Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Cute Little Biological Markers
For
our Emily
Who
set a thoughtful challenge
To
define the term
The
lives of our frogs
Biological
markers
Tell
us of toxins
If frogs
have clean air
And
fresh clean water and bugs
We
will have clean frogs
Healthy
little frogs
To
celebrate our health too
They
give us great joy!
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
“They Knew What They Signed Up For”
That cruel dismissal is from some keyboard commando
Who memorized every line from Patton
But never volunteered for anything himself
Except for a two-layered two-fer at McDonald’s
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Tom Swift and His Bully Electric Gloves
The
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To hurt
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Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
The End of August, and the Dragon is Here
We are taught in science class that heat rises
Because molecules bash each other
And thus thinned are lifted by denser air -
Raise your convections if you believe it is so!
The month of August persuades us otherwise
Late-summer molecules are dragon-hot
Ssssssteam-blooded reptiliansssss ssssssucking our sssssssouls
While hisssssing their sssssibilant sssssssatanic hymnsssss
Heat rises, we are taught in science class -
But in August it slithers lowwwww in the grass
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
A Summer Processional in Honor of Structured Poetry
[I]ambic
pentameter…is the very breath of English verse.
-Stephen
Fry, The Ode Less Travelled
Wind
August heat drought grass shade lawn tree crows ‘possum headache mourning doves
clouds and sun blue jays humidity cardinals longings for autumn egrets unseen
airplanes lawn chairs heat-shimmering hayfield early acorns bees grapevines
trumpet vines porch fans spinning in futility just any old way
Bolts
and locks in chaos waving and rushing up against and to and into our exiled poetic
minds
Ahem!
Order and method, please, poet 1
Who
amid the alien Saint Augustine grass 2
Sets
fading roses in order serviceable 3
Sets
the sky aright, above the oaks
Sets
meter, orderly and elegant
Sets
doves in chortling chorus to coo the hours
Sets
flowers about in casual good taste
Sets
lawn chairs in English here-and-there-ness
Those
thrones from whence we serve rather than rule
And
the days, bearing blessings as vexilla
Process
among us with quiet dignity
Singing
the verses we write from nature
Until
all manner of things shall be made well 4
1 “Order and method,” Agatha Christie’s Poirot
2 “Amid the alien corn,” biblical book of Ruth and numerous other sources
3 “On the Eve of Christ’s Nativity,” Milton
4 “Showings,” St. Julian of Norwich
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
The Leader of the Free World Aboard His Chariot of the Gods
When the food truck speeds off, making a run
Just think of it as our majestic Air Force One
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Poets Speak of Hay
For Nat Lipstadt, Ken Pepiton, VerseBuster, and Billy
Collins
I was raised on a farm
Which did me no harm
But bales of hay
And stacks of hay
Pitching hay
Filling the old pickup
with hay
And a trailer of hay
Hay and hay and more
hay
In the heat of each midsummer
day
Day after day after
day
(You may channel
Coleridge's Ancient Mariner here)
The old barn full of
hay Hot, musty, fusty, allergenic hay
Day after musty,
fusty, allergenic day
Hot day, hot, hot, hot
every da®ned day
You may
Have my hay
As Dimitri Karamazov
did not say
"A ticket for hay? I herewith return my
ticket!"
