A Complicated Affair of the Heart - poem for Independence Day

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 Complicated Affair of the Heart

 

 

“‘My country, right or wrong,’ is a thing that no patriot would think of saying.

It is like saying, ‘My mother, drunk or sober.'”

 

-G. K. Chesterton, The Defendant, 1901

 

 

At midday I finally posted the flag

After many hours of reflection and guilt

The bloody tyrant will think it is there for him -

But he cannot command our faithful hearts

 

His soldiers occupy our capital’s streets

Arresting citizens for crimes that never were

He wars against the nations while our Congress cowers -

But he cannot command our faithful hearts

 

That is not his flag over our still-standing ramparts -

For he cannot command our faithful hearts

 

4 July 2026

Criminally Made Algae - 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

 

Criminally Made Algae

 

 

“The Reflecting Pool is now in full use after suffering great damage from Criminal, Radical Left Vandals, people that truly hate our Country…the criminally made algae is gone”

 

The President, 28 June 2026, numerous sources

 

 

A dripping-damp alley off a sinister street

Among the garbage cans and omnivorous rats

A series of coded knocks on an obscure door

“Psssst! Neville the Liberal Arts Graduate sent me”

 

Sinister doings in a dimly-lit lab

Chemicals and curious machinery

“We can’t get the chlorophyl balanced, Boss”

“The gamete-producing cells must be shipped at dawn”

 

“Algae, comrades, remember our purpose, our goal!

Algae, comrades, for the president’s toilet bowl!”

 

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

I Caught the Sun - 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

 

I Caught the Sun

 

 

I’ll catch the sun, and never give it back again

 

-Rod McKuen, “I’ll Catch the Sun”

 

 

I caught the sun, but have to give it back

Always in memories, sometimes in bits of flesh

Once by square inches, now by centimeters

In the modern measurements of loss

 

We often caught the sun, shirtless and sunburnt

In the golden summers of our glorious youth

When solar radiation was good for us

While building bob-wire fences and working the fields

I once showed off my tan to pretty girls

But now only to dermatologists

 

 

“Bob wire” is the sweat-stained vernacular; “barbed wire” is the usage of people who never built fence.

The Empire of the Snail - haiku

 

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 Empire of the Snail

 

Pepper-climbing snail

Is grasped by the gardener’s glove

And then flung away

Goslings and Quislings - haiku

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

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

Home - Hello Poetry

 

Goslings and Quislings

 

Goslings and Quislings

Die in a reflecting pool

Goslings have no choice

Who Taught You How to Tie Your Shoes? - 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

 

 

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

Is Life an Open Road or a Blind Alley? - short 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

 

“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

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

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

Home - Hello Poetry

 

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

Envision a World Without Mission Statements - rhyming couplet

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

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

Home - Hello Poetry

 

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

How Big is Our Universe? - 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

 

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

Basho's Frog for for Our Time - haiku

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

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

Home - Hello Poetry

 

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