Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Goslings and Quislings
Goslings and Quislings
Die in a reflecting pool
Goslings have no choice
Thursday, July 2, 2026
Goslings and Quislings - haiku
Sunday, June 28, 2026
Who Taught You How to Tie Your Shoes? - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Who Taught You How to Tie Your Shoes?
(a rabbit and a cousin help)
Now when we learn to count our fingers and toes
Learn about laundry hampers and feeding the dog
Eat with a spoon, pick up our toys and clothes
And gently, gently touch the little tree frog
We must then teach another child
To laugh when she counts her fingers and toes
Learn about laundry hampers and feeding the dog
Eat with a spoon, pick up her toys and clothes
And gently, gently touch the little tree frog
Civilization is generational
Pass it on
Saturday, June 27, 2026
Is Life an Open Road or a Blind Alley? - short poem
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
“Is Life an Open Road or a Blind Alley?”
-de Chardin, Pensee
33
You can tell it’s an open road because
Someone has crow-barred the rusty lock and chain
You can tell it’s a blind alley because
Of your dark glasses and your tapped-out white cane
If We are a School of Poetry, Then When is Recess? - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
If We are a School of Poetry, Then When is Recess?
…what we mean to establish is a school for the Lord’s service
-St. Benedict’s prologue to his Rule
1997 English edition, Ampleforth Abbey
When a poet consecrates a poem
(Which is in the nature of what poets do)
And a soul-friend breathes beauty into it
Then they have formed a school of poetry
Which is not a school for the Lord’s service
Except that it is – all this shifting of words
From chaos into meaning and purpose and love
Is a school of life, only without the home-room pledge
(or morning Mass or a chemistry lab)
We write in procession through cloisters of hope
To elevate each other as presentations of truth
Thursday, June 25, 2026
Envision a World Without Mission Statements - rhyming couplet
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Envision a World Without Mission
Statements
Your Thinking has Been
Edited for Time and Format
Let us propose a series of abatements -
Deliver us, O Lord, from mission statements
Wednesday, June 24, 2026
How Big is Our Universe? - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
How Big is Our Universe?
Time goes by – or do we?
- The Once and Future King / Camelot
How big is our universe? How deep? How far?
In youth we learn of planets, orbits, and stars
Of the infinite Great Dance of the Spheres
And God, before forever, Who created all
But meditate upon this pilgrimage -
Will we shrink it into a transient Now
Which with death and dust and ruin and rot
Seems to go away even before the next hour?
Let us stand on this cusp of Creation
And together we will consider the Beyond
Monday, June 22, 2026
Basho's Frog for for Our Time - haiku
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Basho’s Frog for Our Time
An old roadside ditch
A frog leaps into the lane
‘Neath Subaru tires
I suppose I had better apologize to Basho,
his frog, the Japanese people, Subaru, the pretty little tree frog glaring
at me through my bedroom window, and all
lovers of Haiku!
Later: a dear friend reminds me that I have
touched on this topic before:
Flat Frog Floogie
The silent carport
A frog croaks under a tire
Then silence resumes
Pinched from Basho’s
famous pond poem
Music: “Flat Foot
Floogie,” 1938
Saturday, June 20, 2026
A Memorandum of Understanding for Dead Children - short poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
A Memorandum of Understanding
And a Contemplation of the FIFA Peace Prize
The tiny hands of schoolchildren on fire
The tiny hands of schoolchildren sobbing for life
The old men on both sides claiming victory
Over
The ashes of schoolchildren at Shajareh Tayyebeh
The Great Riding Lawnmower Chase - rhyming doggerel
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
The Great Riding Lawnmower Chase
A Song of My People
In the dust beside the highway
Wide ol’ Texas four-lane highway
Ran a fat man in his anger
In his white shorts, in his anger
To another man just like him
Mower-mounted on a lawn
On a John Deere painted green
But this was not a peaceful scene
Like angry Pillsbury Doughboys
Or like dropouts from a Sumo school
They grappled in the roadside dust
In fleshy fury (not in lust)
The mower-man finally thought it best
To steer his steed into the west
Across the highway, a running fight
Dodging traffic in the morning light
The foot-man circled, the mower-man turned
The shrieking brakes of a big truck burned
Combat resumed in the turning lane
Beeps and honks again and again
I never saw the end of this chase
Who won the day, who won the race
Of if by the beginning of the next day’s dawn
Someone had finished mowing that lawn
In this I played with the Longfellow /
Hiawatha meter, which is far more appropriate for serious long poetry, not a short
frivolity. Longfellow sent me a note from the beyond advising me not to do this
again.
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