Who Taught You How to Tie Your Shoes? - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

 

Who Taught You How to Tie Your Shoes?

 

(a rabbit and a cousin help)

 

 

Now when we learn to count our fingers and toes

Learn about laundry hampers and feeding the dog

Eat with a spoon, pick up our toys and clothes

And gently, gently touch the little tree frog

 

We must then teach another child

 

To laugh when she counts her fingers and toes

Learn about laundry hampers and feeding the dog

Eat with a spoon, pick up her toys and clothes

And gently, gently touch the little tree frog

 

Civilization is generational

Pass it on

Is Life an Open Road or a Blind Alley? - short poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

“Is Life an Open Road or a Blind Alley?”

 

-de Chardin, Pensee 33

 

 

You can tell it’s an open road because

Someone has crow-barred the rusty lock and chain

 

You can tell it’s a blind alley because

Of your dark glasses and your tapped-out white cane

If We are a School of Poetry, Then When is Recess? - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

If We are a School of Poetry, Then When is Recess?

 

 

…what we mean to establish is a school for the Lord’s service

 

-St. Benedict’s prologue to his Rule

1997 English edition, Ampleforth Abbey

 

 

When a poet consecrates a poem

(Which is in the nature of what poets do)

And a soul-friend breathes beauty into it

Then they have formed a school of poetry

 

Which is not a school for the Lord’s service

Except that it is – all this shifting of words

From chaos into meaning and purpose and love

Is a school of life, only without the home-room pledge

 

(or morning Mass or a chemistry lab)

 

We write in procession through cloisters of hope

To elevate each other as presentations of truth

Envision a World Without Mission Statements - rhyming couplet

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

Envision a World Without Mission Statements

 

 

Your Thinking has Been Edited for Time and Format

 

 

Let us propose a series of abatements -

Deliver us, O Lord, from mission statements

How Big is Our Universe? - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

How Big is Our Universe?

 

 

Time goes by – or do we?

 

- The Once and Future King / Camelot

 

 

How big is our universe? How deep? How far?

In youth we learn of planets, orbits, and stars

Of the infinite Great Dance of the Spheres

And God, before forever, Who created all

 

But meditate upon this pilgrimage -

Will we shrink it into a transient Now

Which with death and dust and ruin and rot

Seems to go away even before the next hour?

 

Let us stand on this cusp of Creation

And together we will consider the Beyond

Basho's Frog for Our Time - Haiku

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

Basho’s Frog for Our Time

 

An old roadside ditch

A frog leaps into the lane

‘Neath Subaru tires

 

I suppose I had better apologize to Basho, his frog, the Japanese people, Subaru, the pretty little tree frog glaring at  me through my bedroom window, and all lovers of Haiku!

 

Later: a dear friend reminds me that I have touched on this topic before:

 

Flat Frog Floogie

 

The silent carport

A frog croaks under a tire

Then silence resumes

Pinched from Basho’s famous pond poem

Music: “Flat Foot Floogie,” 1938

The Great Riding Lawnmower Chase - rhyming doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

The Great Riding Lawnmower Chase

A Song of My People

 

In the dust beside the highway

Wide ol’ Texas four-lane highway

Ran a fat man in his anger

In his white shorts, in his anger

 

To another man just like him

Mower-mounted on a lawn

On a John Deere painted green

But this was not a peaceful scene

 

Like angry Pillsbury Doughboys

Or like dropouts from a Sumo school

They grappled in the roadside dust

In fleshy fury (not in lust)

 

The mower-man finally thought it best

To steer his steed into the west

Across the highway, a running fight

Dodging traffic in the morning light

 

The foot-man circled, the mower-man turned

The shrieking brakes of a big truck burned

Combat resumed in the turning lane

Beeps and honks again and again

 

I never saw the end of this chase

Who won the day, who won the race

Of if by the beginning of the next day’s dawn

Someone had finished mowing that lawn

 

In this I played with the Longfellow / Hiawatha meter, which is far more appropriate for serious long poetry, not a short frivolity. Longfellow sent me a note from the beyond advising me not to do this again.

Primrose-Cat and the Circle of Lunch - couplet

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

Primrose-Cat and the Circle of Lunch

 

Primrose is afraid of bluejays, and wisely so

She enjoys dining on the occasional cardinal, though!

Letters of Transit - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

Letters of Transit

 

Thanks to an idea from Omni and friends,

“Humphrey Bogart Blues,” Hello Poetry

 

There are always distracting macguffins in life:

A missing cufflink, Chekhov’s rifle, Tintern Abbey

An anonymous message torn in half

Letters of transit signed by General Weygand

 

But better are the letters of transit she writes:

Coded soul-maps in her sighs

Secret signals in her eyes

Her dreams revealed as this surprise -

The only true letter of transit is

Her love

A Three-Part Educational Case Study - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

A Three-Part Educational Case Study

 

1.

