My Brother Lost His Wife - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

My Brother Lost His Wife

 

Which sounds as if he misplaced her, like car keys

But she has gone away, as must we all

Into those far-beyond mysteries beyond our poor knowing

And leaving us vacuums and vacancies

 

And he is sorting out bills to be paid

Her nursing license which will not be renewed

The bits and bobs to be given to the children

Daily remembances in all the little things

 

His days are mysteries

Filling in the great emptiness in his life

                           and all the small ones

A Boyhood Friend Goes to the River - memorial poem

Lawrence Hall

mhall46184@aol.com

 

A Boyhood Friend Goes to the River

 

 

My soul has grown deep like the rivers

 

-Langston Hughes

 

 

His son visited him in hospital every day

The father told the son, “I need to go to the river”

And so they left the hospital; they sat on the bank

They watched the river, they talked to the waters

 

They listened to the waters and the winds

One more lesson from the river, the eternal flow

The growing-up river, the teaching river

The river, their father-and-son river

 

One day, in silence, his spirit slipped away

And crossed over the river forever

A Funeral is a Dress Rehearsal - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

A Funeral is a Dress Rehearsal

 

“He looks so natural...”

 

Even among family, you feel alone

Because attendance at a funeral

Is a dress rehearsal for your own

The Galaxy's Guide to the Hitchhiker - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

mhall46184@aol.com

The Galaxy’s Guide to the Hitchhiker

 

A very, very, very, very weak attempt at the Thai Khlong Suparb form

An idea suggested by Emily Johnson

On a topic suggested by an idea from Bulletcookie (sic)

 

       Gratitude to Douglas Adams will be found

  locked in a filing cabinet in a disused room in the basement

 

We are all hitchhikers of the spirit

Thumbing a ride to the moon and stars

And we fall for a pause on Mars

On our tide of discovery

 

And then swing an orbit around

An errant earthling satellite

Sweetly sing to its blinking light

While riding along on a comet

 

Do the stars have a guide to us?

We study our home galaxy

But does our galaxy study you and me?

We are all hitchhikers of the spirit!

Some Clinical Notes on Anaesthesia and, Like, StuffZZZZ - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

Some Clinical Notes on Anaesthesia and, Like, StuffZZZZ

 

A chair in the waiting room

A chair in a consulting room

A chair in a room where they rearrange your body parts

A blood pressure cuff that chuffs and puffs every few minutes

          (And can you say, “sphygmomanometer?”)

          (I thought not)

Clamps on your wrists

          (Is the prisoner ready, chaplain?)

Steel trays of shiny steel things for cutting and drilling and clamping

A quest for veins. Not that vein. No, this vein. No, where’d it go…

Ouch

Let there be blood

Are you comfortable?

You’re going to start feeling sleepy

Grey floating boxes and conversations among them as they move about in an unreality which for the non-time-being are the / a reality and they’re nice enough little boxes but why are they grey and there is no fear and there is no pain but there is no control only grey floating boxes speaking to each other

Another chair in another room – how…?

And those are your post-procedure instructions…are you ready to go…?

I want a cup of coffee

Nothing hot until tomorrow

The University of Granddaddy - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love

Home - Hello Poetry

 

The University of Granddaddy

 

Class meets on the wooden steps of the old back porch

Syllabus:

Talking. Listening. Whittling on a length of cedar

Please bring: a Schrade-Walden Old Timer pocketknife

Pale Shadows and seasons - poem

 Lawrence Hall

A re-write and re-post of an older poem:

 

Pale Shadows and Seasons

 

Pale shadows and seasons and leaves drift by

The slanting sun of February falls

With merciless mortality upon

Our weak attempts to prepare for spring

 

The leaves we mulch today mulch us tomorrow

The roses we prune in anticipation of June

Await the night when we are pruned for them

While the wolf pack keens beneath the ancient moon