Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com


                                    ­        Café’ Renee’

                      Listen very carefully; I shall say this only once.

                                    -Michelle of the Resistance

Café Renee’ is still open in Nouvion
Close to the coast, except when it isn’t
In a petit monde of possibilities
Even when the outside world is going wrong

Let us find a table close enough to hear
Lieutenant Geering and Colonel von Strom
Whispering conspiracies about paintings and plots
Until Madame Edith screeches out a song

Renee’ brings us a cognac as always
And we know the fun is about to begin

But it’s not a prison; it’s a unit
(Euphemisms make everything all better)
The morning sun rising above the fog
Sparkles merrily on bright razor wire

A barefoot little girl dances and sings
She has already been wanded and searched
Her princess shoes examined for contraband
She’ll put them back on after Mommy’s turn

She gets to see her daddy again this week
And that is why she is dancing in prison




(Please understand that prison staff are not Disney baddies; adults sometimes hide drugs and other contraband in their children’s clothing.)

“Men Ditch Suits, and Retailers Struggle to Adapt”

                      -Wall Street Journal, 25 March 2019

We all must be good comrades now
We all must wear good comradewear
As if we worked with wrench and plough
Instead of cruising an office chair

We all must be good comrades, da!
And from one’s well-lit office space
Sneer at “the suits” - so long, Grandpa!
And so decolonise this place

We all must be good comrades now -
But have you ever milked a cow?

Though some maintain that parallels don’t meet
And three-point-something is the sum of pi
And whether X is found; no one knows why
(Was it lost, perhaps wandering in the street?)

Curious matters all Euclidian
Even for the bold mathematician
Are as obdurate as obsidian
Each an illogical proposition  

To the rationalist impossible, and yet -
Parallel lines are at the Altar met

If Sneezes were Horses, then Beggars Would…Sneeze, Probably

O man – what art thou? Thou’rt not mighty
Clingingly pathetically to a Kleenex box
Instead of wielding a conqueror’s sword
Lifting patent medicines, not wine, to thy lips

Thy sneezing and wheezing will not win thee worlds
The book unread though open in thy lap
Thy darked-orbed eyes unseeing and unseen
Thy wretched, reddened nose – all is despair

And snot that runs in foul, polluted streams
O man – thou art little more than Nyquil-dreams!

Premium Leaded, Leaded, News, and Weather

The talking gas pump down at the Conoco
“Please enter your zip code and press the pound”
Says the temp will be thirty tomorrow
“Will this purchase be credit or debit?”

And that snow is a possibility
“Please remove nozzle and select product”
And that we must watch the road conditions
“Begin fueling now (beep beep beep beep beep)”

In a whisper:

But that’s the number 6 pump saying so,
And that one acts all weird in Bible class

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                      Southpaws of the Spirit

                        Upon reading Mary Oliver’s Devotions

My favorite poets write on the left side of the page
Which I hadn’t known, and didn’t need to know
“It’s not important how you write, but that you write”
As my dear friend Rod McKuen did not say

Rule 2: Don’t Write Poetry about Poetry

A poem is a magic looking-glass
In which you see others, and not yourself
And search it for veiled possibilities
This mirror for the needs of –
                                                        not yourself

When you tap-tap to push pixels about
Or set in place a line of ink and hope
Into a meaning that you have perceived
It is a bedesman’s prayer for –
                                                     not yourself

A poem is a magic-measured song
That helps make sense of life for –
                                                     not yourself

I hope I have been an inspiration
To the masses, to the humble people
Who go each day from their humble condos
To their humble jobs on the ski slopes of America

The humble artisans who humbly toil
On the balance beams and the practice fields
The humble laborers in the swimming pools
Who sacrifice so much for the rest of us

The humble commons who want my autograph
And little girls who want to be like me, me, me

“Did Y’all Read About Those Chips in the Bible?”

