Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
The Modern Science of Imprisoned Sound
If thousands boo the vice-president
And NBC filters them out
Is there a sound?
Thursday, February 12, 2026
The Modern Science of Imprisoned Spound - short poem
The 1970s, When Lapels Roamed Wild - poem
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's
Journal of Life, Literature and Love
The 1970s
– When Lapels Roamed Wild
In the 1970s’ men’s lapels grew
wider and wider
And men’s neckties grew wider and
wider
And men’ sideburns grew wider and
wider
And they all got so wide that they blew
away
(Poof!)
And haven’t been seen since
And in the Darkness Bind Them - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
And in the Darkness Bind Them
-from the ring-verse in Lord of the Rings
I.
I should pity a certain poor old man
But he has established for us concentration camps
Where pity is forbidden
II.
And why is Jeffrey Epstein’s ghost
Our fourth branch of government?
A Night Prayer for You - poem
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's
Journal of Life, Literature and Love
A
Night Prayer for You
Thank you
For the prayers you offered over
your first cuppa
For the breakfast you made for
yourself and others
For singing along with the radio on
your way to work
For wearing your seatbelt and
stopping at the lights
Thank you
For going to work in the heat or the
dust or the snow
For tipping the overworked server at
a hurried lunch
For the jokes that made the workday better
for all
For minding your tongue when the
boss said something stupid
(something
really stupid)
Thank you
For the verse you wrote, the words
you read
For your little children whom you
tucked into bed
Thank you –
You made the world a better place
today
My Preferred Verb and Adverb
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
My Preferred Verb and Adverb
Grow up.
In other contexts “up” can be a preposition or adjective, but in “grow up” it is an adverb. As Pontius Pilate said, “what I have written I have written.”
My Brother Lost His Wife - poem
Lawrence Hall
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
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
A Funeral is a Dress Rehearsal - doggerel
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
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
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
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
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
Dispatches for the
Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's
Journal of Life, Literature and Love
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
Dispatches for the
Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's
Journal of Life, Literature and Love
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
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
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
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's
Journal of Life, Literature and Love
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)
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