Lawrence Hall, HSG
The First Barn-Jacket Morning in Autumn
Dawn – windy and cold
The first barn-jacket morning
Wild geese singing south
The former address, "reactionary drivel," was a P. G. Wodehouse gag that few ever understood to be a mildly self-deprecating joke. Drivel, perhaps, but not reactionary. Neither the Red Caps nor the Reds ever got it.
Lawrence Hall, HSG
The First Barn-Jacket Morning in Autumn
Dawn – windy and cold
The first barn-jacket morning
Wild geese singing south
Lawrence Hall, HSG
The Kittens Come on Little Fog Feet
As Carl Sandburg did not say
At dawn: coffee and the Wordle and thoughts
The moon’s still full, but one last star winks out
The dew-bathed oaks drip onto a tricky word
Fog drifts in silence among the tricky light
A little paw stirs soft autumn’s molding leaves
And then two eyes appear, and a greeting tail
The forming image of the cat completes itself
And then another – two abandoned cats
These tiny orphans approach – and love begins
To them I pledge
They will never be hungry or lonely again
Lawrence Hall, HSG
On Reading Three Hundred Tang Poems
From The Jade Mountain they
came
300 Tang dreams
Each in its well-ordered
frame
Cups adrift in streams
The ancients speak to us
still
Wisdom from the high
Each word a clear-flowing
rill
Each a song, a sigh
Three
Hundred Tang Poems
Translated
and edited by Peter Harris
© 2009 by
Peter Harris
Typeset in
Somerset, England
Printed and
bound on Possneck, Germany
Everyman’s
Library Pocket Poets
New York:
Knopf
Toronto:
Penguin Random House
London:
Everyman’s Library
Lawrence Hall, HSG
An Autumn Flight
A leaf fell, a leaf
A life of summer in flight
In bright golden flight
Lawrence Hall, HSG
A Dixon Ticonderoga #2 Pencil from 1955
Neither plans nor bathroom
vents last forever
The workmen pulled down the old
one from ‘55
Amid a tumble of old nails
and bits of wood:
A Dixon Ticonderoga #2
The yellow paint a little
aged now
The green metal ring a little
bit dull
The eraser now hardened
beyond all use
The point well-sharpened with
a pocketknife
What sturdy craftsman from
the long ago
Measured out his work - I’d like to know
Lawrence Hall, HSG
One Does Not Pre-Imagine Pre-Edward R. Murrow Pre-Babbling
A Lesson in Clear Writing for Journalists
Hunker down, swath of destruction, hunker down, write your Social Security number on your arm, hunker down, eerie, hunker down, monster, hunker down, time ticking down / away, hunker down, pre-positioned, hunker down, pre-planned, hunker down, pre-need (and maybe even pre-hunker down), hunker down, pre-deployed, hunker down, spooky (and possibly pre-spooky), hunker down, snapped like matchsticks (“Daddy, what’s a matchstick?”), hunker down, doomed paradise, hunker down, paradise lost, hunker down, lost paradise, hunker down, apocalypse, hunker down, biblical, hunker down, storm of the century (again?), hunker down, doomed, hunker down, doomed, hunker down, pummeled, hunker down, pummeled, hunker down, pummeled, hunker down, power lines brightly bursting, hunker down, eerie calm, hunker down, eerie quiet, hunker down, birds chirping, hunker down, unexpected sparks, hunker down, hazards are unfolding, hunker down, street lamps waver, hunker down, one-two punch, hunker down, what we know, hunker down, hunker down, hunker down
Lawrence Hall, HSG
A Treatise on the Burrowing Habits of Dachshunds
A dachshund will burrow under the
garden fence
For every dachshund thinks she is a wolf
A fearsome apex predator with a
squeaky toy -
This is in the nature of dachshunds
A dachshund will burrow into your
tightly-closed hand
Nosing out the doggie treat you have
hidden there
A fearsome apex predator and omnivore
-
This is in the nature of dachshunds
A dachshund bill burrow into your end-of-day
lap
Watching both the television and the
cats
A fearsome apex predator drooling on
your book -
This is in the nature of dachshunds
A dachshund will burrow, borrow, beg,
and bark
And in her foreshadowing of that
better World to come
A dachshund will burrow deeply into
your heart -
And love you forever
This is in the nature of dachshunds
And of you