destruction, hunker down, write your Social Security number on your arm, hunker down, eerie, hunker down, monster, hunker down, time ticking down / away, hunker down, pre-positioned, hunker down, pre-planned, hunker down, pre-need (and maybe even pre-hunker down), hunker down, pre-deployed, hunker down, spooky (and possibly pre-spooky), hunker down, snapped like matchsticks (“Daddy, what’s a matchstick?”), hunker down, doomed paradise, hunker down, paradise lost, hunker down, lost paradise, hunker down, apocalypse, hunker down, biblical, hunker down, storm of the century (again?), hunker down, doomed, hunker down, doomed, hunker down, pummeled, hunker down, pummeled, hunker down, pummeled, hunker down, power lines brightly bursting, hunker down, eerie calm, hunker down, eerie quiet, hunker down, birds chirping, hunker down, unexpected sparks, hunker down, hazards are unfolding, hunker down, street lamps waver, hunker down, one-two punch, hunker down, what we know, hunker down, hunker down, hunker down

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                  A Treatise on the Burrowing Habits of Dachshunds


                                                   in memory of

                                     Astrid-the-Wonder-Dachshund

                six pounds of barking, yapping, demanding, and love


A dachshund will burrow under the garden fence
For every dachshund thinks she is a wolf
A fearsome apex predator with a squeaky toy -
This is in the nature of dachshunds

A dachshund will burrow into your tightly-closed hand
Nosing out the doggie treat you have hidden there
A fearsome apex predator and omnivore -
This is in the nature of dachshunds

A dachshund will burrow into your end-of-day lap
Watching both the television and the cats
A fearsome apex predator drooling on your book -
This is in the nature of dachshunds

A dachshund will burrow, borrow, beg, and bark
And in her foreshadowing of that better World to come
A dachshund will burrow deeply into your heart -
And love you forever

This is in the nature of dachshunds

And of you

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com


                                 “Tell Them to Let Me Go!”


    For those who live in a land of great darkness, a light will shine

                                                   -Isaiah 9:2


While waiting in the dark for an escort to the gate
To the prison gate, to the parking lot
Beyond the moonlit coils of razor wire
A Voice from a darker place cries to me:

“I’M TIRED OF THIS *!

I’M TIRED OF THIS *!

I’M TIRED OF THIS **!

Hey, mister!”

Self: “Yes?”

Voice: “Tell those people to let me out of here!”

Self: “I will, but they don’t often listen to me.”

With wry and ancient humor the Voice laughs.

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                 Don't Forget the Jewish Space and Weather Lasers

After watching a Trump rally on the telescreen
I read a bit in The Rise and Fall of the Third *****
And ghostly echoes heard, of slogans and chants
From screen and book and my father’s narratives

The generations who raised us – they left us hope

And you and I – what will we leave to our children?

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com


                 We Are Offered Two Candidates for the Presidency


I am afraid that one of them will win

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                     An All-You-Can-Eat Buffet of Summer Bugs

                      A middle-of-the-night half-awake moment

(He was small in the spring)

When a tree frog moves up in the world
He becomes a fashionable window frog
No longer the pain of a rough tree bark life
But rather the pane of easy living

(He grew larger during the summer)

My bedroom window is his buffet
An all-he-can-eat buffet of bugs
Delicious summer bugs shared around
With an uncommon house gecko of style

(He’s really big now)

I look out at a hungry tree frog, you see
But now – is he looking hungrily in at me?

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                 Falling Into Truth

The fall of October’s leaves is nothing new
Except that it is – this leaf never fell before
And we were never here to watch this leaf
Because we and the leaf were somewhere else

Except that we were, we are, we will be
A little leaf, each of us, springtime-new
Then dancing merrily the summer through
Now floating gently into a winter’s sleep

A coverlet soft, a hymn, a night-light moon
Sleep - sleep – another spring is coming soon