In the Supermarket Checkout Line

“Did y’all read about those chips in the Bible?
Yessir, they got these chips now, and we ain’t
Gonna be able to buy or sell nothing
Without these here chips in our bodies

The C.I.A., some of those people got’em,
Yessir, and you ain’t going to the grocery store
And buyin’ nothin’ without ‘em. I read
Where it’s in th’ Bible, and, yessir, it is

Me, I’m standin’ on th’ World of th’ Lord
And I ain’t havin’ no chip put in, nossir”

(In which good fellowship between Russians and Americans is probably not advanced)

Start the Evinrude – pull!
Grandpa’s Evinrude – pull!

Where is my sunblock? Where!
Over by the sodas – there!

Start the Evinrude – pull!
It won’t start, Dad – %^&!

Where is my +^% phone? Where!
There by your fishing hat - There!

Start the Evinrude – pull!
Grandpa’s Evinrude – pull!

Watch those tree stumps! Where?
&%#ing tree stumps! @#$!

Start the Evinrude – pull!
Grandpa’s Evinrude – pull!

Drift to that cove, now – there!
Cut the engine, now – shhhh!

Where are them fish, then - $#@%!
They ain’t here, Dad – *&^%!

Start the Evinrude – pull!
Grandpa’s Evinrude – &#%&!

*(Chorus fades as the sun sets over Tovarisch Bubba’s Bait, Beer, ‘n’ Borscht)

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
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

              They Say Young Men Have No Ambition These Days

The poetry section is the most remote:
The floor where the staff sneak away for lunch
Or lovers rendezvous for lovers’ arguments
A few eccentrics who want to read poetry

A young man sees it as his corner office
Reposing in a chair, feet up on the glass
Wielding two ‘phones, negotiating ***
And drugs, and his efficient deliveries

A **** among the poets, playing the world -
Who says young men have no ambition these days?

Kensington Avenue

With Leonard gone, who can wear a fedora?

A pilgrimage away from Kensington
Lovers and mountains and islands and words
Questions flung far into the universe
Returned as Alleluias angelic

Or as Comments Constant in lonely rooms
Where Marianne in memories spoke to him
Sometimes upon a wire from otherness
Finishing words about the avenue

Now home from mountains and islands and song -
Perhaps one answer was here all along

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

              A Poetry Brawl Down at the Long Branch Saloon

I wrestled with a line of blank verse until
It fell, all writhing on the floor, and there
It gasped for breath and glared at me with hate
Each syllable grating against another

“You have a sorry accent,” it snarled
“And when my rhythm rises I will make you
A dactyl fallen or a trochee tripped
With my booted and spurred iambic feet!”

But we shook hands, and let our quarrel cease
And so at Miss Kitty’s there was
Syllabic accentuation at peace

We have built for ourselves a Faraday cage
And locked ourselves inside; no rays can touch
Our souls codified in magnetic strips
The Good, the True, and the Beautiful in chips

No ray, no beam, no pulse can penetrate
The protection racket of secret codes
(Except when they ****** well can and do)
While we posture behind scientific wires

Passive self-destruction is all the rage

For this

We have built for ourselves a Faraday cage

O wing’ed messenger of happiness,
Aloft among the pollinating flowers,
At last you have returned from Mexico
And warm months there among soft latitudes
Where little birds can make a holiday
Far, far away from withering Arctic winds.

O tiny traveler, what souvenirs
Did you declare to customs at the Rio Grande?
South winds to tell the flowers to wake up
And Rosaries of morning fogs to bless
The yawning grasses with a morning drink,
And fresh new sunlight for the industrious bees.

O buzzing and impatient little friend!
Just wait a minute, your breakfast is coming -
The old glass feeder washed and packed away
In harvest-rich October’s golden light
Must be recovered and refreshed for you,

And

How good it is to have you home again.

A Meditation Upon Matters of Faith
And the Worthy and Diligent Study
of the Arcana of Mathematics
as Recommended to Industrious and Thoughtful
Young Men and Women

For Kyle,
Who is Enduring His First College Maths

Our Saviour never said “Now solve for X”
Such is not written in any sacred tex(t)

Saints Paul and Barnabas on journeys Psidian
Did not refer to topics Euclidian

The Corinthians were divided only by factions
Never were they divided by fractions

Good St. Paul wanted all to comprehend
The truth, and not some subtle subtrahend

But still…

But still (to me it is a great frustration)
Numbers are how we measure Creation

With them we plant the Garden that is earth
Building it up with word and work and worth

So that we feed and clothe and mend and tend
With crop rows plowed, panels welded, cattle penned

Airplanes launched, fires put out, and light bulbs lit
Messages sent – there is no end of it!

