Sunday, February 8, 2026

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

Saturday, February 7, 2026

Wednesday, February 4, 2026

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!

Tuesday, February 3, 2026

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

Sunday, February 1, 2026

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


                                                 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

 

No, It Wasn't the Medications - 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

 

No, It Wasn’t the Medications

 

 

If we do meet again, why, we shall smile

 

Julius Caesar V.i.28

 

 

Last night my friend and mentor was dreamed to me

He was himself again, and so was I

Among Spenserian fields and forests and friends

In a summer world all warm and green

 

In a time of waiting rooms and surgeries

Slow days of headaches and painful awkwardness

Appointments, lab reports, diagnoses

He came as a comfort, a vision of what will be

 

We did meet again, and we did smile

And so, just so, we all will meet again

Saturday, January 31, 2026

Maybe Winter is Tired - 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

 

Maybe Winter is Tired

 

And taking a break for a few sunny days

Icicles have dripped and dropped away to earth

Merry breezes breathe away dawn’s drifting haze

A warm front soon after the new year’s birth

 

But even now the north drops down in greys

The shifting wind blows dark, decaying leaves

Away to prep for tomorrow’s icy glaze

As the wilding weather bobs and weaves

 

The paling sun drops coldly in the west -

False spring in its own turn now takes a rest

This is the Church House, This is the Steeple - 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

 

This is the Church House, This is the Steeple

 

This is the church house

This is the steeple

Open the doors

And see all the…rioters, ICE, podcasters, snoops, gossips, busybodies, stirrers, activists, influencers, selfie-istas, agitators, provocateurs, disruptors, boors, instigators, trespassers, hecklers, hooligans, gorms, dips, loonies, stooges, vandals, protestors, patsies, and puppets

 

(One hopes they left a few coins in the poor box)

Friday, January 30, 2026

"A Republic, Madam, If You Can Keep It" - 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 Republic, Madam, If You Can Keep It”

 

-attributed to Ben Frankling and many others

 

Americans, please take time for reflection -

While watching the rioting we might take note

That in the last presidential election

35% of the people did not bother to vote

 

How Many People Didn’t Vote in the 2024 Election? | National News | U.S. News

Where We Grew Up is not Where We Are - against ICE

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

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

Home - Hello Poetry

 

Where We Grew Up is not Where We Are

 

Our fathers strong, home from Europe and the Pacific

Worked confidently at building a peaceful America

Lean, weathered, war-weary men in chambray shirts

Who sweated to make their crops and cattle grow

 

But the feed store shut up shop in the 60s

The gas station pushes eight-liners and vapes

The old picture show where John Wayne rode

Is now a missionary Christian fellowship or something

 

The drugstore with the best comic books burned long ago

Once-busy sidewalks are mostly weeds and grass

Our favorite rocker on the A.M. radio

Has long since been Forest Lawned in bronze

 

Our fathers are buried, and on the palantir

A man in an SS coat orders us to report each other

Antibiotic-Go-'Round - 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

 

Antibiotic-Go-‘Round

 

The dermatologist cut away part of my ear

          Truth!

The maxillo-facial surgeon cut out my impacted

          Tooth!

They negotiate now which antibiotic to use

To void the chances of infection or bruise

 

“Gentlemen,” I say,

 

“Weigh each certainty against a doubt

But both the original ear and tooth are out!”