The Ruby-Throated Grand Scheme of Things - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

 

The Ruby-Throated Grand Scheme of Things

 

The last hummingbird of the season, perhaps,

A tail-end Charlie, this mid-October pilgrim

Stopping a moment at the dollar-store feeder

On El Camino Real to Mexico

 

To what king will this royal messenger report?

His legions of the air and summer flowers

Are gathering in from all over the Americas

To winter in mysterious valleys and hidden fields

 

 

L’envoi:

 

We can’t know where your long journey will end

But God speed you as you fly with the wind, little friend

Dawn Across the Planet - short poem

 Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Dawn Across the Planet

 

Soon you will be awake for breakfast and tea

A good cup of tea for beginning the day

As the waning Harvest Moon sails west

And you and the sun rise happily in the east

Forgive Me for not Writing Yesterday - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Forgive Me for not Writing Yesterday

 

I was reclined before a bin of farriers’ tools

Ironmongery smithied in shining steel

In a room shaded institutional green

Fluorescent lights, only one door

 

Gadgets clipped to me, needles poked into me

Surely soon would sound the voice of Number Two:

“Information. We want information.”

Thinking of pain, then poetry, then you

 

But having a dying tooth extracted

Does not lend itself to metre or rhyme!

She Thinks My Tractor's Schleppy - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

She Thinks My Tractor’s Schleppy

 

Anyone who can hear “She thinks my tractor’s sexy”

With a teary eye of sentimentality

For a lost golden age of rural life

 

Da*ned sure didn't grow up on a farm

 

 

 

Cf. Kenny Chesney, “She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy,” lyrics by Jim Collins and Paul Overstreet.

Kind Hearts are More Than Coronets - rhyming doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

“Kind Hearts are More Than Coronets”

 

Tennyson – “Lady Clare Vere de Vere”

 

But coronets will get you set

In better seats at Goodwood, you bet

(Doesn't everyone read Tennyson on Sunday afternoon?)

Saint Vincent Ferrer and I Go Fishing in a Toilet Tank - weak doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Saint Vincent Ferrer and I Go Fishing in a Toilet Tank

 

 

And the master-salesman asked of him and me:

Is the flapper-valve, yea, verily, two inches or three?

 

-not exactly according to Ultimate Guide: Plumbing, Creative Homeowner, 2021

 

 

Toilet bowls are fascinating to dogs and cats

Like watering holes on the Serengeti plains

Their cousins hunt among the desert flats

In the seasons between sweet nourishing rains

 

Strange noises in the dark…

 

But when the water gushes both day and night

St. Vincent and I must pray and think and work

To work this ceramic water-hole aright

For Luna and Pushkin to hunt and lurk

 

The animals watch impatiently…

 

Our labors at last are proven to be blest

As water flows like a smooth anapest!

A Sidewalk Table at Pouline's - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

A Sidewalk Table at Pouline’s

 

V: Monsieur…

 

R:                     Oui?

 

V:                              Your life has no meaning

 

Please let it have no meaning somewhere else

 

R: But my coffee, my croissant…

 

V:                                                    Oui, you have paid

 

And have left the perfect tip. The afternoon

 

Is slow and there are certainly plenty of tables

 

Your appearance and demeanor are parfait but…”

 

R: Oui?

 

V:             You have sat here ten minutes into the time

 

At which you commenced to appear desperate.

 

R: But how?

 

V:                If you must ask then you are desperate

You have not been accepted into the mysteries

And never can be. You have been caught out

Please dispose of your Mont Blanc pen

 

Your embossed note cards, your important papers,

And your leather portfolio crafted in understated elegance,

And go deliver groceries or wash cars.

 

R: Does it really show?

 

V:                It’s as if you

Were taking a selfie

At Shakespeare & Co

 

R: Then all is existential despair

 

V:                Oui, former monsieur