He sat on the old board fence, his chair of state
All spiffy in his Sunday-pressed khakis
Though he wasn't much for going to church
And his Other Hat, still a farmer’s hat

With his teeth and his workworn, sunburnt hand
(The other hand somehow mislaid in France)
He played the paper and ‘baccy and tag
Into a censer of sacred sweet smoke

And all us little boys watched him in awe
And hoped for the bag with its little string draw

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

                                              Behold!

A story requires an occasional “Behold!”
Merely to see the magic is not enough
The children do not merely see Aslan
Nor does Uncle Andrew merely see the witch

Behold!

A story requires an occasional “Behold!”
Merely to see the Truth is not enough
The Magi do not merely see the Star
Nor do the shepherds merely see the Child

Behold!

A story requires an occasional “Behold!”
Or else the magic isn’t truly told

Behold!

Futurism acknowledges the past
But only to condemn it, discard it:
A song that was sung sweetly yesterday
By a pretty girl while driving to work

A baby laughing at a butterfly
A beagle pup chasing a rubber ball
Geese honking through their autumn pilgrimage
And former people who would not adapt

Reflecting on the mass graves it has filled
Futurism acknowledges its past

Palm Sunday in Egypt
9 April 2017

Revelation 20:4

Poor bleeding Egypt, Mother of martyrs
Whose sands receive the gift of sacred blood
Almost without an end: the Apostle Mark,
Saint Katherine, and even on this day:

A child in the narthex scampering about
Although his mother told him to behave
A man waiting for a friend, passers-by
Someone hoping that the sermon is short

O may they now with Christ enter into
Golden Jerusalem, now and forever

Once upon a time each morning began
With a ventilation shaft and the night’s
Foul fall of dreams, drama, and downed debris
Dammed and maybe ****** against the window screen

And then an apartment window so high
I could see only the San Diego sky
Train windows, the Mojave through the glass
Then only for a little while
                                                       there was you

The scenery keeps shifting, and that’s okay
Life is a John Ford movie every day

An Angelina College Christmas

The hallways of our little school echo
God’s holy silence on this Christmas Eve
The only light’s the Star of long ago;
It shines this night for us, whose hearts believe

For we are all now at the Manger met
Before the Altar of eternal Light
So many different disciplines, and yet
We share one calling on this rarest night

We bring our gifts to Mary’s fair-born Child:
A pen, a broom, a book, a welding rod,
A wrench, some chalk, some papers neatly filed –
Our daily labors offered up to God

But silence now: offices, classrooms, gym,
As silent as the streets of Bethlehem.

Children Waiting for the School Bus

Children still wait for the yellow school bus
Along old country roads as early spring
Makes green the happy springtime of their lives
They carry backpacks now, and wear shoes every day

Because

The State of Texas sternly forbids bare feet
In the sacred halls of learning, even in the heat
Children ignore the passing cars, and joy
In their new world of giggles and first crushes

Cedar-wood pencils and Evangeline –
We too still wait for that yellow school bus

The Greatest Gift of the Enlightenment

A merciful machine is the guillotine
Empowering a compassionate society
To actuate therapy efficiently
Imagined by a diverse team of dreamers
Who saw what was why, and asked themselves why not
This greatest gift of the Enlightenment
Built using the latest technology
Sustainable wood from certified rainforests
And recycled metals crafted by artisans
Places the consumer at the center
Enhances higher order thinking skills
And promotes community values
Authentic ecosystem solutions
Embrace the needful progressive experience
A solution addressing social needs
And building teamwork across the spectrum
With voices for the voiceless voiced with love
And it all began with an idea, a dream
In someone’s kitchen, dorm room, or garage

POSS MARIJ <2OZ

A smart and funny kid, lanky and tall
Cliché mop of hair which on him looks good
Personality-plus, new jokes each day
He makes the day better by being around

He’s not around today. But here’s his name
His date of birth. Some words that don’t make sense…
So that’s why no one’s seen him since…since when?
But when you ask, no one says anything

A smart and funny kid, lanky and tall
No one can hear him crying in the holding cell

Harvest Time in the Fens

St. Michael’s Church, Chesterton

A calendar knows little of a day,
Of any day; its arbitrary squares
Mark seasons as they amble on their way
From holy Advent ‘til the harvest fairs,

When summer’s crops, all red and gold and blue,
Along with piglets, ducks, some well-fed hens,
Are carted squeaking, squealing, creaking to
Saint Michael’s fields in the Anglian fens.

