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

                             At the Hissing Electric Eye Doors

An old man shuffles his walker to the doors
The sanitary wipes are to the left
A gum-chewer brushes by with a plastic sack
Ranks of shopping carts rust to the right

A child skips through; her mother yells, “Wait! Wait!”
A three-color circular blows by
An angry woman flings her cigarette down
Right there beneath the NO SMOKING sign

Another old man growls, “Son of a *!”
Because he’s pulled the cart with a wobbly wheel

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

                                                    Attitude Check

Climb down off your white horse
And sit in the shade of the trees
To drink from your canteen
A taste of humility

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                  At Yevna Something Happened

The Talmud is to this day the circulating heart's blood of the Jewish religion. Whatever laws, customs or ceremonies we observe-whether we are orthodox, conservative, reform or merely spasmodic sentimentalists - we follow the Talmud. It is our common law.

                                       -Herman Wouk

At Yevna something happened, something quite real
Though no one seems to know exactly how
Those who entered as priests arose as rabbis
Carrying Talmud out into the world

At Yevna something happened

Ben Zakkai and Gamaliel sit at your table
Your study table, a house of wisdom in Yevna
Where all may come to study Mishnah and Gemara
Where the lamp of peace is lit on Sabbath eve

At Yevna something happened

G-d sees to it that even a few holy books
The wisdom of the sages
The library of the ages
Are Yevna written into your modest home

At Yevna something happened



Note: The quote from Herman Wouk might not be exactly as he wrote in 1959; I was following an elusive and shape-shifting cut-and-paste text through a trackless forest of quotations.

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com


                                     August is a Yellow Flame


                          “That August was like a yellow flame”

                    Anna Ahkmatova, 1917 / Anno Domini MCMXXI /
                                       III. The Voice of Memory


This August is indeed like a yellow flame
Death writhes among brown-burnt withering leaves
The grass is as sere as Macbeth’s acrid soul
And garden hoses drip in futility

The sun-bleached visage of Ozymandias
Might frown upon this blighted desert wrack
For not unlike the Ancient Mariner’s ghostly crew
The usages of summer drop and decay

But look!

But look above the last barren clouds in the west -
A tiny sliver of the promising moon

August is not a Melodious Month

August is not a melodious month
Unlike September with its amphibrach
A rhythm of soothing rises and falls:
September morn and then September song

For August is a trochee all intemperate
A restive foot that wants to walk away
Impatient with discourse, laughter, and song
In its wearying heat and lassitude

August is a word alone, without a rhyme

And so

August is not a melodious time

A Boy and His Dinosaur

In another world, a silent world within,
The dominant species are dinosaurs.
Never having fallen, no evil obtains,
And beneficent reptiles live there as -

As innocently as butterflies.
In his quiet world of gentle reptilians
A little boy is never without a friend,
A Saurian with an unpronounceable name,

To share a cave, a thought, a book, a toy,
And so that world with a best-friend dinosaur
Is the child’s real world, the only one
Where he knows love.

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

                   Autumn: Do I Turn the Thermostat Forward?

The thermostat that I set for seventy
In the August heat was entirely too warm
And now in November it’s entirely too cold
Why can’t thermostats get the temperature right?

The clocks, hot or cold, have issues of their own
In August they chimed the sunrise at six
But now they chime it at seven-thirty
We can conclude that clocks are easily confused

The seasons don’t know if they are forward or back
And I’m unsure myself – alas and alack!

https://logosophiamag.com/2022/10/25/autumn-is-life-writing-its-autobiography/#respond



A selection of short poems published in LogoSophia.

