Thursday, October 17, 2024

The First Barn-Jacket Morning in Autumn - haiku

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The First Barn-Jacket Morning in Autumn

 

Dawn – windy and cold

The first barn-jacket morning

Wild geese singing south

Tuesday, October 15, 2024

The Kittens Come on Little Fog Feet - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

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

Sunday, October 13, 2024

On Reading THREE HUNDRED TANG POEMS - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

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

Saturday, October 12, 2024

An Autumn Flight - haiku

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

An Autumn Flight

 

A leaf fell, a leaf

A life of summer in flight

In bright golden flight

Friday, October 11, 2024

A Dixson Ticonderoga #2 Pencil from 1955 - poem and photograph

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

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


Thursday, October 10, 2024

One Does Not Pre-Imagine Pre-Edward R. Murrow Pre-Babbling - not exactly a poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

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

Tuesday, October 8, 2024

A Treatise on the Burrowing Habits of Dachshunds - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

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