The Fairies Themselves Now Dance Sweet Summer In - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The Fairies Themselves Now Dance Sweet Summer In

 

My work is loving the world.

Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird

 

-Mary Oliver, “Messenger”

 

Everything is sacramental this week:

 

The Strawberry Moon in the fullness of being

Midsummer magic by day and by night

The English quarter day, the Feast of St. John

And holy bonfires in honor of light

 

Good honeybees take Communion at every flower

Soft breezes sing hymns among the ripening corn

The woods and fields are baptized in happiness

The sun and moon bless maidens and swains

 

We need no clocks or calendars to tell us when –

The fairies themselves now dance sweet summer in

1957: The Year We All Became Soviets - poem

  

Lawrence Hall HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

1957: The Year We All Became Soviets

 

“…we’re going to get science applied to social problems and backed by the whole force of the state…”

 

Mark Studdock in C. S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength

 

Soviet Science launched a beeping toy into space

In the name of Progress; a mass-murderer ordered it so

And a month later Science launched and killed sweet Laika

Abandoned in orbit to die alone

 

Brave America suffered the Aunt Pittypat vapours:

We too must launch our slide-rules into space

And set our children to study Sovietism

Send civilization into orbit to die alone

 

Dogs and apes and men have flamed out in crashes

And Alexandria again is but pale ashes

If Taylor Swift Were Your Principal - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Do You Miss Your Trapper-Keeper?

 

This is the middle of June so why

Haven’t the back-to-school sales begun?

This year’s cooler than cool styles

Have been stored in shipping containers

 

For months or years on Indonesian docks

Or in warehouses in Long Beach

The teeny-boppers who modelled those clothes

Might be in graduate school by now

 

If school were as cool as the ads

Taylor Swift would be the principal

Old and Unselected Poems - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Old and Unselected Poems

 

Why do publishers entitle volumes of verse

New and Selected Poems?

Is it the editors’ lack of imagination?

Or is it some sort of secular rubric

An inky “We’ve always done it that way?”

 

When you finish writing a poem it is new

It didn’t exist before you, and now it does

And someone who reads your poem has selected it

It wasn’t selected until someone picked it up

 

Every poem is forever new and selected

And to the joy of your friends, so are you

 

Somewhere in New Mexico I Tipped a Waitress 25% - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Somewhere in New Mexico I Tipped a Waitress 25%

 

NOT I - NOT ANYONE else, can travel that road for you. You must travel it for yourself.

-Walt Whitman

 

On a cool autumn morning in New Mexico

A greasy spoon along the interstate

Walt Whitman and I enjoyed breakfast together

Bacon and eggs, hash browns, coffee and toast

 

And it was very good – no heaves of gas

But Whitman found an errand in some other soul

And sang a different self to California

McKuen rode with me the rest of the way

 

Breakfast was ninety-five cents; I added a quarter

The waitress was happy, and so were we all

Mockingbirds at Dusk in a Time of War - poem

  

Lawrence Hall HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Mockingbirds at Dusk in a Time of War

 

They might be fighting; they might be he-ing and she-ing

Their leaf-rich oak could be their arena

Or it might serve them as their bower of bliss

For love in this magnolia-scented dusk

 

They’re still at it, whatever their “it” might be

But breaking off to blitz the subtle cat

Sneaking about in quest of a bunny or squirrel

But who from feathered fury must now retreat

 

They might be fighting; they might be he-ing and she-ing

But then

                   They might be mocking the rest of us

 

 

Bower of bliss – cf. Spenser’s The Faerie Queene

Petite Bourgeois, Personal, and Self-Indulgent - poem

 

Lawrence Hall HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Petite Bourgeois, Personal, and Self-Indulgent

 

I used to admire your poetry. I shouldn't admire it now. I should find it

absurdly personal. Don't you agree? Feelings, insights, affections...

it's suddenly trivial now.

 

-Strelnikov to Yuri in Doctor Zhivago (film)

 

In the evenings I sit on my summer lawn

Slouched in an old, much-painted metal chair

That symbol of petite-bourgeois respectability

With a little table for my drink, my pipe, my book

 

(The cat pads by on errands of his own)

 

At dusk a friend or two might amble along

And join me for a glass, a smoke, a talk

We casually swat at mosquitoes and rumors

And argue about Doctor Zhivago and Lonesome Dove

 

(A fast-diving mockingbird mocks the cat)

 

In a fallen world of chaos and suffering

With fear of revolution in the air

Is it right to indulge ourselves with such trifles

As sitting and talking with old friends in the twilight?

 

Oh, yes

 

(The cat and the mockingbird continue their game)