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

                        Autumn is Life Writing its Autobiography

Autumn is not the end of summer, nor yet
Is autumn the beginning of winter; it is
Itself. Autumn is not between anything
Autumn is the culmination of seasons

The seed that slept beneath winter’s cold death
Arose in spring, a resurrection of itself
And grew its summer strength through work and sweat
And in September finished, and mopped its brow

Surveying all its cosmography
Autumn is life writing its biography

(pretend this is centered) Autumn Leaf

                 for a dear friend who died  in the night

O may her life close like a leaf that falls
And laughs in falling at its happy end
Air-dancing through a sky of Dresden blue
Sun-sliding sideways in a blithesome breeze

Soft-singing in a sweet sinopian sun
Who smiles grandfatherly on each blest leaf
Remembering its spring, and summer too
Pushed from the wood after the last fell frost

To grow from mother-tree and taste the air
In that Apollonian sun of youth
To work and play in Saturnian summer
And then to glow in ripe Pomona’s dusk

In celebration of all life, and then
At last to leap into eternity

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                             Autumn Jewish Space Leaves

This morning the sun rose at seven-fifteen
                    Jewish space lasers had something to do with it
The air outside was October-cool and still
                    I’m pretty sure that this was an IDF scheme

A leaf in silence fell to the still-green grass
            No doubt the Mossad planned it that way
Leaves didn’t fall when Trump was president
                    These Jews control all vegetation!

Another leaf floated into my coffee cup
             The mainstream media said nothing about this
Fox News was silenced for thirty seconds or so
                      There’s a They out there who don’t want us to know

I used to enjoy autumn mornings a lot
              But now I know that weather is a Jewish plot!

I.

How wonderful to sleep in a soft, warm bed
Beneath a roof against the blowing night
Of wind and rain rattling each window pane
As winter falls upon this weary world

The busy-ness of day is all complete
I wind the clock and so unwind myself
My little dog burrows toward my feet
Contented with her life, with warmth, with me

And now a few more pages to be read -
How wonderful to sleep in a soft, warm bed

V: Deo gratias


II.

But good enough to sleep in an old, worn bag
Beneath a tarp against the blowing night
Of wind and rain rattling the plastic *****
As winter falls upon the weary world

The emptiness of day is incomplete
And bigger guys stole my cheap Timex watch
Now slithering rats burrow toward my feet
And bite to see if they can feast on me

Another night to be drained and bled
I remember - long ago – sleeping in a bed

R: Your Deo gratias ain’t much help

I mean, like, veg, you couldn’t expect me to eat
A fellow vegetable, a kindred soul
One in spirit with me, with woody cells
Made in the image of the Great Carrot

The animals don’t feel pain like we do
They have no sense of being, they have no soul
And humans need to be farm-raised in pens
And really, veg, they’re happier that way

I’m studied in all such matters agrarian
And, yum! I love me a tasty vegetarian!

A Veteran of the Wars

This old warrior has many tales to tell:
He’s sailed among the distant Philippines
Built ships all over the world, repaired tanks
In Germany, was in the desert wars

He served with the Marines, and the Navy too
And can tell you everything about the Aegis -
And does –
                          but he was never in the service;
He’s a sacker at the supermarket

This poor old man; he never got it right
But God bless him – he had his own wars to fight

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

                                          A Village for Our Exile

Far is that City of God for which we hope
Here the cities of man in which we live
Glorious, but still only refugee camps:
Constantinople, Athens, London, Rome

Give us for our exile a village instead
A pub, a library, a shop, a little school
Cows and sheep grazing on the grass of the commons
A hay wain lumbering through the summer stream

Draught horses drinking from the little rill
In the ford below the slow-clacking mill

(Cf. John Constable, “The Hay Wain”)

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

                  A Violation of the First Law of Thermodynamics

A day so hot that ordinary tasks
Exhaust the body and the soul; to grasp
The handle of a water tap wearies the mind
To grasp a simple thought eludes one’s will

The day is in violation of childhood summers
When little bare feet scampered across the grass
Those days have in adulthood have been stolen
The victims lie abandoned in the dust

Who will lay these charges, and against whom?
And in what court should this strange case be placed?

A Visitor from Canada

Across the border she discreetly slipped
Not bothering the ICE with paperwork
They’ve got enough to do in their little booths:
“And is this visit for business or for pleasure?”