So brew yourself a cup of coffee
Find your Euclid and dust it off(y)

Work those angles on your protractor
Add, subtract, calculate, and factor

Apply yourself most assiduously
Soon you’ll be an engineer, you’ll see!

Admired by all, a man of great knowledge –
And it began in community college

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                             Wordle for Klingons

Let the captain win now; he is one of your betters -
Revenge is a dish best served with five letters

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                             One of Texas’ Foundational Documents

Taking an oath by placing one hand
Upon a copy of Lonesome Dove
Is not yet law in our sacred land
But by the Grace of God above…

Someday it might be

“Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang”
-Shakespeare

The air is thurified – the incense given
Our Lord upon His birth is fumed at last;
The censer’s chains, clanking like manacles
Offend against the silence at the end of Mass

Supper is concluded; the servants strip
The Table bare of all the Seder service:
Cups, linens, and dishes, leaving in the dark
An Altar bare, prepared for sacrifice

In Gethsemane the flowered air is sweet
But iron-heeled caligae offend the night

https://logosophiamag.com/2022/08/29/light-raindrops-upon-the-withered-world/

The Mirror Heal'd from Side to Side

When a mirror looks
Into you, deep inside you
Does it see itself?


(An allusion to Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott”)

A copy of The Oxford Book of English Verse Remaindered from
the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham Public Libraries




This happy gift of 1939
Rescued from the good comrades’ loving fires
From the liberation of censorship
From the gentle criminalization of thought

This little book and its happy, dancing lines
Crafted with thought and care and art and love
A celebration of civilization
Oh, save it, read it, love it, smuggle it

Because

More dangerous to tyrants than weapons
Are the poems of a people living free

A solution driven technology
Committee…paying it forward…globally
Competitive…peace poster…this flu season
We have had extra reminders in place

To wash hands and be contentious1 of spreading
Germs…child-centered learning…preparing your child
For the twenty-first century…a vibrant
And diverse living-learning environment

A cross-section of the district’s stakeholders

And, as ever,

Home of the Fighting Something-or-Others


1"Contentious of spreading germs" was the wording on a site during this year's 'flu season.

Arc of the Solstice

High summer’s solstice is the year’s proud crown:
The sun has reached his apogee, and now
Will linger through July’s life-ripening days
Then drift into a worn Augustan gold

September is a sort of seasonal coup
Who in the equinoctial treaty signs
For a slow dissolution of the sun
And all his ancient power to rule and reign

In his old age the sun is seldom seen –
Diana, then, is crowned as winter’s queen

The Richest Country in the World

A concrete sidewalk for skipping to school:
A busy flower shop, the picture show
Post office, the hole-in-the-wall café
The general mercantile, the old feed store

The school is gone; the sidewalk hasn’t changed
Except that no one walks it any more -
Just archaeology, weeds and bricks that tell
Of once-upon-a-time along Main Street

No townsfolk now, only unroofed walls and sky
Not far from where the four-lane passes by

Someone demands an immigration czar
Which could be interesting: a crown, a throne
A double-eagle flag, the border guards
Singing a Troparian while on patrol

On the Steppes of Central Texas 1
The Czar in progress royal comes to see
His happy villagers waving MREs
From behind the merry Potemkin wire

The Czar, contented, turns his escort then
To Petersburg, and lunch at the Little Red Hen

1 Cf Borodin's "On the Steppes of Central Asia"

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                   As Gloria Swanson Did Not Say in Sunset Boulevard

We are great -
It’s the MAGAs that got small

The universe spirals through its starlit dance
Creation spins around, in, and down
Eternity circles the paten and cup

Miraculum

Eternity circles the paten and cup
Around and out and up, Creation spins
Through its starlit dance the universe spirals

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                         Atheist Chaplains Forging Mixed Metaphors

         “Atheist chaplains are forging a new path in a changing world”

