Sunday, October 13, 2024

On Reading THREE HUNDRED TANG POEMS - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

On Reading Three Hundred Tang Poems

 

From The Jade Mountain they came

300 Tang dreams

Each in its well-ordered frame

Cups adrift in streams

 

The ancients speak to us still

Wisdom from the high

Each word a clear-flowing rill

Each a song, a sigh

 

 

Three Hundred Tang Poems

Translated and edited by Peter Harris

© 2009 by Peter Harris

Typeset in Somerset, England

Printed and bound on Possneck, Germany

Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets

New York: Knopf

Toronto: Penguin Random House

London: Everyman’s Library

Saturday, October 12, 2024

An Autumn Flight - haiku

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

An Autumn Flight

 

A leaf fell, a leaf

A life of summer in flight

In bright golden flight

Friday, October 11, 2024

A Dixon Ticonderoga #2 Pencil from 1955 - poem and photograph

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

A Dixon Ticonderoga #2 Pencil from 1955

 

Neither plans nor bathroom vents last forever

The workmen pulled down the old one from ‘55

Amid a tumble of old nails and bits of wood:

A Dixon Ticonderoga #2

 

The yellow paint a little aged now

The green metal ring a little bit dull

The eraser now hardened beyond all use

The point well-sharpened with a pocketknife

 

What sturdy craftsman from the long ago

Measured out his work - I’d like to know


Thursday, October 10, 2024

One Does Not Pre-Imagine Pre-Edward R. Murrow Pre-Babbling - not exactly a poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

One Does Not Pre-Imagine Pre-Edward R. Murrow Pre-Babbling

 

A Lesson in Clear Writing for Journalists

 

Hunker down, swath of destruction, hunker down, write your Social Security number on your arm, hunker down, eerie, hunker down, monster, hunker down, time ticking down / away, hunker down, pre-positioned, hunker down, pre-planned, hunker down, pre-need (and maybe even pre-hunker down), hunker down, pre-deployed, hunker down, spooky (and possibly pre-spooky), hunker down, snapped like matchsticks (“Daddy, what’s a matchstick?”), hunker down, doomed paradise, hunker down, paradise lost, hunker down, lost paradise, hunker down, apocalypse, hunker down, biblical, hunker down, storm of the century (again?), hunker down, doomed, hunker down, doomed, hunker down, pummeled, hunker down, pummeled, hunker down, pummeled, hunker down, power lines brightly bursting, hunker down, eerie calm, hunker down, eerie quiet, hunker down, birds chirping, hunker down, unexpected sparks, hunker down, hazards are unfolding, hunker down, street lamps waver, hunker down, one-two punch, hunker down, what we know, hunker down, hunker down, hunker down

Tuesday, October 8, 2024

A Treatise on the Burrowing Habits of Dachshunds - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

A Treatise on the Burrowing Habits of Dachshunds

 

A dachshund will burrow under the garden fence

For every dachshund thinks she is a wolf

A fearsome apex predator with a squeaky toy -

This is in the nature of dachshunds

 

A dachshund will burrow into your tightly-closed hand

Nosing out the doggie treat you have hidden there

A fearsome apex predator and omnivore -

This is in the nature of dachshunds

 

A dachshund bill burrow into your end-of-day lap

Watching both the television and the cats

A fearsome apex predator drooling on your book -

This is in the nature of dachshunds

 

A dachshund will burrow, borrow, beg, and bark

And in her foreshadowing of that better World to come

A dachshund will burrow deeply into your heart -

And love you forever

 

This is in the nature of dachshunds

 

And of you

Friday, October 4, 2024

Falling Into Truth - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

                                               Falling Into Truth

 

The fall of October’s leaves is nothing new

Except that it is – this leaf never fell before

And we were never here to watch this leaf

Because we and the leaf were somewhere else

 

Except that we were, we are, we will be

A little leaf, each of us, springtime-new

Then dancing merrily the summer through

Now floating gently into a winter’s sleep

 

A coverlet soft, a hymn, a night-light moon

Sleep - sleep – another spring is coming soon

Reading the Room - doggerel

   Lawrence Hall Mhall46184@aol.com Dispatches for the Colonial Office   Reading the Room   I don’t know to read a room, but look – I’m stil...