Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
About that Bicycle Leaning Against a Sunlit Wall
About that bicycle leaning
against a wall
All artsy and stuff in the
slanting sun
“Take my clear photograph!”
it seems to call -
Nah, put away your Leica -
it’s been done
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Physician and Poet
For Allan Pulliam
Texas A & M ‘21
I used to admire your poetry…I shouldn't admire it now. I
should find it absurdly personal. Don't you agree? Feelings, insights,
affections...it's suddenly trivial now. You don't agree; you're wrong. The
personal life is dead in Russia. History has killed it.
-Strelnikov in Doctor Zhivago
Don’t write to be approved
by masters who
Wear Rolexes in the Name
of the People
Don’t write to be approved
by masters at all
But be your own authority
and see
Your work, your words are
nobler than manifestos
The latest noisy Guelphs
and Ghibellines
All Power to the
Constituent Assembly
One folk, one nation, one
waffle with syrup
Write freedom through
verses, and disobey
Anyone who wants to take your
voice away
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
“Now This Ain’t No S---”
The old chief took a slug
of coffee and said,
“What’s the difference
between a fairy story
And a war story?
One of ‘em begins with
‘Once upon a time’
And the other with ‘Now
this ain’t no s----'"
And it is so.
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Kryptonite Rocks
and Invisible Magic Coins
Most
ideas are merely structures – things built on bits of knowledge and insight you
already possess. If the knowledge you possess is in error, the structure will
be flawed.
-John D. McDonald, “Reading for Survival”
In my youth comic book ads offered mail-order invisible helmets,
sea monkeys, x-ray glasses, jet planes you could actually fly, kryptonite rocks,
nuclear submarines, machine guns, army tanks, life-size moon monsters, hypno-coins,
frontier cabins, silent dog whistles, time machines, and Count Dante’s Deadly
Fighting Secrets, all really-real!
This was pretty stupid stuff, but it was directed at naïve
children, and sold well for generations. An adult, of course, should see
through such mummery.
Unfortunately, many do not. Adults continue to buy this
century’s invisible helmets offered in new forms.
A modern variant of x-ray glasses and kryptonite rocks are
invisible magic coins.
The sales patter is that modern fiat money has no value,
and so we should all invest in invisible magic coins. These invisible magic coins
are generated by computers grinding away in their circuitry for hours. After the
computers have spun millions of numbers around within themselves they come up
with things that don’t exist, and those who control the computers propose to sell
to us these things that don’t exist.
And how does the awe-struck victim buy invisible magic coins?
Why, with that worthless fiat money.
The victim fails to consider that if invisible magic coins
possess value, and fiat money does not, then the possessor of the invisible magic
coins would hang on to the invisible magic coins and leave everyone else to
their fiat money.
You don’t need x-ray glasses to see through invisible magic
coins because they don’t exist. They are magic beans, the emperor’s new
clothes, a fortune teller’s readings, a political party’s promises, magic
crystals, your rich uncle in Nigeria, the South Sea Bubble, the Great Texas Emu
Bubble, the Dot.Com Bubble, Enron, and whatever Next Big Thing is being peddled
this week.
You might as well invest in one of those old comic book hypno-coins;
you’d at least have a disc of pot-metal or plastic with a swirly image. You
could look into it and say to yourself, “You are getting smarter…smarter…smarter…get
a job…a job…a job…”
-30-
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
A Footprint on the Road to Santiago
A footprint on the road to
Santiago
It has meaning - a footprint,
and another
An indent from the ferrule
of a stick
Toward a vision of a Field
of Stars
Sin-weary and sunburnt, a
pilgrim plods
Through weeds and dust and
sometimes traffic lights
And idlers mocking from
across the road
Toward a vision of a Field
of Stars
Where free from sin and
pain and blood and scars
He may at last find peace
in that Field of Stars
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
He Just Walked in Front of the Train
He just walked in front of
the train, they say
Off in the woods, the
lonely woods, the night
The rails as screaming
horror in his wild death
Blue
jeans, yellow shirt, no identification
He just walked in front of
the train, they say
The black-box cameras will
show something of it
But not the emptiness that
chased him there
Blue jeans, yellow shirt,
no identification
He just walked in front of
the train, they say
Blue jeans, yellow shirt,
no identification
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
A Polite Response to an Invitation to a Crawfish Boil
Aquatic roaches
Foul, malodorous decay
Exoskeletons
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Poetry
Magazine Responds
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that your request will be
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Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Online Certificate Program in Novel Writing
“…that led me to answer an advertisement in the Sunday Times
and
take a job…with a correspondence school…”
-Elizabeth Bishop, “The U. S. A. School
of Writing”
And a certificate!
The ad presented as a
joke, only it wasn’t:
(Famous Name Brand School)’s
Continuing Studies Program
Will make you Hemingway
for eighty dollars
And there is a student
testimonial
And a certificate!
Embrace the tools solidify
develop
Accomplished authors craft
tutorials
Dedicated dynamic cohort
peers
Passionate instructors prestigious
fellows
And a certificate!
Achieve the goal for which
you have been aiming!
(And a certificate,
suitable for framing)
Only eighty dollars
“The U. S. A. School of Writing had been raided by the police
shortly after I left…”
-Elizabeth Bishop
Elizabeth
Bishop’s poetry is rightly praised, but her prose, less often noted, is equally
delightful in its construction and content.
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Oath Peepers Security Cameras
The security cameras
around the house aren’t much
The cheapest available on Yarmuk.com
They take dim pictures of
the UPS guy
And fuzzy grey shots of
‘possums at night
A problem is that they
think they’re Army cameras
That the batteries they
took never expire
That the science of optics
has been betrayed
And that light is whatever
they want it to be
Along the windowsills they
belch and *art:
“Tina Modotti is a traitor
to art!”