                                    -CNN 7 November 2024

One seldom thinks of chaplains at a forge
Work-weary, work-stained from hours of smoke and sweat
With mighty hammer strokes bending hot iron
To the will of the artisan in useful things

Some writers forge nothing but metaphors tired
From overuse, and mixed as verbal soup
In music, art, literature, and life paths can be

Cleared
Paved
Traveled
Surveyed
explored
Followed
Noted
Marke­d
Mapped
Found

But it is not in the nature of paths to be forged

Atheist chaplains and metaphor soup
Are nothing more than an ouroborosian loop

(Look upon this fresh metaphor and neologism
And despair)

Astride his horse, the gift-shop blisful martir
Raises his glov’ed hand in priestly blessing
For those who wear his token in evidence
Of a devout pilgrimage to Canterbury

By tour bus those who wolden ryde there
To seek a blessing (and a souvenir)
In brass Saint Thomas and his horse and groom
Forever stand; Saint Thomas asks of us:

“Sin you have seyn the paving wher I deyd –
Let now Iesu forever be your gyde”

Uncle Vanya and Lady Godiva

Uncle Vanya came strolling down the road
Wishing he had made something of his life
His young friend Anne loquaciously agreed
And with remarkable vehemence urged

him to endeavour to remediate his perceived inadequacies in the many precedent matters that burdened him…

Don Quixote suggested that worries were giants
Cassandra sighed, “There is only one page left”
Nick Adams whispered, “Shh! You’ll scare the  fish!”
Ambrose Silk asked the way to the world’s end

And young Lady Godiva, sans chemise
Outsourced her image on souvenir tees

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                Oppos­ite the House of Sculptures

“…unchanging, shrill, crazy exclamations and demands, which became progressively more impractical, meaningless, and unfulfillable…”

                  -Doctor Zhivago, Part Two, Chapter 13,
                        “Opposite the House of Sculptures”

O strong man, strong man, Supremo Alpha-******
Please be our Putin, ******, or Mussolini

O strong man, strong man; tell us what to think
Pour us some Jim Jones; we’ll take a real deep drink

O strong man, strong man; tell us what to do
We’ll happily go to prison just for you

O strong man, strong man; clench your mighty fist
You put for us the “GO” in your “jingoist”

O strong man, strong man, you are our latest god
Please break us to obedience with your mighty rod

O strong man, strong man, you are our highest law
Whatever dribbles from your mouth we hear in awe

O strong man, strong man, we are your little elves
We promise to stow our history upon the shelves
And never, ever again think for ourselves

A Lady and Her Two Knights

For their Nona and Papaw

Three young adults walking along to Mass
Pals from childhood, arms around each other,
Laughing, and pausing briefly for a mama-picture -
For them, even October is their spring

And in this springtime of their lives they offer
All of their happiness to Our Lord Himself,
All together Ad Altare Dei,
To God who giveth joy to their youth1

Three friends laughing, taking the morning air:
Two knights honored to escort their lady fair

1paraphrased from the Missale Romanum of 1962

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

                                     “LA Fires Bring Art to a Halt”

                 Hyperallergic: Sensitive to Art and Its Discontents


No.

A fire brings nothing to a halt

To the last respiration of the very last soul
And beyond: Art will live because Art lives -

A poet abandoning her car to flee for her life
Holds to her heart her notebooks in a grocery-store bag

To the last respiration of the very last soul
And beyond: Art will live because Art lives

A trumpeter manages to save the mouthpiece at least
While carrying his child out to an ambulance

To the last respiration of the very last soul
And beyond: Art will live because Art lives

A sculptor’s eyes record a wall of windows
To be re-molded as life-filled windows of dreams

To the last respiration of the very last soul
And beyond: Art will live because Art lives:

Firefighters wrestling a hose through smoke and heat
Are a choreograph of life against flaming death

To the last respiration of the very last soul
And beyond: Art will live because Art lives

An artist whose studio is now but smoke
Will stir ashes and water, and paint again

To the last respiration of the very last soul
And beyond: Art will live because Art lives

A little girl will write of her little dog
Her bestest pal whom she never saw again

To the last respiration of the very last soul
And beyond: Art will live because Art lives

In a shelter tonight an aging man
Will sing to himself the love songs of his youth

To the last respiration of the very last soul
And beyond: Art will live because Art lives



                                                        ­       then patch

                    a few words together and don’t try
                    to make them elaborate, this isn’t
                    a contest but the doorway

                                   -Mary Oliver, “Praying”

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                         A Cargo Cult

Conversations are about packages
Packages considered, packages ordered
Packages delivered and packages stolen
Packages as the cosmic medium of exchange

Conversations are about packages
Packages that give meaning to our lives
Packages pinched by plundering porch pirates
Packages snatched by maskers in masks

What is it all about? the thinker asks -
What if the packages are filled with
                                                                      masks?

