Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                              An Old Crucifix on the Garden Gate

Summer is better in theory than in practice
A vision through the window of a shady lawn
All green beneath perfect Robin Hood oaks
Bright leaves, a chair, a book, a glass of tea

But the thermometer stands at 97
Even the shade itself wants to burn one’s skin
Wasps seem to seek their end in suicide dives
Wanting to die beneath the swing of a hat

Summer is better as abstract theories
And in our happy childhood memories

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                   The Honor of Being Posted to an Enemies List

             Trump Amplifies Calls to Jail Top Elected Officials,
             Invokes Military Tribunals

                                        -DNUZ, 1 July 2024

Our leaders are making lists of enemies
We should want to be at the top of them:
Resistant and insolent, contemptuous
Of tyrants and their pathetic disapproval

I fear that I am not important enough
To be on anyone’s national list
But then perhaps the local party faithful
And their Q Boys will write me up instead

True Americans will be booed and hissed
But what an honor to be on that list!

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                        Shakespeare: But I Gave You Your Start

                          Cf. Shakespeare’s Sonnets 79 & 80

Once upon a time you and I were alone
I wrote of your virtues and your beauty rare
You posed for me, for a portrait painted in verse
You gave my poor iambics a forever glow

Your best is so much better than my good
And so I understand if you have found another pen
To pleasure you with far more skillful words
While I am left with an empty, unmade page

There are other poets of superior art
But please remember that I gave you your start

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                         The Principal Who Liked His Pizza

If test scores made HIM look good – pizza for all
And a hallway plaque with HIS NAME at the top
If HE could claim an academic win – pizza for all
And another plaque with HIS NAME at the top

If the drama team won a competition – pizza for all
And another plaque – HE was HIS favorite topping
If the football team won district – pizza for all
And a bigger plaque with HIS NAME at the top

And when the evening sun set over the gym
Five or six of those pizzas went home with HIM

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                  James Bond Faces Aunt Agatha’s Inquisition

                   No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to REDACTED

                   Rewriting James Bond: Offensive references to be
                   removed from Ian Fleming’s 007 novels | Euronews

Ian Fleming’s novels are *******; that’s the point
Laddy boy books for laddy boys and laddy dads
An escape from duties and domesticities
With the weekly cigar and the weekly glass

The sentencing:

Assign him Jane Austen as his reading list
No car chases, gunfire, or bikinis
Henceforth he may drink only herbal tea
And breathe only candle-scented air

Reduce him to a weakling all pale and harried
And then complain that he’s not the man you married

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                  National Public Radio on Saturday Morning
                  While Driving to the Dump in an Old Pickup
                  Whose Radio Receives Only Two Stations

Wait, wait; don’t bore me

(knowing chortles and polite applause)

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Except for the title none of this is mine; the direct quotation following is from Shakespeare:

                                              Jill Macbeth

…Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full
Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood,
Stop up th’ access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
Th’ effect and it! Come to my woman’s *******,
And take my milk for gall, your murd’ring ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature’s mischief! Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark
To cry, “Hold, hold!”

                                         -Macbeth I.v.41-62

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Macbeth, by William Shakespeare

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                            Monsoon Coffee

The old men argue whether we have monsoons
Or if our afternoon thunderstorms are unworthy
Of scientific labels, notations, or marks
To be discussed on the six o’clock news

Each day at four I take my coffee outside
To sit beneath the oak and take the air
With a book, the Wordle, or an empty mind
As thunderheads rise like monsters in the east

Fearsome clouds menace the sky-paling moon
And breezes wind themselves up for the daily monsoon

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                         ­  Double Haters

                            The windiest militant trash
                            Important Persons shout

                      -W. H. Auden, “September 1, 1939”

No
I am not a double hater
I am a single writer
Since both parties chose to crater
I refuse to choose either blighter
They offer us only Stink and Stank
So I will leave my ballot blank