Old Father William lifts a pint (no less!)
With farmers selling cows and chicks and corn,
For he is merry too, and quick to bless
The laboring marsh-folk on this autumn morn.

Earth, sky, and air mark seasons as they fall,
And now comes Martinmas, joyfully, for all.

Teddy bears ribboned to a chain-link fence,
Plastic-wrapped flowers stacked like compost,
Dime-store candles flickering in the exhaust
Of passing mini-vans.  The inanity
Of filler-language falls, descends upon
The shattered souls of the barely alive,
The dead cliches’ of well-planned camera-grief:
“Our hearts and thoughts go out to you.”
What does that mean?  Nothing but conventional noise
For generations of lovers and mourners
Long ago looted of reality,
Programmed with state-sanctioned hyperbole,
And mourners now are left with nothing but
An existential howl against the light,
Sodium-vapor upon broken glass,
While strident Men of Destiny
There rake for votes among the ashes of death.

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


                                   Moo. Herd Immunity. Moo.

            "I don't know what herd immunity is, but when you
             add that to the people who have acquired immunity,
              it looks like it could be very close to herd immunity.”

                             -Texas Governor Greg Abbott,
        as quoted by the Washington Post via The Houston Chronicle


Moo. Herd immunity. Moo. Simple math.
Moo. Very close. Moo. Vigilant. Moo. Proactive.
Moo. Efficacy. Moo. Calculation.
Moo. Dashboards. Moo. Trackers. Moo. Asymptomatic.

Moo. 70% Moo. 80%.
Moo. Fourth surge. Moo. Waves. Moo. Gaps. Moo. Pockets.
Moo. Complications. Moo. Misunderstandings.
Moo. Factors. Moo. Threshold. Moo. Duration

Moo. Emerging. Probable. Moo. Data.
Moo. Equation. Moo. Very close. Moo. Died.

“I don’t know what herd immunity is…”

Moo.

In memory of Michel Legrand


Young lovers have from time to time made promises
On midnight docks before the troopships sailed
On dripping railway platforms censed in steam
At bus stops and on glassed-in airport ramps

Young lovers have from time to time made promises
And pledged them in their letters with kisses sealed
And cancelled politicians upside down
Then posted to a world that is not yet

Young lovers have from time to time made promises -
If it takes forever, we will wait for them

Elegy for a Four-Cup Coffee Maker

Poor Mister Coffee – may God grant you rest
After long years of humble service to man
You never abandoned your duty station
Next to the cookies and the kitchen sink

You were the first to bless each day at dawn
Your little red sanctuary lamp aglow
As with electricity you commingled
Water and coffee into a sacrament

Fruit of the bean and work of human hands -
But now you are silent, to drip no more

Dry Well

A Gift from Fort Apache Energy, Inc.

“We will be drilling with a fresh water mud system
which has no environmental impact.”

- Allan P. Bloxsom III, President

As woodland creatures shy until the dark
Drift as a silent blessing through the trees
At dusk some sad folk gather ‘round the wounds
Gored geometrically into the ground
A palisade of wood and water and earth
Now guarding nothing but pale desolation:
A pond of death whose hydrocarbon sheen
In corpselike stillness entertains no life
A sewerage ditch bedecked with human turds
A dumpster skip piled high with promises
Piles of unidentified white powder
An unattended garbage fire, a shirt
Some bolts, planks, screws, sandwich wraps, cigarette butts
A cargo cult of curiosities
Liturgically in statio around The Hole
That venerable new hole, that hole of hope
That fabled argosy laden with dreams
That fell into the depths, and never returned
At dawn a tower stood, adorned with lights
By dusk it was folded, and stolen away
Like the long-storied tents of Araby
Or a Roman camp in the Teutoburg
Abandoned among the darkening woods
For the curious primitives to poke
And **** about, chattering in their tongue
About the marvels of a superior race
Who make no environmental impact.

