Cuddled up with Cold Medicine and a Warm Dachshund - poem

 

Lawrence Hall & Nyquil ™

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Cuddled up with Cold Medicine and a Warm Dachshund

 

A January lawn is a desert of desiccated leaves

Winter winds driving them as desolate dunes

Shoaling against the oaks who gave them life

Then in the autumn watched them fall to their deaths

 

Croakery crows almost seem to splash among them

Searching out seeds and corn and kitchen scraps

In beak to nose confrontations with squirrels

Darwinians struggling upon the sleeping earth

 

A January lawn is a desert of desiccated leaves

As winter winds batter my window eaves

 

Addendum:

 

(Each line is framed with a cough or a sneeze

And fever one minute followed by a freeze

And a wheeze!)

Meditation upon a Starlit Northern Sea - poem

 

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Meditation upon a Starlit Northern Sea

 

The sea is black, the sky is midnight blue

The crowning moon and her cold, pendant stars

Call color to fall upon the shoreline sand and snow

And too upon a silent Dreamer who stands

 

A silent Dreamer privileged to view this scene

Who stands upon this mysterious Arctic shore

To place for us our hopes beneath the stars

And yield them to the mysteries of the night

 

The sea is black, the sky is midnight blue

And the silent Dreamer is who else but…?

If This Were Your Real Life Your Would Have Been Given Better Instructions - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

If This Were Your Real Life 

You Would Have Been Given Better Instructions

 

 

This is only a test -

if this were your real life you would have been given better instructions

 

-seen on a bumper sticker

 

 

I took my cough to a plastic plaque

My wheezing and sneezing and headache too

My unaccountably rigidy back

And sputum that reeked like a witches’ brew

 

I waved the little cotton probe all through

My nostrils where the wicked virus lurked

And then I thoughtfully dropped five drops unto

A window in the plaque, and, lo! It worked!

 

I don’t have the covid and I don’t have the ‘flu

So why do I feel so blown-out blue!

(N.B. I take my medical advice from my brilliant nurse practitioner, not from the InterGossip nor from Robert Kennedy.)

Not Herod's Household Calvary This Time - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Not Herod’s Household Cavalry This time

 

 

The Holy Innocents

 

 

Not Herod’s household cavalry this time

His personal SS with their spears and swords

From screaming children ripping their sacred lives

And flinging the tiny fragments into the dust

 

Now Herod sends his tailored representatives

With silky-soft, serpentine promises

Would you like a dress as nice as this?

For only an hour or two of easy work

 

Softly now

 

Don’t worry; your parents will never know -

Because they will never choose to know

Sneeze Across Texas - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Sneeze Across Texas

 

 

(widespread respiratory infections in Texas during Christmas 2025)

 

I would almost rather gnaw off an arm than endure what passes for contemporary country music. By the Grace of God we will always have the authentic work of Ernest Tubb. One of his best is “Waltz Across Texas.”

 

 

When we cough together under Texas skies

It’s rather a nightmare that has come true

And when you look at me, with those red, rheumy eyes

I could sneeze across Texas with you

 

Sneeze across Texas with you and our virus

Sneeze across Texas with you

Like a medical movie ending but with no one to admire us

I could sneeze across Texas with you

 

My rhinorrhea just won’t be gone
The moment that you come in view
And with our soggy hankies we could wheeze on and on
I could sneeze across Texas with you

 

Sneeze across Texas with you in my arms
Cough across Texas with you
Like a bad novel ending I'm semi-comatose in your charms
And I could sneeze across Texas with you

 

 

NB: “Waltz Across Texas” is the property of its several authors, musicians, and copyright holders. Respect.

Aeolian Wisdom - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Aeolian Wisdom

 

When I was taking my ‘versity courses

‘Twas my obsession to cite my sources

To assume without knowing was an academic sin

But now that I am old

I learn much wisdom from the westering wind

The Back of the Wardrobe - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

The Back of the Wardrobe

 

If you invite me to your house one day

And if in a spare room you have a wardrobe

Then will you let me open it? I pray

And reach far in, and touch and tap and probe

 

Old coats, old shoes, old dreams, your MeeMaw’s old hats

Someone’s uniform from a long-ago war

Boxes of Christmas ornaments stacked on some mats

Some surprisingly cold mothballs rolling on the floor

 

Because your wardrobe might be an Advent itself

With Narnia on the other side