Everybody honors Th’ Workin’ Man
With songs about the dignity of work
Poems, impassioned speeches in Congress
The latest book about worker housing

But everybody ignores that working man
Who builds the stage on which the singer sings
The plumber who makes the artist’s royal flush
The electrician who wires the elections

Everybody honors Th’ Workin’ Man -
But nobody honors a working man

A Rocket from the Colonial Office

Colleagues,

If you are receiving this email, your
Syllabus for your course(s) is not showing
On the )/ webpage under House Bill
2504.  This is a state law with

Which we must be in compliance.  If you have
Not uploaded your syllabus for each
Course that you teach, you need to get that task
Completed now. The task was supposed to

Have been completed by September 5,
According to a previous email
Reminder – this is actually your third
Reminder. If you need help completing

This aspect of your responsibilities,
Please let me know if you have uploaded
Your syllabus already, but if it
Is not showing, we may need to contact

IT for assistance.  Thank you for your
Dedication to /)/) College.

Gone to Glory Wearing a Beer Advert

Found by a walker wandering through the woods:
Fragments of flesh, and bitten bits of bones
An ankle joint still jammed into a shoe
Sporting a checkmark, a fashionable sneak

And his tee-shirt, boasting a famous beer,
Unread in those months among the leaf-mold
As lonely winds and seasons passed over him
And the name brands abandoned to the mists

He’s gone to glory wearing a beer advert
And no one knows what any of that means

Under a Fluorescent Sky

or

Computer Training Made Easy for Delicate Wits

(Each regular line consists of two anapests and two iambs; the italicized lines are from an in-service presentation)

Hard rain roars on the roof, while subjects sit
In hard chairs, in straight lines, and yawn, not learn

Integration specialists from all schools...

Speakers drone, listeners zone throughout the day
And the light does not change -- no sun, no clouds

Will use technology-related terms...

Not in here.  But outside the thunder sings
About rain, about life, for rain is life

Concepts, data input strategies, and...

The rain falls, and life calls us to the meads
There to sing faery songs where love is wild

Ethical practices to make informed...

Must this man thus drag on about machines
That he says make life fun? No rain, no sun.

Decisions about current technolo...

Channel Twelve, six tonight, in colored light
Will show me, writing this, alien here.

*Gies and the applications.  All teachers...

Meditation on a Ten-Dollar Timex Watch

A watch doesn’t really tell time, you know
Its tiny mechanism sweeps three hands
Around a dial locked in a little case
Upon a strap buckled around your wrist

And there it imitates the planet’s spin
And the planet’s spin is ordained by God
And the watch’s spin is ordained by man
So that we get to our haircuts on time

The solar system is a mighty work -
And a visit to the barber is nice

Night Class – Cellphonia in F Flat

A chamber piece for two sulks and a soda

He yawns, his head propped up against a wall
Of head-stained, head-banged green fluorescent blocks
In the back of the room, in Marlboro Country
Reposing in sad, sullen insolence

Furtively strumming a silent keypad
Flinging his unique existential angst
Into cool, pure, plasticized electrons
And out into the meta-fusional night

Where there’s real life, man, not these books and stuff,
Real life; you wouldn’t understand. I’m me
And you don’t know who I am, man.  I am:
An inspirational singer-songwriter

My own me journeying onward to me
An artist, a great soul misunderstood
Raging against a machine that isn’t there
An angry rebel on government grants.