So here she is, on a bright five-pence piece
All elegant in profile, crowned and just,
Mistaken for a democratic dime
In a handful of republican change

What really is the reason for her visit?
To ‘mind us of our own nobility

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

              Avon Man and the Mystery of His First-Best Bed

                   I gyve unto my wief my second best bed…

          -Attributed to Shakespeare in his will. Or Churchill. Or
          Milton. Or Elvis. Or Some Famous Man. And Shakespeare
          was secretly a Catholic. (No, he wasn’t.) (Yes, he was.) (No, he
          wasn’t.) (Yes, he was; I read it on the InterGossip.)

That second-best bed doesn’t matter a pop
Those anyones whoever slept in it are deads
Memorialized as dashboard bobbleheads
At Ye Olde Anne Hathawaye gifte shoppe

Kinge Richarde nevere cryede, “mye kyngdome fore ye bedde!”
Yea, goode olde Sirre Erpinghame joked, “Now lye I like a kynge”
So what’s the deale withe the firste-beste bedde thynge?
Thatte seconde bedde is where the Widowe rested hir hedde

Ande thusse ye scholares maken withouten cessatione
Unsupportede argumentes and allegationes

I.

         “No doubt they’ll sing in tune after the Revolution.”

                      -Kamarovsky, Doctor Zhivago (film)

Everyone seems to clench his fist these days
In solidarity with ephemera
While setting fire to green recycling bins
Hurling someone else’s bicycle through a window

Armed with their undergraduate degrees
The comrades liberate a coffee shop
Wifi-ing the revolution of the day
Empowerment by beating love to death

Loudsplaining authentic victimization
Posing for selfies with a stolen ‘phone

II.

Their inhumanity seemed a marvel of class-consciousness, their barbarism a model of proletarian firmness…

                         -Doctor Zhivago, p. 349

Everyone seems to clutch his flag these days
In solidarity with a past that wasn’t
While setting fire to misspelled cardboard signs
Hurling someone else’s beer into a crowd

Armed with their lurid Confederate tats
The Something.Right liberate a dumpster
Bull-horning the counter-revolution
Empowerment by beating love to death

Bellowing their Reconquista of stench
Posing behind their cheap gas station shades

III.

“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. You don't agree; you're wrong. The personal life is dead…”

            -Strelnikov to Yuri, Doctor Zhivago (film)

Some few embrace civilization these days
In solidarity with humanity
While lighting one small candle as a votive
Whispering an Ave into the Light

Armed with wonder through pen and flute and brush
Recusants choose the liberation given
In singing of the eternal verities
Self-empowerment happily denied

With love, with poetry, music, and art
Celebrating life on this summer day

Hey, TeleCheck:

                                              T
     ­                                         H
                      ­                         I
                                         te  S  le

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                   Awaiting Cataract Surgery

                       You can't get a cup of tea big enough
                       or a book long enough to suit me.

                      - attributed to C. S. Lewis and others

I will give up my books
When someone pries my cold, dead hands from them
Companions of my youth, tellers of truth
Next to my heart when the mortar rounds fell

But now I see the world
As through a dark lens darkly, well enough
For most common household purposes
But those dear words on any page – not so

I never thought I’d say
That I’m looking forward to surgery day!

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

              Awarded the Chair of Poetry at a Leafy Rural Tree

Among its ancient gifts are acorns and leaves
But the most generous stipend is peace
Oh, sure, we have our academic rivalries –
Just last night a raccoon occupied the chair

And the cardinals and jays squawk a bit
Mostly about seeds, seldom about verse
For arguing with Keats and Yevtushenko
Is my great pleasure and duty, not theirs

Who knew –

That an old steel chair dragged onto the lawn
Could be a center of civilization?