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

               You Are Not Something Burnt into the **** of a Cow

So many people want to be brands
I hope you are not a brand
I want to read your words, not your brands
You are a poet
You are not a label on a tin of tomatoes
Or something burnt into the **** of a cow

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                      The Percolation of Our Beautiful Green Earth

Like MeeMaw’s aluminum coffee ***
The earth percolates through all the seasons
Of rain and drought and freeze, of dust and mud
The ground we work gives up its annual troves

The tiller’s tines turn up old pocketknives
Old nails, old screws, old bits of window glass
An unfired flash cube from a party long ago
Gardening is also archaeology

I excavate from the machine while sitting in the shade
Decades-old fence wire wrapped around the blade

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…!

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                            Waiting-Room Art:
      Same Old Bicycle Leaning Against the Same Old Sunlit Wall

We’ve all seen that bicycle, that sunlit wall
In photographs taken in Italy
And Austin (don’t forget the bike-lock now)
In paintings from old-lady art classes everywhere

Perhaps that bike and wall are a Statement
About Milieu and Patina and, like, stuff
Neoformalist New Socialist Realism
Inverted kitsch deflating the patriarchy

I propose a fresh vision: what I would like
Is that old wall crumbling, and crushing that bike

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                     You’re in Good Shape – for a Man Your Age

                         Which is what my NP and doctors say

My heart has a gadget to make it tick
I stumble about with a walking stick
My brand-new glasses are ever so thick
My neck it suffers a perpetual crick
And I just don’t get around so quick
But I’ve still got my hair; it’s pretty slick
And I’m young in spirit, still doing my schtick!

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                      Giv­ing People The Bird

                                An Empty Chick-fil-A Car
                      Idling in the Medical Clinic’s Red Zone

Blocking the patients-only zone is a bit absurd
Or maybe Chick-fil-A is simply giving us The Bird

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                            From Shakespeare: It’s Complicated

                                  Cf. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 78

Oh, yes, you have long been a muse to me:
Erato, certainly, a goddess in jeans and sneaks
Euterpe when you sing along to the radio
But maybe now a sad Melpomene

Oh, yes, you have long been a muse to me
To my poor eyes to scan and deeply see
And then translate your joy into iambic lines
In gratitude, in hope, in forever words

Oh, yes, you have long been a muse to me
But now to others – and are we not to be?

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                The Hanging of Jake Spoon

                 Nothing in his life / Became him like the leaving it

                                         Macbeth I.iiii.7-8

At dusk. Heat. Heat and dust. Jake’s last slow ride
Words through a fog of fear, last words, slow words
Old pals and dead enemies on either side
Slow cooings and callings from unseen prairie birds

Smooth Jake, always good for a laugh and a drink
A ladies’ man, a gamblin’ man, a man of charm
Unreliable, yes, not one to pause and think
Tho’ he never meant nobody no harm

He suddenly spurred his pacer, making amends
His moment of nobility, to spare his friends

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                         ­        Ad Covers Content

V: Ad covers content

R: Thanks. Feedback improves Google ads.

V (Vox clamantis in deserto): No, it doesn’t

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                           Three Gentlemen Perusing Books
          in the Wreckage of Holland House, December 1940


                                   Manuscripts Don’t Burn

                       -a trope in The Master and Margarita


You needn’t be a gentleman, or English
To care for music, art, truth, beauty, and books
To love civilization and all its possibilities
Through the measured dance of sub-creation

If you happened upon a bombed-out library
You would pull a surviving book from its smoking shelf
Open it to words you may have read long ago
And among transient ruins celebrate eternal verities

I hope I will have the courage to read with you

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                              Grab ‘Em by Their…Patriotism

                      Republican arrested after 'chasing an adult dancer
                      on a road while waving a gun at 2:45am

                               -U. K. Daily Mail, 20 June 2024

Now let this news serve as a stern rebuke
To those who say that America no longer stands tall
Or pursues positive domestic policies
In service to working women everywhere

Oh, may our bible salesman proudly wave his…
Flag as a brave new Paul Revere rides his…
Horse through every Middlesex village and town
Because if the British aren’t coming, someone else is

Now we know (hoist the banner upon its shaft!)
Just why they want our daughters for the draft

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                       Bullets Do Not Whine

Bullets do not whine as they pass one by
Nor do they

Clang
Zing
Ching
Sing
Whizz
Zip
Zap
Zow
Pow
Pew
Pop

What they really say, quite loudly, is
“S*!”