Adventures with an Olivetti

(In which the scrivener violates his rule never to write in the first-person)

My bed was a Sears & Roebuck sleeping bag
And my world headquarters that old MG;
An Olivetti portable processed
My words, my fresh young words, that no one read

I owned more books than clothes, and only those few
That could be stowed in the passenger seat;
I fancied myself the new Rod McKuen
And I wasn’t - but I remember the road

When the world was new, adventures every day
And I miss that - but mattresses are nice

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”

                 -Father Zossima in *The Brothers Karamazov

I am Napoleon now.  I want to be
Napoleon, and it is so.  I can be
Anything I want to be – isn’t that
The cleverness you’ve always taught to me?

My truth is the truth, and it must be yours
My self-determination - it obscures
Your bogus science and reality
Fiat and fashion my truth thus secures

I am a poached egg 1 now. That’s what I want –
It’s illegal to argue that - so don’t!

1 The allusion to an argument in C. S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity is well known.

How is it that a man can live a long
And happy life in the service of God
And humanity without ever having made
A deep study of the cultivation
Of eyelashes?

Sweet music on the Mustang’s radio
We’re sitting in her parents’ driveway

And sort of talking about the movie
And sort of talking about poetry and life

Frost is settling on the hood of the car
But all is warm in our bubble of love

Until

Our kiss is interrupted by the flickering
Of the parental, watchful front porch light

We sigh. We kiss. The censorial eye -
It orders me away  - “That’s all! Bye-bye!”

                      (Oh, flick that porch light anyway!)

Horseshoe, and it Crucified

A hoodie girl outside the truck stop leans
Against a wall, huddled against the wind
While no one’s looking, sneaking a cigarette
A vision of desperation through the windshield

She’s selling Cowboy-Jesus “for the missions”
A table of lacquered cypress crosses
But instead of the Corpus a horseshoe
A horseshoe crucified – and, too, a girl

A poor, sad girl outside the truck stop leans
She’s selling Cowboy-Jesus for some boss

Or else

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                      A Ballerina Arrested for High Treason

                           Let them dance in praise of His name

                                                 -Psalm 150

A ballerina was arrested for high treason

And no wonder – dance is a beautiful thing
Whether the thunderous tread of a country line
Or the ethereal flights of Russian ballet
Dance is a joy, and so must be suppressed

A ballerina was arrested for high treason

A dancer moves to mysteries of her own
On an imperial stage in Saint Petersburg
Or barefoot in a meadow among butterflies
Dance is a joy, and must be controlled

A ballerina was arrested for high treason

In the street or in a moonlit fairies’ ring
Such wild wonder – dance is a dangerous thing!

A ballerina was arrested for high treason

“Please remove everything from your pockets
And place them in this little tray (NOW, please)

Which we will then pass around to strange people
Without you being able to see who they are.”

“Will all merlot-class diners please line up
At the door while we verify your existence?”

“I’m sorry, sir, but your meal will be delayed
For about two hours. Would you like some water?”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but your meal will be delayed
While our maintenance team works on the grill.”

“I’m sorry, miss, but your meal will be delayed
While our maintenance team repairs the oven vents.”

“Yes, the breakfast special is $7.95
But there is a $10 surcharge for the plate.”

“We are sorry, miss, but it appears that
Your silverware has been re-routed to Denny’s.”

“We find that seating twenty customers
At a four-foot table is more efficient.”

“We are having a little turbulence
In the kitchen; please fasten your seat belts.”

“For safety purposes, secure all ‘phones
And stow them until after the salad.”

“We ran out of entrees fourteen tables back.
There is no more coffee. Want a doughnut?”

“However, we have lots of *****
For the belligerent drunk behind you.”

“Thank you for dining with us this evening
(Yeah, yeah, like we even care about you).”

The Beggar at Canterbury Gate

The beggar sits at Canterbury Gate,
Thin, pale, unshaven, sad.  His little dog
Sits patiently as a Benedictine
At Vespers, pondering eternity.
Not that rat terriers are permitted
To make solemn vows.  Still, the pup appears
To take his own vocation seriously,
As so few humans do.  For, after all,
Dogs demonstrate for us the duties of
Poverty, stability, obedience,
In choir, perhaps; among the garbage, yes,
So that perhaps we too might live aright.

The good dog’s human plays his tin whistle
Beneath usurper Henry’s1 offering-arch
For Kings, as beggars do, must drag their sins
And lay them before the Altar of God:
The beggar drinks and drugs and smokes, and so
His penance is to sit and suffer shame;
The King’s foul murders stain his honorable soul;
His penance is a stone-carved famous name
Our beggar, then, is a happier man,
Begging for bread at Canterbury Gate;
Tho’ stones are scripted not with his poor fame,
His little dog will plead his cause to God.

