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

                       The Retiring of Old Snow

Clinging to blue shadows and shades and trees
Stained ice and sleet and snow from days ago
Silently steams away as vapour, as mist
Beneath today’s yellow and slanting sun

On Monday eve the skies were low and grey
And Tuesday morn soft flakes began to float
And then the rattle of indelicate sleet
Sent every creature to its appointed burrow

And now the little that’s left hides from the breeze
Clinging to blue shadows and shades and trees

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

                        Death Takes a Holiday in Cancun

In warm and sunny Cancun today
The senator’s children play on the beach
In frozen and powerless Texas today
The children of the poor die in the cold

In frozen and powerless Texas today
The senator’s staff all coven together
To tack together excuses and visuals
The children of the poor die in the cold

Today the senator’s words are loud and bold
And still
The children of the poor die in the cold

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

                                      Ice Wednesday 2021

Many crosses of ice but no ashes
Trees sagging from the icicles dragging
Little birds desperate for last summer’s seeds
The ice ground whitening, whitening, disappearing

The power flickers and flickers and fails
And the day is one of lanterns and firewood
Everyone wrapped up in blankets and thoughts
Reading books in glaring blue battery-light

The roads are closed, and we are exiled home
Our Lenten ashes are in having no ashes


“…last summer’s seeds” – I grow sunflowers and in the autumn save the seeds in that famous cool, dry place in paper or cloth, and in addition to commercial chicken scratch feed them to the birds and squirrels throughout the winter.

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

                   Ice Storm: Darwin Needs to Re-Think His Errors

The electrics flicker off then on, all night long
Which wakes me, and my wake then wakes the dogs
Who protest and blanket-burrow even deeper
While angry sleet rattles the window panes

When the weather is foul and the power fails
We are left with a flashlight and a book
Staticky noises from the radio
A bottle of cold coffee, and our thoughts

When the night is cold and the wind is strong
One comes to understand that Darwin was wrong

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

                      Not This Cardinal, Not This Snow

Men have written of cardinals before
(Both ecclesiastical and avian)
And men have written of fresh snow before
But not this cardinal and not this snow

And so we visit Plato’s obscure cave
To cast our vision around the shadowing flames
Plato will not tell us what we must think
And so we think out all things for ourselves

Men have written of cardinals before -
But not this cardinal, and not this snow


In this context “men” is inclusive. Honi soit qui mal y pense, as Fat Henry said.

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

                                   My Soul-Quest for My Meaning

V:

My parents don’t understand me; I’m special
So sensitive, an artist of the mind
So delicate, a bearer of all sorrows
So fragile, unsuited to physical work

They tell me to get off my (self) and find a job

R:

Your parents understand you perfectly

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

                                 Saint Valentine’s Day Snow

Pale, wintery-grey and cold, diffuse and pale
Light falls upon the pages of a book
Its words unread - the snow may come this hour
Between a noun and verb, a glance, a look

Pale, wintery-grey and cold, diffuse and pale
The figures of our story now pause for us
Impatient for their journey to proceed
But through the window waits another tale

Pale, wintery-grey and cold, diffuse and pale
Light falls upon the pages of our lives

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

                                     ­ Someday a New Arthur

               “Chasing Chaucer and Beowulf out of the Curriculum”

                                                  -S­pectator

Someday a new Merlin among the ruins
Will give a new Arthur a trove of hidden books:
Chaucer and Milton, Shakespeare, Coleridge, Keats
And maybe even long silent Malory

Someday a bold Arthur will command his scribes
To copy for the people the people’s words
Words long forbidden to them by narrow tyrants
Making words free to all, and letting in the sun 1

Someday a wise King Arthur will reign again
Within the greatest empire of all – the mind


1 Tennyson, “The Coming of Arthur,” line 60

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

                 The World Health Organization Concludes
                  That the CV Did not come From Wuhan

                                 As Cole Porter did not say:

I get no WHO from Wuhan
Is it influenza from Fiorenza
So tell me why should it be true
That I get a virus from you

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

                This Ashtray was Stolen from the Seaview Motel

                                                     Color TV
                                                  Weekly Rates
                                                       No Pets

I couldn’t live at the beach forever
A series of shabby little rented rooms
Cheap wine and thin volumes of free verse
Beach hippie chicks, White Rabbit, and guitars

I had to go away, or someday die
An unrealized old man set out on the curb
And so, stubbing out a last cigarette
I packed my seabag and caught the morning bus

I couldn’t live at the beach forever
And in the end became respectable