Chris and Deedra's Porch

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Chris and Deedra’s Porch

Porch-exiled with our beer and cigarettes

We firmly urged the dogs, dead wasps, and heat
To move a bit and make some room for us.
There was no evening cool, no hope of it,
No hope in anything, and there we sank
Into drought-dusty, disreputable old chairs,
Surrendered to the heat and beer and smokes,
Avoided thinking about the death-still dusk.
But then a gentle tease, a gentle breeze
Came wafting coolly from across the fields
Only for a moment, and was gone again,
Not cruelly but of kindness, just a note,
A fairy’s note, soft-whispered through a leaf,
A hymn for exiles, a song of autumn.

Vigil of the Assumption

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Vigil of the Assumption

We will forever venerate our Queen,

Whom God Himself chose happily to be
His Mother, and the Mother of us all.
Each orphaned soul, rejected by mankind,
Adrift among the sloshing, foul debris
Of counsels falsely hissed behind the leaves
Must know that in the wild, sin-howling nights
Of desolation, clutching to himself
The fragments of his failed humanity,
Even so, his loving Mother comes to him,
To tend, to heal, to love, to hold in trust
For God this child of Hers, condemned by time.

Alternative Prayer Before a Crucifix

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Alternative Prayer Before a Crucifix

Our little plastic boxes glow and blink,

They wink, they clink, they link; they almost think -
Until the tenuous connections fail
To silence blown by the January gale,
And we are left in still, cold darkness there:
A candle, a Crucifix, and a prayer.

Night Class

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Night Class

The moonless night presents a nothingness,

As flickering cones of yellow light pursue
Pale wraiths and shadows through the conifers.
The radio hisses in its loneliness,
While miles and hours in meditation pass;
The coffee cup from several towns ago
Is empty now; its caffeine promises
Have faded like a statesman’s solemn vows
While Byron, Shelley, and Keats, in repose
Between the covers of a Moby Book,
Await those even later, owlish hours,
Then to renew their pleynts against the past.

Frogs x 2

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Frogs of August

After surprising summer showers in

A time of heat and dust and lethargy,
Forth from their hidden reptilian repose
The frogs of August rise, and sing a hymn,
A joyful hymn to rain and tasty bugs.

The Pickwickian toad sings of himself,

A stout old gentleman of means and thrift;

The bluff and hearty bullfrog by the pond

Bellows his boasts, and puffs his own praises.

Preferring window screens to rain-damp leaves,

The tiny tree frog trills his outsized voice.

The disparate, dissonant descantations
Of this catalogue of errant froggery
Drift in and out of transient harmony
And back again, an ancient unity
To please the late-night wanderer of hours.

 

O Ye of Little Frog 

For those who deny that frogs sing to God

O ye of little faith in night’s mysteries
Oft hasten to explain away God’s arts,
And dampen joys with your false-writ histories
Believing in dull books, and not your hearts.

You claim that frogs sing only to gain mates,

Based on some long-dead dullard’s science log,
Claiming the last word on reptilian traits -
What do you know of the love-life of a frog?

You might then with equal injustice claim

That Compline is sung in order to attract
Women – but is that Saint Benedict’s aim?
Poor frogs and monks sing hymns; and that’s a fact!

Liesl and the Egrets

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Liesl and the Egrets

Neighbor Willie was mowing the August fields

And to this tillage flew egrets, all white,
Following the blade for its bug-rich yields,
Soaring and wheeling in the mid-day light

Some thirty or more of this hungry flock

Alighted on the lawn beneath the trees
Before the wide window, as if to mock
A spirited dachshund – oh, what a tease!

Young Liesl girded for battle, oh, yes:

The air, the birds, and the doggie were still,
As when a thunderstorm builds, as you may guess,
Or a stalking she-wolf waits for her kill

The door was opened, and, thundering, Liesl sprang

Into the lists of honor, against all odds,
With yelp and yap and yip and paw and fang,
True daughter of the old Germanic gods!

Ere long the scene was silent, free of birds;

An errant feather here and there told the story
Of Liesl’s noble charge far better than mere words,
Told of this day’s dachshundian glory.

Ubi Eras?

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Ubi Eras?

Job 38:4

Their recycled mockery casually slips

Around your soul, coolly, as in an ad
For the season’s fashionable heresy:
Docetism? Yes, after Labor Day,
But Pelagianism’s this week’s thing,
With a subtle twist of Monophysitism,
Or perhaps a hint of existential despair
At noon, to take you through your busy life.

They’ll never suggest that you clothe your soul

With the coarse monastic habit of faith
In Him Who has always believed in you.
You needn’t try to impress Him at all,
For though He thunders entire worlds into being
With less than a flung synapse of His thought,
To you His truth he whispers in His love.

A Doggie Day

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Doggie Day

When leaving for work, one wishes the dogs

A good and useful day at their own jobs:
Barking the cats, sniffing the summer breeze,
Snort-snuffling through the grass, yapping at birds,
Lolling in the sun, doggie-tummies up,
In celebration of God’s creation.
They suffer no meetings and file no reports,
And when they hear that long-familiar step,
Or that happy whistle at the back gate,
They run to have their daily work approved:
A pat, a scratch, a tickle under the chin,
A well-tossed yummie treat caught in mid-air.
The good old dog looks up, and seems to ask
“Good old human, was your day as happy as mine?”

The Garage-Sale Camera

Mack Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Garage-Sale Camera

Surviving the polyester Seventies

Its hippie guitar-strap moldy and frayed
Compromised by corroded batteries
But solid, elegant - Japanese-made

Quite worn with use, some family’s recorder

Of parties, poses, playing in the summer-yard
When children now grown lined up in order
And happily grinned for Grandpa’s Christmas card

First Communion, the trip to Disneyland

A wedding with the groom in a purple tux
A daughter marching in the high school band –
A garage-sale camera, only ten bucks

Families, neighbors, puppies, classmates, friends -

Living forever through this old camera’s lens