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

             The Fairies Themselves Now Dance Sweet Summer In

                         My work is loving the world.
                         Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird

                                      -Mary Oliver, “Messenger”

Everything is sacramental this week:

The Strawberry Moon in the fullness of being
Midsummer magic by day and by night
The English quarter day, the Feast of St. John
And holy bonfires in honor of light

Good honeybees take Communion at every flower
Soft breezes sing hymns among the ripening corn
The woods and fields are baptized in happiness
The sun and moon bless maidens and swains

We need no clocks or calendars to tell us when –
The fairies themselves now dance sweet summer in

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                  Old and Unselected Poems

Why do publishers entitle volumes of verse
                                   New and Selected Poems?
Is it the editors’ lack of imagination?
Or is it some sort of secular rubric
An inky “We’ve always done it that way?”

When you finish writing a poem it is new
It didn’t exist before you, and now it does
And someone who reads your poem has selected it
It wasn’t selected until someone picked it up

Every poem is forever new and selected
And to the joy of your friends, so are you

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

            Somewhere in New Mexico I tipped a Waitress 25%

        NOT I - NOT ANYONE else, can travel that road for
        you.   You must travel it for yourself.

                                         -Walt Whitman

On a cool autumn morning in New Mexico
A greasy spoon along the interstate
Walt Whitman and I enjoyed breakfast together
Bacon and eggs, hash browns, coffee and toast

And it was very good – no heaves of gas
But Whitman found an errand in some other soul
And sang a different self to California
McKuen rode with me the rest of the way

Breakfast was ninety-five cents; I added a quarter
The waitress was happy, and so were we all

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                         Do You Miss Your Trapper-Keeper?

This is the middle of June so why
Haven’t the back-to-school sales begun?
This year’s cooler than cool styles
Have been stored in shipping containers

For months or years on Indonesian docks
Or in warehouses in Long Beach
The teeny-boppers who modelled those clothes
Might be in graduate school by now

If school were as cool as the ads
Taylor Swift would be the principal

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                     From Shakespeare: Happily Lacking in Originality

                                    Cf. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 76

A new sort of sunrise cannot be invented
Our loving moon is the same year after year
Summer lawns for barefootin’ are old news
Happy yellow bathtub ducks splash forever

And so my love for you cannot be renewed
Because it has no expiration date
My iambs and occasional rhymes are always fresh
From singing joyfully of ever-new you

A new sort of sunrise cannot be invented -
Except when you say “Good morning!” each day

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                       Don’t Be Still, My Heart

A brilliant young surgeon fitted my heart
With a scientific gadget to keep me alive
And I am alive, and grateful to him
Every time I read and laugh and mow the lawn

But now I read he’s been struck off the list
For a wicked crime – it was on the news
He listened to me and now I wish I could
Listen to him, and maybe help in some way

I read and think and pray and mow the lawn -
Don’t be still, my heart

Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                             1957: The Year We All Became Soviets

                 “…we’re going to get science applied to social problems
                  and backed by the whole force of the state…”

              Mark Studdock in C. S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength

Soviet Science launched a beeping toy into space
In the name of Progress; a mass-murderer ordered it so
And a month later Science launched and killed sweet Laika
Abandoned in orbit to die alone

Brave America suffered the Aunt Pittypat vapours:
We too must launch our slide-rules into space
And set our children to study Sovietism
Send civilization into orbit to die alone

Dogs and apes and men have flamed out in crashes
And Alexandria again is but pale ashes

Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                   Mockingbirds at Dusk in a Time of War

They might be fighting; they might be he-ing and she-ing
Their leaf-rich oak could be their arena
Or it might serve them as their bower of bliss
For love in this magnolia-scented dusk

They’re still at it, whatever their “it” might be
But breaking off to blitz the subtle cat
Sneaking about in quest of a bunny or squirrel
But who from feathered fury must now retreat

They might be fighting; they might be he-ing and she-ing
But then
They might be mocking the rest of us


Bower of bliss – cf. Spenser’s *The Faerie Queene

Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                         ­ I Once Attended a Funeral...