A     n acrostic
C     an be challenging
R     efining words into patterns
0      f different meanings
S     o we can see the world
T     o be open to new ways of seeing
I       f we've a mind to
C      onsider it so

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                             A Wedding Dress at Goodwill

Long lost longings along a dusty rack
White for purity in her tender years
Backless for a slender, suntanned back
Now stained with disappointments and angry tears

Did she wear it happily that first night
Share champagne kisses passionate though shy
Then slip it off slowly for his delight?
A pause, a touch, an answering touch, a sigh…

Why did she bin it, happy memories and all
That day she received a telephone call?

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

A white tee shirt with a pack of Camels
Tucked up ‘way cool in the left-side sleeve
And new blue jeans, the cuffs exactly right
And in my back pocket a happenin’ Ace comb

For keeping that duck tail so hot for the chicks
To swoon about, so High School Confidential
A cheap tin switchblade hidden carefully away
More Sharks than the Sharks, more Jets than the Jets

Even Kookier than Kookie, oh, my! -
While swaggering home from junior high

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                               Awkward Adolescent Verse

              Poetry…
              The authority of empires, driven mad,
              Threatened it so many times,
              But it was the rulers who perished

                     -Yevtushenko, “Poetry is a Great Power”

They stole his boots even before he died
And scavengers have eaten out his eyes
His flesh and blood commingle with the mud
His rotting hands still claw the earth, the pain

A dime-store notebook, shredded with his heart
Once pencilled with his awkward, juvenile lines
Of undeveloped images and clumsy rhymes
Which will not be shaped and sharpened in this world

Among young bodies rats squabble and hiss -
Someone will be given a peace prize for this

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

                    A Woman Hollering and a Train Passing By

Next to the post office sags a trailer house
Where a fat old woman in a onesie
Was grilling something in her littered yard
Maybe some hot dogs, or just some dogs

A cigarette bounced about on her lip
As she screamed at me for driving by her life
Possibly she thought I was after her beer cans
Or her virtue, or her front-porch couch

A Santa Fe freight blew by, obscuring her words
And I accelerated, escaping her sorrows

As one of the blue-jacketed workers
As a defiant student
As a child of poverty
Who never had a bicycle to ride to the Sorbonne

I repudiate your vivid red flags
And your graduate-school keyboard revolution
And your catalogue of cliches’ and cant
And your crawling housefly symbolism

As one of the blue-jacketet workers
As a defiant student
After an all-night shift in the plastics factory
I like my cuppa Earl Grey tea in my bleeding hands

Someday I’ll have a bourgeois balcony
And from it look down on your stereotypes

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

                   A Young Roman Responds to Saint Benedict

               “We are about to open a school for God’s service…”

                                           -Rule, St. Benedict

Okay, but what about your S.T.E.M. offerings?
Does your footer pitch have artificial turf?
The books are too heavy - I have a note
My feelings are covered by the ADA

Silence? But I gotta have my tunes, man!
“Correction of Youths?” My mummy will sue!
“Daily manual labor” – may I be excused?
“No talk after Compline” – But can I text?

*** *** nonononono ***, no?

Not for me, dude; and this I’ve got to say:
I know that your program’s famously prestigious
But I am, like, spiritual, not religious
And, hey, you know, you’re just not Harvard, okay?

The spring morning was chill when from its nest
A young wasp fell, helpless and young
Upon the ground, needing the warmth of the sun
To spread its tiny dragon’s wings into new life

A creature of God, needing only an hour
To gain its strength, and so to live the life
Destined for it, its appointed mission
In the unknowable Plan of Creation

It seemed to beg for mercy with each desperate breath
And so with great care I crushed it to death

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

                                     ­  Bagram Air Base

                                      Shelley was Right

I met a veteran from an antique land,
Who said – “A looted fortress of concrete
Stands in the desert...Near it, on the sand,
Half sunk lies a computerized spreadsheet

Whose clever numbers and totaled-up tallies
Tell that our keyboard commanders well read
The shifting winds in political rallies
(Never mind an accurate count of the dead)

And on the side of a wrecked deuce-and-a-half:
My name is Builder of Democracies;
Look upon my Works, ye Mighty – and laugh!
The well-built airbase remains yet today

To that colossal base still standing there
The Chinese army speeds from far away.”