1Henry VII, who built the Cathedral Gate in 1517, long after the time of Henry II and St. Thomas Becket

Some Year’s Day

What century is it outside?

-Boris Pasternak

It’s a fair question: what century is this?
There was fog in the morning, this first day
Of the new year, and later overcast
There was nothing new in any of that

The fat grey squirrel raided the bird-seed at dawn
Which is why he is fat, and dampness dripped
From the roof eaves onto the long-dead leaves
There was nothing new in that, either

The first cup of coffee, the same old news -
It’s a fair question, it is: what century?

Saint Joseph the Just

for every man

Saint Joseph in a dreary winter night
Took to himself a Newborn not his own
Yet who is always his, the Child of Light
Whose crib Saint Joseph knew to be a throne

Saint Joseph shows men truth: each child is ours
Adopted by each good man upon birth
True fatherhood ordained in starlit hours
And ratified in Heaven and on earth

Saint Joseph is the man who looked into
The eyes of Mary in her happy youth
This strong man looked into her eyes and knew
She bore within her all eternal Truth

Our witness is Saint Joseph, ever just:
God calls each man to take each child in trust

Borodin's On the Steppes of Central Asia

Lost in a remote province of the mind
A youth attends to the cheap gramophone
Again: On the Steppes of Central Asia,
A recording by a mill town orchestra
Of no repute.  But it is magic still:
While washing his face and dressing for work
In a clean, pressed uniform of defeat,
For ten glorious minutes he is not
A function, a shop-soiled proletarian
Of no repute.  Beyond the landlord’s window,
Beyond the power lines and the ***-holed street,
He searches dawn’s horizons with wary eyes
For wild and wily Tartars, horsemen out
To blood the caravans for glory and gold.
A youth greets the day as he truly is:
A cavalryman, a soldier of the Czar,
Whose uniform is stained with victory.

Scrambled Eggs in Rainwater

Field Medical Service School

Shivering in the rain, up in the hills
Of Sunny Southern California
Kerosene cookers and their gust-blown smoke
Squid-wet Corpsmen in flying wet slickers

Mess kits held out to sullen, cursing cooks
Slam-slopping glops of sausages and eggs
Cold coffee in aluminum canteen cups
No cover, no shelter for floating food

Or for sergeants bellowing in the dark –
And we laughed through it all, for we were young

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

                            We’ll Write a New Idyll This Year

                The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
                And God fulfils himself in many ways

             -Idylls of the King, “The Passing of Arthur,” 8-9

Janus faces both ways, and so do we
A last, lingering look at the year that was
And then a turn to the year we must meet
Marching to it through Janus Pater’s doors

We will most remember about the past
Our friends whose pilgrimages came to their ends
We joy in the remembrance of their happiness
Their stories and songs, their unfailing kindness

Janus faces both ways, and so do we;    
But now our friends, our happy friends, they see
Light


                 And the new sun rose bringing the new year

                       -Idylls, “The Passing of Arthur,” 469

A Hasty Partisan Response to the Mueller Report

                      “And art made tongue-tied by authority”

                         -Sonnet 66, often quoted by Pasternak

The Russian reports on my desk include:

Selected Poems, Yevtushenko
The Possessed, Dostoyevsky
The Zhivago Affair, Finn and Couvee
The Complete Poems of Anna Ahkmatova
August 1914, Solzhenitsyn

And some of them unread, some of them read
And better read than red, so someone said
Some of them shelved (We and The House of the Dead)
But now I’m going to work the flower bed

And what century is it outside?  1


1 Pasternak

“It Could Have Been Worse”

New York City, 31 October 2017

Our thoughts and prayers are with the families
copycat we are Something Strong we are
not afraid plow into mowed down it could
have been worse the new normal lone wolf we

will not change the way we live our thoughts
and prayers are with the families copycat
we are Something Strong we are not afraid
plow into mowed down: "it could have been worse…”

*Oh, newsman, how could it could have been worse
For the eight innocents murdered in the street?