I attended a funeral
Where the officiant did not
Talk about himself

Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                         A White Buffalo Along the Yellowstone

The alligator-boot boys will gather ‘round
Mahogany tables with sky-high views
And there intrigue how best to use this news
For the enrichment of all their plans and plots

The new-born calf could be sold for experiments
Or maybe enclosed behind a barbed-wire fence:
“COME SEE THE SACRED WHITE BUFFALO FOR ONLY
                    TEN DOLLARS
OR A HUNDRED DOLLARS PER CAR SELFIE PERMITS EXTRA!

But you and I pray that whatever gods we know
Will protect this blessing, this baby buffalo



Rare white bison calf reportedly born in Yellowstone National Park: "A blessing and warning" - CBS News

Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                   Petite Bourgeois, Personal, and Self-Indulgent

                        I used to admire your poetry. I shouldn't admire
                        it now. I should find it absurdly personal. Don't you
                        agree? Feelings, insights, affections...it's suddenly
                        trivial now.

                   -Strelnikov to Yuri in Doctor Zhivago (film)

In the evenings I sit on my summer lawn
Slouched in an old, much-painted metal chair
That symbol of petite-bourgeois respectability
With a little table for my drink, my pipe, my book

(The cat pads by on errands of his own)

At dusk a friend or two might amble along
And join me for a glass, a smoke, a talk
We casually swat at mosquitoes and rumors
And argue about Doctor Zhivago and Lonesome Dove

(A fast-diving mockingbird mocks the cat)

In a fallen world of chaos and suffering
With fear of revolution in the air
Is it right to indulge ourselves with such trifles
As sitting and talking with old friends in the twilight?

Oh, yes

(The cat and the mockingbird continue their game)

Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                            You are Going to Write a Poem Today

                             A poet's words can outlive empires
                             and shake the foundations of tyrants.

                                              -Yevtushenko

You are going to write a poem today
Although you will never finish it
For the hours, or a person from Porlock
Will lead you to pause your thought for a time

Your poem will repose as a meditation
A word upon the altar of your mind
And even as you are distracted at Mass
Your poem becomes a tiny sip of salvation

All the truthing words that have come to you -
There on your mindful altar they bless the world

Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                 From Shakespeare: You are Golden

      Cf. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 75, Robert Frost, and S. E. Hinton

To say that you are my dear golden girl
Would be a tired cliché and would be wrong
You are yourself, neither golden nor mine
I cannot grasp you, but I honor you

To say that you are my dear golden girl
Would be an exercise in futility
A metrical line in ten syllables
Wholly inadequate for any purpose

To say that you were my dear golden girl -
          Perhaps it was so in some other world

Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                    Little Children are Much Like Dachshund Puppies

With wildly scattered toys the lawn is messed -
Children came to visit – O how we are blessed!

Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                         From Shakespeare: My Spirit is Thine

                              Cf. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 74

                      No kinsman could offer comfort there,
                      To a soul left drowning in desolation.