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Fellowship & Fairydust (fellowshipandfairydust.com)
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                  Ball Valve-Packing Gland

                            Valbula de bola-Tuerca de ajuste
                                            Hecho en China

I don’t know what a Ball Valve-Packing Gland is
My A & P classes didn’t mention it
Something to do with the rotator cuff?
Or is it next to the sella turcica?

A floating bone or a floating bit of plumbing
Because some men were here the other day
To mend a wonky valve with something brass
That glistens richly in the morning sun

Yes, that’s it; it’s plumbing, not my diet
And so I can have chocolate cake today!

Bands of Rain

The radar shows them as spiraling lunettes;
Here on the ground only rain, and then not
And then again, pale rain. The air is green,
The leaves are still, and heavy with the damp

The hurricane is far away, and yet
Its tentacles search out with menacing winds
And hidden tornados pursuivant
Poor refugees from its transient rule

And now another band, beating the walls
With hideous fury as another night falls

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com


                                           ­  Bar-and-Chain Oil


                                      “Here, sir, The People govern.”

                                    -attributed to Alexander Hamilton


Do our wise and more equal-than-equal equals
In all three branches (barren now) of government
Flying from luxury offices to luxury homes
In luxury aircraft they know to be their due

Pause between delicate porcelain cups
Of rare and precious Jamaica Blue Mountain
And single-malt in hand-cut Waterford crystal
And delicacies arranged on silver trays

Look down upon their lesser-than-equal equals
And suddenly remember
“I forgot to buy some bar-and-chain oil!”

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

              Barefootin’ Among Watermelons on a Summer Afternoon

                    For J. W., His Dad, and His Uncle Brandon

J. W. is blessed with family and purpose and love
Guided study and chores and structured faith
Happy barefootin’ days among the watermelons
A fishing pole and buzzing-bee summer afternoons

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


                 Barney Fife! Thou Shouldst be Living at this Hour

                              -as William Wordsworth did not say

Police chiefs are costumed as admirals these days
Or as generals, with medals and eagles and stars
Peaked caps and polished boots, more Patton than Patton
In stern command of parking-lot plywood lecterns

Their trousers are crisply pressed, as are their frowns
And all their seams line up with military precision
Each gold and silver button polished as befits
Leaders formidable to civilization’s foes

And thus they appear, gloriously attired
Explaining to their people why they’ve just been fired


(I admire police - beat cops, the proper coppers - but the resume’ builders who rise to high office and dress up like Hohenzollern postal clerks are another matter.)

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                          Battle Stations Aboard the Bismarck

When general quarters sounded that morning in May
Did a seventeen-year-old apprentice cook
Rushing to his topside battle station
But remembering the chief’s daily admonitions

And the way his mother kept her kitchen clean
Notice on a galley table a speck of dust
And pause to brush it away
When general quarters sounded that morning in May

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

           Beached Beauties, Summer Tomatoes, and Midday Cicadas


                                   Where are the songs of Spring?

                                                        ­-Keats


The tomatoes are split and discolored in the heat
Like bathing beauties who have beached too long
And, gathering up the past, totter home at dusk
Surprised to be all burnt and wrinkled with age

The sun of April who was a ***** lover
Caressing and warming their soft young skin
Is now a middle-aged man baring his chest
And seeking love in other vegetable beds

The cicadas of noon mourn in the withering heat
In remembrance of spring, youthful and sweet

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

                                         Beaten and Shot

          To Blessed Stanley Rother, Padre Francisco, Padre Apla’s
                                            – a petition

Missionaries and martyrs, pray for us
That we may still our anger and intemperance
And listen not to the voices of hate
But rather to the small still voice 1 of love

Missionaries and martyrs, pray for us
That we may think before we write in blood
And resolve our differences through God’s peace
With prayer, understanding, and fellowship