 

I noted that he was ambidextrous

“You can’t call me that; I’m straight!

I’m gonna tell my daddy what you said!”

 

II.

 

At graduation he asked me to help him with his tie

A manly handshake; we wished each other well

He disappeared among the cheap plastic gowns

 

III.

 

Before he was thirty he died of a heart attack

 

A Celebration of Freedom and Our Flag - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

y

 

A Celebration of Freedom and Our Flag – Gramps’ Champs

 

 

“’Cause the flag still stands for freedom”

 

-Lee Greenwood

 

 

Will the Flag Day bloodfest hosted by Gramps

In the name of freedom, with MMA champs

Be broadcast to America’s

 

                                     concentration camps?

The Boy Who Wasn't There - poem

 Lawrence Hall

mhal46184@aol.com

The Boy Who Wasn’t There

 

He was tall and dark, dramatically handsome

I was a little bit afraid of him

In my skinny little freshman way

High school seniors are the coolest of the cool

 

And then he wasn’t there except as whispers

Whisper whisper whisper cancer whisper whisper

Algebra whisper pep rally whisper

Occasional whispers around an empty desk

 

One day

 

He returned to school on two crutches and one foot

He was tall and pale, ethereally handsome

 

And after that, like a wraith he disappeared

The Drum-Song of the Cicada - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

The Drum-Song of the Cicada

 

 

The cry of the cicada
Gives us no sign
That presently it will die

 

- Basho

 

 

Cicadas are living drums singing the summer

Self-rattling so fast that the beats become a buzz

A whining buzz that intensifies the midday heat

Through thin-throbbing tympanic hypnotism

 

Rising and falling, the leaf-borne chorus

In defiance shrills against the peace

The blessed peace of leaves and lawn and sky

That properly belongs to summer days

 

Even so, summer days, all summer long

Are not complete without the cicada’s song

A Response to Nat Lipstadt's "We are Transitory" - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

A Response to Nat Lipstadt’s “We are Transitory”

 

 

“Time goes by – or do we?”

 

- from Camelot / The Once and Future King

 

 

Your poem is forever

You are forever

This waiting room of a world (C. S. Lewis) – maybe not

You're the Best! - poem

 

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

You’re the Best!

 

 

                                                                    and love

                                                   with hope

                                our friends

                   lift up

When we

 

Then we are doing our proper job today

 

And knowing you, I am happy to say

You do even better, each bles’sed day

 

You’re the best

Love Must Be Held for Questioning - Senryu

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

Love Must Be Held for Questioning

  

He felt pity for those…whose love is bounded by the frontier of a nation. 

-“The Spiritual Power of Matter”, Teilhard de Chardin

Bombers cross borders

Easily enough, but love?

Held for questioning

Batter Our Hearts - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

Batter Our Hearts

 

“Batter my heart, three-person’d God,” said Donne

And we’ve all of us agreed with that

So now, God

                             You can stop battering

Really. Stop it. It’s gone on long enough.

Technology is a Two-Edged Carrot Grater - rhyming doggerel

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

Technology is a Two-Edged Carrot Grater

 

A Meditation upon Computer Updates

 

After an update:

 

I cannot delete intrusions that should go away

I cannot save that knowledge which should stay

I cannot find the files that went astray

While codes and access are changing every day

 

People I don’t even know want me to pay

For services and tweaks they want me to play

My work-rhythm will go much faster, they say

Or else they’ll block my already-slow pathway

 

An update is litter on the information highway

A metaphorical carrot grater of existential decay

I Wandered Lonely as the Recent HP Site Update - poem

 

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

I Wandered Lonely as the Recent Site Update

 

 

As Wordsworth did not say

 

 

A daffodil is in itself a being

That dances by itself to the glory of God

Without the registery of a poet’s pen

Without the approval of passwords and codes

 

Two lovers are in themselves a being

Who dance each other to the glory of God

Without the registry of a poet’s pen

Without the approval of passwords and codes

 

All poets are in themselves a being

Without the approval of passwords and codes

This is not Who We Are (or perhaps this is exactly who we are) - a sort-of poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

This is not Who We Are

 

(or maybe it is)

 

 

This is not who we are we need to come together as one when you get home just hug your children we’re better than this our thoughts and prayers are with you one victim is too many we’re [someplace] proud from an abundance of caution active shooter situation enough is enough We. Will. Find. You. no more excuses WHEN? unspeakable we know many of you are grieving our community this senseless crime this is not a reflection of who we are this type of behavior will not be tolerated