                      -“The Seafarer,” trans. Burton Raffel

When we die, our little things disappear:
Hairbrushes and pocketknives, fountain pens
Car keys, spare change, books, clothes, unopened mail
A souvenir coffee cup from Canada

An old uniform, a pistol from the war
A clock, a crucifix, Topsider shoes
Family pictures, a graduation ring
A magnifying glass, a radio

Bits and bobs, all sorts of trivial stuff
And a poem for you – it’s not enough

Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                      Someday I Hope to Meet a Mango Tree

                             For Pradip Chattopadhyay

Someday I hope to meet a mango tree
And sit at its feet to learn wisdom from Buddha
And if Buddha is not there, then I’ll learn from him
That the absence of teaching is a teaching itself

Someday I hope to meet a mango tree
Where lovers stroll beneath its gentle shade
And if lovers are not there, then I’ll learn from them
That the absence of love presupposes love

Someday I hope to meet a mango tree
Maybe in Veluvana in holy India
But if I never make that pilgrimage I’ll learn
That the magic of the mango is real

Someday I hope to meet a mango tree
Where surely I will find both teaching and love


Pradip Chattopadhyay - Hello Poetry

Symbolism of Mango Grove at Veluvana in Buddhism - Silent Balance

Mangoes: The True Caribbean Currency (caribjournal.com)

Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                       Book Removal Training

                   The orange flames waved at the crowd as paper and
                   print dissolved inside them. Burning words were torn
                   from their sentences.

                                       -The Book Thief, p. 112

And now burning words must be torn from free people
For if people read they might think about things:
Why does the Party’s Jesus hate everyone
And why are weapons superior to ideas?

Can a hangperson’s noose teach us to love
Burning crosses comfort a frightened child
Why do the cult’s censors fly our flag upside down
While stealing books from our children’s hands?

A state that trains people to purge library books
Is a slave state



Florida revises school library book removal training after public outcry
Story by Douglas Soule, USA TODAY NETWORK

Florida revises school library book removal training after public outcry (msn.com)

Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                   From Shakespeare: Bare Ruined Arguments

                               Cf. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73

In near-winter’s cold, lonely emptiness
As manifested by the utilitarianism
The industrial Mordor bleakness of
A cafeteria for adjunct instructors:

V. Obviously, the bare ruined choirs are an allusion to the dissolution of the monasteries.

R. It’s not obvious at all! It’s a may be, not a must be!

V. It is obvious; the Shakespeare family were secret Catholics!

R. We don’t know that! And even if so, you can’t just say that everything is secret Catholic stuff! The sweet birds really could be just sweet birds gone for the winter, not Benedictines martyred in the Dissolution! A cigar is just a cigar, right?

V. But Shakespeare is not as shallow as some critics I could name; his language is rich and layered. He enriches the language with his depths of meanings, and religious persecution has the side effect of taking ordinary nouns and comforting the reader who would still miss the ancient usages of the monastic Daily Office.

R. Edmondson and Wells say the reference is to choir boys, so there’s a possibility!

V. Yes, but Edmonson and Wells are published by the Cambridge University Press (Harrumph!).

R. And just what’s wrong with the Cambridge University Press?

Voice Off: If you two are done we need to clear this table; people are waiting, you know.

Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                       A Red-Headed Skink Enjoying its Supper

You cannot tell if a skink is happy or not
It has no grin, but it seems to be at peace
This one
Stretched out in the sun on a rotting stump
Snacking on the insects who pass its way

Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

    From Shakespeare: In Which Will Feels Very Sorry for Himself

                               Cf. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 72

Roses are red
Violets are blue
I am dead
My poetry stinks
And so do you

Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                            The God of Children and Blueberries

    For Theo (who is three today) and Nora (who is more than three)

                           “It is eaten, and renewed, every day.”

      -Ramandu’s daughter in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

God is prodigal with his seasons and feasts -
This is the season of blueberries, each day a feast
Great clouds of fat blue globes hang upon the little trees
Water and sky shading into Prussian blue

This is a table-tree, all are invited
To stand with buckets and thirsty lips
To pick and take, to take and eat, each day
The feast magically renewed each dawn

Mockingbirds, robins, sparrows, rabbits, and squirrels

And children

Picking, pecking, plucking, nibbling, biting

All at Aslan’s Table, and all at peace

Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                            From Shakespeare: Mourn for Me