Missionaries and martyrs, pray for us
That we never state a thesis as death

Blessed Stanley Rother – thank you


1 1 Kings 19:12

Beating the Gums of War

                   “Hell hath no fury like a non-combatant”

           -this phrase, attributed to many, dates back at least to the    
                                        American civil war

Channeling John Wayne, their semi-autos on show
Leather-boy bandoliers draped with lots of ammo

          Hell hath no fury like a deer-stand commando

Old men beating their gums for war; oh, yes, it’s so
Each wearing his made-in-China camouflage chapeau

          Hell hath no fury like a café commando

Idle hookah heroes in Houston, don’cha know
Want their country liberated but our children must go

          Hell hath no fury like a narghile commando

Studs at their ‘puter games, screens all aglow
There’s nothing about George Patton that they don’t know

          Hell hath no fury like a keyboard commando

And corpses for the lamps of China to make the oil flow
They want your child to die for profits – just tell ‘em to blow

          Hell hath no fury like a private-jet commando

None of them made the first day of boot camp, oh, no
Though their thousand-yard stares are perfected guano

           Hell hath no fury like a ‘way-back commando

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

                  Because It Looks Like a Lab Specimen

Some suggested that a cup of green tea
Would be a help for whatever ails ya
But I must say that it looks like P
So in that, at least, it really fails ya

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

              Because That’s What Momma Would Have Wanted

We’re angry – Momma attended this church
Thirty years ago, and no one remembers
No rosary; we’re not Catholic, praise God
Not since we put Momma in the nursing home

We’re angry – the priest shoulda remembered her
Even if he wasn’t even here then, and no music
Because that’s pagan; just get it over quick
And then let’s get on to the cemetery

We’re angry - just a ****’ Cath’lic service, okay?
Because that’s what Momma would have wanted

Because the Dragon Never Forgets

St. George, who fights our daily dragons for us
With golden prayers, and silver sword aloft-
Shall we neglect him on his festal day
Dismissing him as a Perseus myth?

Oh, no – for any man is more a myth
Than any saint, whose glory is in God
And not in his calendar reputation
Or in the vaporous memories of men

Even unremembered, he is our shield -
St. George, who fights our daily dragons with us

Because the Rattlesnake Ate a Kitten

We heard the agonized shrieks of a kitten
As it was being eaten by a rattlesnake
And rushed to find that well-fed dragon at rest
As it digested a little girl’s friend

“Snakes are part of the balance of nature”
“It was only doing what it was supposed to do”
“Snakes keep down mice and rats and other pests”
“We are obligated to honor God’s plan”

Yeah?

That devourer of baby bunnies, squirrels, and household pets -
I shot the ///-of-a-///// without regrets

Suggested by a Thought from Temporal Fugue

Because we respect words, we wrestle with them
And because they respect us, they wrestle back;
We shape them in order serviceable 1
And they refuse to be pinned as cliches’

We fling a needful verb against a noun
To make a thought complete, but then adverbs
And adjectives begin cluttering lines
And then we all must take a coffee break

Because we respect words, we wrestle with them
For every scrap of story, verse, or hymn


1 Cf. John Milton, “Hymn on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity”

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                      Bees and Breeze and Lime-Green Butterflies

                                  How beautiful the world is
                                  In the morning cool and clear!

                -Anna Ahkmatova, “The Lime-Trees by the Open Door”

Bees and breeze and lime-green butterflies
Follow the little green electric tiller
Bouncing through the turf from clod to clod
Upending roots and sticks and last year’s grass

Fresh soil awakened from its winter sleep
Eager to push summer sunflowers up and up
Sneezes and wheezes follow the tiller too
Pollens in green and yellow, clouds of allergens

But, oh, the earthen scents, perfect skies -
Bees and breeze and lime-green butterflies!

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

                                         Before Marshal Dillon

                                                   There was

                              The Thing from Another World

Hear of this early role if you can bear it:
James Arness as a giant carnivorous carrot