Saturday, August 1, 2026

Hearts and Minds and Books Open to the Autumn Air - 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

 

Hearts and Minds and Books Open to the Autumn Air

 

 

The Dreaming Water Towers of State University

 

                                     “ In the quad, where we lay our scene…”

                                 -As Shakespeare did not say


Math students whose favorite dessert was always pi

Engineering students with leather scabbards at their belts

Ready to charge into battle with their Kueffel and Essers

Against heretics who believed in “It’s close enough”

 

Historians who made the acorns drop

With their thunderous defenses of Pirenne 

And measured Turner’s western frontier thesis

Against the Czarist empire’s eastern lands

 

English majors (and maybe French lieutenants)

Free-versifiers arguing against disciplined meter

The next Rod Mckuen with his guitar

Biologists considering an ant’s nutritional needs

 

And hearts and minds and books, books everywhere -

All open to thought and the autumn air

 

 

 

It wasn’t that dreamy; I worked the night shift seven nights each week and often double shifts on the weekends in order to live and study, and so was constantly tired. But there were indeed golden moments…

Thursday, July 30, 2026

Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale as a Cabinet Meeting - 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

 

Chaucer’s Pardoner’s Tale as a Cabinet Meeting

 

A brotherhede of sworen conspiratours

Blody daggares, poysouned wyn, hepys of gold

Caroignes under an ok – a counseil of trecherie

And the scorneful laughter of Olde Man Deth

Wednesday, July 29, 2026

I've Never Thought About What Teachers Wiped With - photograph

 


Nonsense Rhymes for Nonsense Times - a poor attempt at senryu

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

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

Home - Hello Poetry

 

Nonsense Rhymes for Nonsense Times

 

Literary chat:

Basho’s frog, Schrodinger’s cat

There’s truth in all that

A Comma-nist Manifesto - poem about comma usage

 

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 Comma-nist Manifesto

 

Like tiny little tadpoles, commas are fun

Randomly swimming in a pool of words

Feeding on microscopic organisms -

They might grow up to be dictionaries

 

Unless they are devoured by an A.I.

Do Oxford commas wear tiny Cambridge shoes? 

Or do they simply float about, separating clauses

As commanded by Fowler1, but not by a fisher

 

Commas will mend a certain grammatical flaw

Lest “Let’s eat, Grandma!” become “Let’s eat Grandma!”2

 

 

1 Fowler’s Modern English Usage, Oxford University Press, many editions

2 Possibly every language teacher has employed this old wheeze.

Everyone Has a Dream - not really a 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

 

Everyone Has a Dream

 

He wants his head set atop Mount Rushmore1

I think that’s a fine idea

 

 

1 Six Grandfathers Mountain

The Gospel According to the Ladies' Altar Society - 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 Gospel According to the Ladies’ Altar Society

 

The announcement for and the exposition of

The Ladies’ Altar Society Craft Fair and Sale

Should not last longer than the homily

All My Neat School Stuff for the First Day of Term - poem

  Lawrence Hall Mhall46184@aol.com Dispatches for the Colonial Office LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literatur...