Lawrence Hall, HSG
The Bond Girls are
Grannies Now
James Bond’s girlfriends are mostly grannies now
Sweatpants and sneaks instead of bikinis
The school run with the grandchildren, the grocery store
Volunteering at the public library
If one of them mentions she once kissed Roger Moore
No one knows who he was – the Lone Ranger, maybe?
Adolescent hippie-color fantasies
Budgeting for the grandchildren’s new shoes
Didn’t you used to be somebody?
Well, yes, and you?
Lawrence Hall, HSG
The United States Postal Service is Holding my Mail Hostage
in Exchange for my Credit Card Number
The Postal Service claims that my zip code is not my zip code
They want confirmation and three cents to redeliver
They want my credit card number for those three cents
As if anyone can trust the USPS
They can’t even get mail delivery right:
They place other people’s letters in my mailbox
And the packages I receive have often been penetrated
By busy little postal workers’ hands
And for this they want my credit card
As the old cliché says, what could possibly go wrong?
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Show Me Who You
Read
Show me who you read
You love Thoreau’s hut on Walden Pond
You fly with Wendy and Peter to Neverland
You pet Mary Oliver’s marvelous dogs
And tell Yevtushenko not to be so full of himself
Show me who you read
You stand at an angle with Cavafy
You ask Frankl how he found meaning after all
You gaze into Tolkien’s palantir
And at bedtime say good night to the moon
Show me who you read
But I already know
You read by the light of a dreaming star
And everyone loves the starlight you are
Lawrence Hall, HSG
The French Government Collapses
4 December 2024
How can a government possibly collapse -
Did the National Assembly suffer a fainting spell?
Did the cabinet consume poisoned croissants
Or discover they’d been deceived by a California wine?
Perhaps a statue of Saint Joan of Arc
Newly gowned in haute couture from Wal-Mart
Lies prostrate in the Champs Elysee
Next to a made-in-China guillotine
How can a government have worked all in vain –
Did everyone in office go in Seine?
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Old Mr. ‘Possum and
the Moon
Old
Mr. ‘Possum is a garbageman
Who
quietly works his appointed nightly rounds
Unappreciated
as he tidies this
And
cleans up that, all without any fuss
The
other animals don’t seem to like him much
For
his wobbling, waddling walk, his untidiness
His
pointy nose, his all-draggledy tail
And
his awkward shape like a loaf of oaf
But
when he lifts his eyes to the queen of the skies
He
knows that to her he is a knight in disguise
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Another Argument Against the Death Penalty
Each one of us is a murderer
To someone else whose memory is long
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Ordinary
Time and Advent: as a Diptych or a Dipstick or Something
I. The Last Day in
Ordinary Time
Time is not at all ordinary, of course
It is an ordinal of flowing days
Whose current in its journey swims among
The well-marked seasons of sacred observances
Advent into and through Christmas and its promise
Lent into and through Easter and its fulfillment
Cycles of seasons, penance, and merry feasts
Each as a step in the great dance of Creation
All seasons echo God’s eternal rhyme
Blessing our senses with His created time
II. This is When
You Light That First Candle Against Darkness
Ordinary Time is now as summer’s lost leaves
Autumn has fallen into fogs and frosts
Pale sunshine flickers from shallow angles all day
Marking out the road to Bethlehem
Before the Altar in the parish church
A wreath is set with four candles to light
The first one today and a second next week
A third, a fourth, and then at last the Stable
The Stable at last, where the universe sings
The happy Desire of all our wanderings
