Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life,
Literature and Love
My
Friends and Okra
Give my share to the cats, the sea-bass, and the seal!
I have a dear friend who loves her
okra
Monday, January 19, 2026
My Friends and Okra - rhyming couplet
Evil is Afraid of You - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Evil is Afraid of You
That in the world which is evil despises you
Mostly because you never give up
Evil sends you hopeless dreams and despair
And leaves your pillow stained with sour tears
That in the world which is evil despises you
Because in the morning you wake up strong
Greet the new day with your own songs of hope
And work at your purposes with joyful intent
That in the world which is evil despises you
Because it can never be you
The Doomsday Clock and Watch Collection - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's
Journal of Life, Literature and Love
The
Doomsday Clock and Watch Collection
Since 1947 the image of a doomsday clock
Has haunted our dreams and possibilities
First nuclear war, then global cooling
Then global warming, and now A EYE
If we continue to date and time our
doom
Let’s have it as an app, or a clever
watch
Strapping the end of time to our wrists
Or entombed in an Orwellian
telescreen
The Doomsday Clock has been frozen
for eighty years -
Let’s wear as a fashion our
existential fears
Poetry is an Uncommon God - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Poetry is an Uncommon Good
Thanks to Nat and Friends
Poetry is a common good
Like dreams and water and earth and air
What graces might bless us if we would
Be grateful for each as an answered prayer
Friday, January 9, 2026
Texas A & M University and Mickey Mouse's Dog - doggerel
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's
Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Texas
A & M University and Mickey Mouse’s Dog
Private Joe Gomez: “What you
readin'?”
Private Marion Hotchkiss:
“Plato.”
Joe: “You mean they wrote a
whole big book about Mickey Mouse's dog?”
-Leon Uris, Battle Cry
Texas A & M has banished wise Plato
(Some colonel is shaking in his aiguilette)
Shoved philosophy out through the old
North Gate-O
(Asking questions scares the admin soviet)
We mustn’t teach thinking on the
Texas plains
Or read the books that our ancestors
wrote
That kept us free from cruel
tyrants’ chains -
No Plato, now, and maybe soon no
vote
A university no more; that how it
looks -
Their homecoming bonfire now is for
burning books
NB: In
the long-ago A & M rightly dropped my lazy (self) for skipping class. I wasn’t allowed to skip class in Viet-Nam, and
that was a sterner lesson.
Texas A&M deems Plato unnecessary for approved thought
Texas A&M blocks readings on gender ideology in
philosophy class: 'Plato has been censored'
Texas A&M flags parts of Plato readings as violations of
new anti-gender theory policy
Texas A&M Warns Professor Not to Teach Plato Because of
Gender Rules - The New York Times
Texas A&M Forbids A Plato Reading In An Intro Philosophy
Course
Crawfish are not in the Bible - rhyming couplete
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Crawfish are not in the Bible
…spawned in that slime
Conceived by a pair of those monsters
Born of Cain
-From Beowulf in Burton Raffel’s fine translation
Eating crawfish is seasonally lawful
But I tell you true, they’re simply offal!
Friday, January 2, 2026
Randolph Scott at the Saturday Matinee on my Birthday - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
Randolph
Scott at the Saturday Matinee on my Birthday
…and life's
rewards were chocolate bars and nickel bubble gum.
-Rod McKuen, “People
on Their Birthdays”
At 78 I am old enough again
To play with my Mattel Dream Car on
the lawn
Watch Randolph Scott at the Saturday
matinee
And dream of catching a freight
train out of town
My grandfather was 78 the summer I
was six
He was born in a wagon; he never
knew where
Manifest Destiny was an iron wheel
over the bones
Of the First Nations, and of mothers
who died young
We sat on the back steps while he
whittled
And spit tobacco into the grass, and
talked
And I don’t remember what he said
Or maybe what he said is in the wind
The passing of my dreaming barefoot summers
And of his life came as these things
do -
We turn around and find that the gates
of the past
Are shut against us and we don’t
know why
I hope that on some shimmering summer
day
Fishing poles on our shoulders
He’ll whistle up the dogs, and we’ll
away
(There’s
no rush – life is fun, and I haven’t yet visited the Kamakura Daibutsu!)
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