A mist, but not of memories or ghosts,
And not a silent mist - a noisy one
Drifts darkly over this altar to the past
The docent pauses for each motor home

Gear-growling up the unexpected *****
Along the road from that point to this one
Well-paved and posted: fifteen miles per hour

For cell-‘phone shots where each historic death
Is marked with stones among the sunlit grass
The docent speaks of her peoples: Cheyenne,
Arapaho, Sioux, and soldier boys blue

With frequent and reflective pauses as
A Winnebago circles Last Stand Hill

Easter Vigil, Sort Of

A vigil, no, simply quiet reflection
Minutes before midnight, with all asleep
Little Liesl-Dog perhaps dreams of squirrels,
For she has chased and barked them all the day;
The kittens are disposed with their mother
After an hour of kitty-baby-talk,
Adored by all, except by Calvin-Cat,
That venerable, cranky old orange hair-ball,
Who resents youthful intrusion upon
His proper role as object of worship.
All the house settles in for the spring night,
Anticipating Easter, early Mass,
And then the appropriately pagan
Merriments of chocolates and colored eggs
And children with baskets squealing for more
As children should, in the springtime of life.

Nothing is more pragmatic than a votive light
A candlelight
A little light
A prayer light

Whether I am on the right side of history
Is a fantasy and an irrelevancy -
History had better be on the right side of me

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

                           Trousers, Gentlemen, Trousers!

          “There are moments, Jeeves, when one asks oneself,
            'Do trousers matter?'"

            "The mood will pass, sir.”

                     ― P.G. Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters

Had you visited the post office today
You might have heard an elderly man say
(After opening his newspaper, by the way)

“Trousers, gentlemen, trousers”

For there in black and white, on the front page
Was pictured each and every schoolboard sage
Attired in shorts, in deference to the age

“Trousers, gentlemen, trousers”

While one appreciates our volunteers
Who serve our schools for free (let’s give them cheers)
The vision of old men’s legs must lead to jeers

Their veined and wrinkled knees – is this a tease?
“Trousers, gentlemen, trousers – please!”

Old Number Ten Saloon – where Bill was shot
Sitting in this old chair – or maybe not
‘Cause down the street there is another bar
Where poor Bill died; that’s two beer joints so far

And yet a third, here in South Dakota
Right over there, behind that Toyota
Another of those authentic places
Where Wild Bill died over his eights and aces

Everyone has a different tale to tell

And so

We’re not real sure where Wild Bill Hickok fell

Come Laughing Home at Twilight

Beaumont-Hamel, 1916

And, O!  Wasn’t he just the Jack the Lad,
A’swellin’ down the Water Street as if –
As if he owned the very paving stones!
He was my beautiful boy, and, sure,
The girls they thought so too: his eyes, his walk;
A man of Newfoundland, my small big man,
Just seventeen, but strong and bold and sure.

Where is he now?  Can you tell me?  Can you?

Don’t tell me he was England’s finest, no –
He was my finest, him and his Da,
His Da, who breathed in sorrow, and was lost,
They say, lost in the fog, among the ice.
But no, he too was killed on the first of July
Only it took him months to cast away,
And drift away, far away, in the mist.

Where is he now?  Can you tell me?  Can you?

I need no kings nor no Kaisers, no,
Nor no statues with fine words writ on’em,
Nor no flags nor no Last Post today:
I only want to see my men come home,
Come laughing home at twilight, boots all mucky,
An’ me fussin’ at ‘em for being’ late,
Come laughing home at twilight...

Yes, Lady-in-the-Back-With-Your-Arms-Folded-in-Disapproval

“Excuse me.  Excuse me.  Could I ask a question?
Okay, I’ve got a question actually I’ve got
Two questions okay maybe it’s one question
I don’t mean to interrupt or anything

“Ha ha but sometimes us old folks don’t understand
So well ha ha but about what you said about
Just now what was it oh yes now I remember:
When I was young back in the stone ages

“Ha ha we were taught one way and right now
You’re telling us this way and that’s not right…”

“Chocolate Eggs and Jesus Risen”

“I have been told of a very small boy who was heard murmuring to himself on Easter morning…’Chocolate eggs and Jesus risen.’”

-C. S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms

This evening is not Ordinary Time
Not even close, with Eastertide just begun
But put we now our mourning clothes away
And with them too our Easter morning best

And dress again in ordinary life
The relatives have finally gone away
The house is quiet, the dishes are washed -
That chocolate bunny is an object of desire

Almost of pagan worship (by God’s grace)
This evening - it is ordinary enough!