A fine wine’s not for us; we want cheap red
In paper cups beneath the apple trees
with cheese and bread upon the grasses spread
And you singing along each merry breeze

This fine day’s made for us; we want to kiss
Creation as we kiss each other’s lips
In celebration of sweet summer bliss
While soft away the dreamy twilight slips

Our fine moon’s rising, silvering the air -
She tells us we have kisses yet to share

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                An Afternoon LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER Walk
             Along Beer Can Road and County Dump Extension

Dewberries LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER sassafras seedlings LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER Virginia creeper LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER pine cones LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER crumbling oak leaves from last summer  LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER winds sighing in the pine tops LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER a little plum tree LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER Canada goldenrod LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER poplar LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER swamp oak LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER mourning doves LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER slanting evening sunlight LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER Chickasaw plum LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER nightshade LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER red spider lilies LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER a skink bluebonnets LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER clouds in the west LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER spiderwort LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER a long eared rabbit loping across the road LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER sorrel LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER a feather from a bluebird LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER waving field grasses LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER the neighbor’s cows browsing in peace LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER a crane flying up from a pond LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER crows fussing at me from the woods LITE A FINE PILSNER BEER…

(John Keats wrote much of the first line; I took care of the rest)

Where are the squirrels of spring? Ay, where are they?
Flattened by a log truck, just yesterday
When old enough to leave the family nest
They ran into the road, there flattened, pressed

Though cautioned by their wise sciuridaean sire
They panicked before an approaching tire
They had little time for a valedictory squeal
Before they died, so young, beneath the wheel –

So even if the old folks seem such a bother
You really ought to listen to your father

Saint Garden Gnome

An obscure barefoot friar in Italy
Long labored in the Perugian sun,
Heaped rocks upon rocks, and then other rocks,
Up to a wavery roof of broken tiles,
Repairing with his bleeding hands God’s church

Then, better known – it wasn’t his fault – this friar,
With others in love with Lady Poverty,
In hope and penance trudged to far-off Rome
To offer there his modest Rule of life,
Repairing with his mindful words God’s Church

Along the delta of the steaming Nile
He waved away the worried pickets, crossed
Into the camp of the Saracens
Preaching Christ to merciful Al-Kamil,
Offering with a martyr’s heart God’s Faith

Saint Francis is depicted in fine art
In great museums and in modest homes -
And you can find him too, down at Wal-Mart,
Between the plastic frogs and concrete gnomes.

Feast of the Epiphany

Grey days recede into dreary, drizzling dusks
Baptismal rains across the windows slip
And even the candlelight is not proof
Against the gathering gloom of heartfall

Shakespeare leans uncertainly on the shelf
And agonizes over his writer’s block
Milton is writing yet another tract
On faith while smoking Players cigarettes

Warnie and Jack are out for a brisk walk
And Tollers is busy correcting proofs
Under a yellow puddle of lamplight
Bleak Spenser in his grief Kilcolman weeps

We all hold castles abandoned and burnt
Friendships grown mouldy, squabbles unresolved
Walks not taken, rough drafts uncorrected
Pipes gone quite out, cups of tea gotten cold

Has it been that long since I saw you last?
Come in; I’ll put the kettle on for tea
Just leave your coat and brolly by the door
Come sit by the fire; come, and talk with me

“Maccabees, and all that Mess”

Antiochus declared himself to be
Epiphanes – a god unto himself
And persecuted suffering Israel
With pagan images and fire and death

The blood of martyrs Mattathias moved
And all his sons, hammers chosen by God
To cleanse the Temple of all perfidy
And through eight days rededicate the world

But now

Dismissed by the café theologian
As merely “Maccabees, and all that mess”

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Logosophiamag.c­om
Hellopoetry.com
Fellowshipandfairydust.com

                                          A Field Guide to Fields

Watermelons, sunflowers, field corn, sweet corn
Sweet potatoes, green peas, butterbeans, squash
Cabbages, purplehulls, lettuces in rows
And across the fence, red clover in glorious clouds

But the most glorious field is in midsummer hay
Green-dancing beneath the benevolent sun
Crosstracked by beagles, terrapins, foxes, and rabbits
And little boys off to the fishing hole

Those little paths across farm fields, you know
Lead to happy memories of the long-ago