                                  Cf. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 71

In the event I hope you’ll mourn for me
And remember those cups of coffee at the Greasy Spoon
Our walks across the fields where rabbits played
Our magic moonlit kisses on frosty nights

In the event I hope you’ll pray for me
Light votive candles and whisper gentle prayers
Slip beads through your fingers with Aves on your lips
Sing Masses of remembrance on our festal days

In the event I know you’ll come to me
Because we were, we are, and we will be

Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com


                               A Congressssssional Hearing


               “But hiss for hiss return’d with forked tongue”

                                   -Paradise Lost, X.518


Men in nice suits meet in air-conditioned luxury
Ties perfectly knotted, Cain’s mark on their lapels
Enthroned behind paneled tables of polished oak
Where by the magic of a secular oath, all are honorables

There is a chair, who is a man, not a chair
Who wields an oaken gavel of authority
As he smiles benignly and modestly
An ‘umble adornment to the Republic

Then “bash!” goes the gavel, and yelling begins
And no one seems to know why

Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                     From Shakespeare: You Will Not be Blamed

                                Cf. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 70

You are so beautiful; you are so good
Twin attributes given to you at birth
Sustained by you in dignity and grace
As you have grown into a woman’s estate

Be careful! You will be envied for those truths
Envied by some for your transient beauty
Envied by others for your transcendent good
Envied by the envious for their own failings

In the end your reputation cannot be harmed
For you are the queen of all hearts charmed

Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com


                        A D-Day Reminder to Every Neo-**** Oaf

                         Including certain Members of Congress
                           and Justices of the Supreme Court


                                      There is poetry in this:

     Our American flag was not flown upside-down at Normandy

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

One Supposes That a Red Wheel Adds a Festive Touch to a Barrow


Anyone who takes that

Red wheel

Barrow

Seriously

Need not be taken seriously

Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                   A Harvester of Praise

                              Cf. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 69

You taught us
Put not your trust in oozy flatterers
Who tell you only what you want to hear
And nothing about what you need to know
Adorning yourself with your own press releases

And as you taught us
Your thoughts, your words, your speech were ever strong
You stood upon the lessons you had learned
With wisdom and kindness you taught hard truth
And with truth found beauty in everything

But then you stopped
You were an artist and scholar in your younger days
But now you are only a harvester of praise

Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

      The Doorkeeper of Notre Dame and a One-Fingered Greeting

                                “I pray you remember the porter”

                                                -Macbet­h II.iii.22

“‘Tis my limited service” on Sundays to mind the door
To open it to the faithful with cheerful greetings
This is pretty much my skill-level, this modest chore
Such is the ancient custom for Sunday meetings

A family of long acquaintance approached, almost late
They live some miles away and had a long drive
Their youngest son held his hand out at the holy gate
I thought his intent was a youthful high five

But with only one finger he greeted me!
And that was my lesson in humility

As for the boy’s lesson

While the servers rang the welcoming bell
His momma yanked him outside and gave him
                                             (peace)

Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                          The Baptism of Valaria Elizabeth

At the Altar
The young couple presented their first-born
Valaria Elizabeth, wrapped in a silvery gown
A happy child at play in the holy Jordan

At the Altar
Valaria Elizabeth, delightful in herself
Was glorious in white with many colors trimmed
And skillful stitchings as befit a queen

At the Altar
Someone asked Valaria’s dear mother
Did you craft this gown with love and thread?

“No, I bought it just yesterday,” she sweetly said

                        Welcome with love, Valaria Elizabeth!

Lawrence Hall HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                                   Behold a Man

                                 Cf. Shakespeare’s Sonnets 67 & 68

He is a man who needs no oils or scents
The arts of makeup, filters on a lens
A touch of blush upon his honest chin
A photographer’s vanity lights placed just so

He is a man who is his own manly self
Washed, shaved, and combed by his own rugged hands
Hands that know shovel, hammer, ax, and saw
A businessman’s hands, a protective father’s hands

He is a man who needs no frippery
For he is clean and honest and just, you see