The Road to Magdalena, New Mexico

The wind is cold, a Colorado cold,
Blowing the summer back to Mexico
From whence it came; it sat upon this land
For dreary months of heavy, lifeless heat.
But now the desert dawn is blue; the stars
Make one last show before withdrawing to
The Caves of Night beyond the timberline,
Where no man walks, for fear of ancient gods.

This desert dawn is blue with promises;
The road to Magdalena creeps beneath
The ridges where the Watchers of the night
Seem now content to still their thunderstorms,
And grant a grateful pilgrim sunlit hours.
There will be coffee in Magdalena,
And not much else.  The cattle drives have ceased,
And the railroad is gone; the school is closed,
As are the saloons, but there should be coffee.

For Liesl-the-Wonder-Dachshund, of Happy Memory

A merry dachshund yaps, and leaps for leaves
Wind-strewn across the still-green summer grass
As Autumn visits briefly, and looks around
To plan his festive moonlit frosts when soon
Diana dances across November’s skies.

My father painted his dairy barn yellow
Maybe because he found some bargain paint
Then came along the inspector fellow
With his clipboard, and he said that yellow ain’t

Legal, that dairy barn paint had to be white
My father had The Book, and from it he read
That a dairy barn’s color only had to be light
“Well, I’ll find something else,” the inspector said

He found a fly speck on an old cow bell -
May Texas milk inspectors just go to (Newark)

Rosaries might be like ball-point pens
A souvenir for you from Brighton Beach
Fabrique en Chine, blessed by the Bishop of Rome
A kind thought from gap years and honeymoons

But now those rosaries and ball-point pens
Repose in stasis beneath your Sunday socks
And the handkerchiefs Mee-Maw monogrammed
In silk for your high school graduation

Go find them
(No, no, not the socks or handkerchiefs...)

Words flung onto paper are gifts of light
And so are Aves whispered in the night

No one ever figured out how Schlomo
Got off the ship with a life jacket
 
But there he was on the pier among the crowd
Sitting sadly on his little brown suitcase
 
And wearing a life jacket from the ship
With "Orinoco" stenciled across it
 
A sailor in a white uniform wanted it
But Schlomo would not take it off
 
A policeman in a blue uniform wanted it
But Schlomo would not take it off
 
Schlomo's father told him he wanted it
But Schlomo would not take it off
 
And on the bus ride through the city
Schlomo would not let go of it
 
And for weeks Schlomo wore his life jacket
 
In the park
In the dark
 
In his schule
In his school
 
Until one day in the park on the river's bank
He took it off
He threw it in
It promptly sank
 
Then he said to himself, our little Schlomo,
"I knew somehow - it was time to let go."

In the midst of a world of light and love, of song and feast and dance, he could find nothing more interesting to think of than his own prestige.

                        -C. S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost

Just look into the mirror, and there you are
Could lose a little weight, but there you are
You comb your hair, you brush your teeth, and then
You should always remember to make a face

And laugh

For you are not a sloganed comrade-hat
Nor yet a shadow in a marching mob
A noise, a post, a bumper-stickered oaf
An obedient tool being pushed about

Because

You are not a tagged and labeled identity
But a true child of God: brave, loving, and free

Lady Day

And now comes Lady Day, a new year’s day
When happier hours to summering begin
And farmers follow their ploughs among new fields
While in the hedgerows early snowdrops bloom

Old debts are settled, new agreements made
And the oldest promise of all proves True
On this the day of the Annunciation
As spring comes early in Galilee, and here

And all because our Lady said yes to Life
On this our Lady’s day, a new year’s day

“Render unto Caesar…”

29th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Let us render unto the Caesars
Our sons and daughters for undeclared wars
Each death excused with a telephone call
Each death another medal for a general

Let us render unto the Caesars
Our children for the pleasures of the rich
Each death and shattered heart excused as art
Each death a tribute to some rich man’s lust

Each leader, each Somebody, takes and takes –
They then dismiss their victims as snowflakes

Is there a God? And did He really build
This world for us in which to live and serve
Each other and Him in sweet caritas?

Is there a God? And does he really love us?

If this is so,

Why does He permit motivational speakers?

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