Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Blue Storm
Blue September storm
Blowing down from the northeast
Hastening summer’s end
Sunday, September 6, 2026
Blue Storm - a modest attempt at haiku
Friday, September 4, 2026
Fragments of Sappho - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Fragments of Sappho
“Someone will remember us…even in another time”
-attributed to Sappho, many sources and variants
I have but one small volume of Sappho
Which I can’t find just now
I wanted to look up something
Perhaps I should instead look for you
Two problems:
Little of Sappho’s work remains
And even that has disappeared
Two joys:
But I found a Tolkien I had lost
And you and I found each other
Two fragments:
Verse floating among our hopes
And happiness upon our pillow
Life Up On Cinder Blocks - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia
Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Life Up On Cinder Blocks
In the flickering-fog-forever-flare-lit
night
He steered
along a mud-crumbling shell road
Off Highway
225, through cracking towers
Day shift
to juke joint to the trailer park on the right
He’d catch
it for his two-Budweiser breath
Just two -
promise! That skinny girl who danced
Like she
was dancing just for him, green eyes
Shimmering
as seductively as a Shiner Beer
When he stepped
down he tripped on a cinder block
Left over
from setting up some steps to the door
She didn’t
look up as he flung his jacket over a chair
A sack of Dairy
Queen cold on the table
She was
sitting with a box where he kept his books
Artifacts
of a roadblocked freshman year -
Introduction
to College Algebra
Major
British Writers, Geology
Industrial
Engineering – and
asked
“Do you
think we can get anything out of these?”
She noted his
sudden hope, and broke him of that:
“I mean,
like, y’know, from a re-sale shop.”
Ode to Harris Famous Roach Tablets - rhyming doggerel
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Ode to Harris Famous Roach Tablets
If you have a clean house you will have clean roaches
-old saying
I have no pity for the perfidious roach
Who invades my house for crumbs to poach
And spaces behind cabinets in which to encroach
So if this creature presumes to approach
Your hygienic boundaries foully to broach -
Harris Famous Roach Tablets are beyond reproach!
(I have no connection with the nice folks who make Harris Famous Roach Tablets. In my experience the product works as advertised against certain nasty insects and so may be dangerous to influencers, politicians, and motivational speakers.)
Wednesday, September 2, 2026
A Spondee for Parents Who Complain About School Being Cancelled When a Tropical Storm Approaches - one spondaic foot
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
A Spondee for Parents Who Complain About School Being Cancelled When a Tropical Storm Approaches
Shut up
Reading Basho on a Rainy Morning - a poor attempt at Haiku
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Reading Basho on a Rainy Morning
When I read Basho
I am properly chastened
For my ignorance
Basho: The Complete Haiku of Matsuo Basho
Translated and edited by Andrew Fitzsimons
Oakland: University of California Press, 2022, 2024
Tuesday, September 1, 2026
Civil Penalties for Mailing Anything Dangerous - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
“Civil Penalties for Mailing Anything Dangerous”
…our children will be ashamed…
remembering how in so strange a time
common integrity could look like courage
-Yevtushenko, “Talk,” in Selected Poems: Yevtushenko
The postmistress chants this as part of her list to us
Whenever a citizen sends a package by postal bus:
Civil penalties for mailing anything dangerous
Firearms, fireworks, a radioactive truss
Air bags - and why mail one? (just an aside)
Poisons, perishables, formaldehyde
The cremated ashes of your cousin Clyde
Or anything else on the weirdo side
Logical enough
But in these fearful days, under our mad regime
Mailing even a thoughtful letter is a dangerous scheme
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