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
No Straight Lines in Nature
That commonplace of art
instruction is true:
From the rainbow to the
tomato worm
And in the rhythms of our
chambered hearts
Creation curves itself
around our lives
A straight line is of the
imagination
Repudiated even by that
famous crow
Who flies as he will and
not according
To the abstracts of
mathematicians
Nothing in nature chooses graphed
confines -
Of course the man-made coffin
– that features straight lines
Mack Hall, HSG
Spring in the Air,
Springs in the Air, and a Brick
There will be no firewood shortage this coming winter. A tree-shaded
lawn is a homeowner’s dream, a tree in repose across the lawn less so, along
with trees across the roads, trees taking down power lines, trees fallen across
the children’s swing sets, trees crushing the lawn chairs where the old people
sit on pleasant mornings, trees, trees, trees, and shoals of hail that did not
thaw until evening, all set picturesquely among a landscape litter and debris.
Along the highway I saw a trampoline upside down, blown
through the air at least hundreds of yards because there are no houses nearby.
It was an occasion not only of spring in the air but springs in the air.
Among all the debris at my country estate was a brick on
the lawn. A brick. It had been blown about thirty feet from a pile of brick and
concrete bits.
A heavy steel chair of the sort one used to see in barber
shops (along with those delightful pictures of poker-playing dogs) was blown
about forty yards into the field, although small, light objects on a patio
table at the chair’s point of departure had not been disturbed at all.
And there was the loss of two of my apple trees. Well,
more firewood.
The song of the chainsaw is heard again in our land,
following nature’s rhythms of winter ice storms, spring hailstorms, and summer
tornados. It’s how we live; it’s what we do. These rhythms keep us humble, and remind
us how aesthetically pleasing are the words “JASPER-NEWTON ELECTRIC
COOPERATIVE” spelled out in a festive green or “PRECINCT 3” in subdued black on
the sides of bucket trucks and pole trucks and crew trucks and truck-trucks.
Their dignified progress along our mucky roads is as joyful as a religious
procession.
Here along Beer Can Road and County Dump Extension the
power was out for about seventeen hours because the winds and trees took down
at least one pole and transformer and any number of lengths of power line. And
that was just one or two miles of the hundreds of miles of lines in our service
area.
As in February’s ice storm, Mr. Bialetti served our
morning coffee.
The Bialetti coffee maker is a work of Italian genius in
function and art, and still made in Italy. Designed almost a hundred years ago,
the Bialetti is elegant in thick aluminum, and consists of only three parts. The
base is the water chamber, and when the water is just the right heat the
physics of the matter bubble it up through the aluminum coffee filter and into
the upper chamber, which is the coffee pot proper.
The Bialetti is not decorated with “PRECINCT 3” OR “JASPER-NEWTON
ELECTRIC COOPERATIVE”, although those would be nice too, but with a picture of natty
little man with a natty little moustache, Signor Bialetti himself.
The Bialetti is designed for a stove top, of course, and
it works fine on a camp stove (OUTSIDE; OPEN FLAMES INSIDE ARE NEVER A GOOD
IDEA).
Before you start cleaning up the windfall, you need a cup
of coffee served by Mr. Bialetti.
-30-
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Morning Coffee with Signor Bialetti
Wreckage is everywhere,
two apple trees down
Limbs and leaves and
litter, shingles and wood
The lawns are white with
shoals of springtime hail
The lines are down and the
power is out
But Signor Bialetti from
Italy
A super-hero in aluminum
Is pleased to take his
place on the camping stove
Twirl his moustache and
stride through Sterno fire
Singing songs from his
favorite libretti
While making us coffee – O
brave Signor Bialetti!
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Afghanistan, Graveyard of 19-Year-Olds
“You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.”
-Holmes’ first words to Watson in
A Study in Scarlet, 1887
Ghosts shriek in the wind from the Hindu Kush
Falling upon the lowlands in despair
Of any reality beyond death
In the blood-sodden sands where sinks all good
Walls, monuments, souls, hopes – all blow away
In the wreckage of long-fallen empires
Their detritus trod upon by tired men
Whose graves will be the howling dust of time
And yet the empire masters will return
And leave fresh offerings of more young men:
A British Enfield, a Moghul’s lost shoe,
A cell phone silent beside the Great Khan’s skull
From The
Road to Magdalena, Lawrence Hall, 2012, available via amazon.com
“Afghanistan,
graveyard of empires” is a common saying whose source is unknown.
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Awarded the Chair of Poetry at a Leafy Rural Tree
Among its ancient gifts
are acorns and leaves
But the most generous stipend
is peace
Oh, sure, we have our
academic rivalries –
Just last night a raccoon
occupied the chair
And the cardinals and jays
squawk a bit
Mostly about seeds, seldom
about verse
For arguing with Keats and
Yevtushenko
Is my great pleasure and
duty, not theirs
Who knew –
That an old steel chair
dragged onto the lawn
Could be a center of
civilization?
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Moo. Herd Immunity. Moo.
"I don't know what
herd immunity is, but when you add that to the people who have acquired
immunity, it looks like it could be very close to herd immunity.”
-Texas Governor Greg Abbott,
as quoted by the Washington Post
via The Houston Chronicle
Moo. Herd immunity. Moo. Simple
math.
Moo. Very close. Moo. Vigilant.
Moo. Proactive.
Moo. Efficacy. Moo.
Calculation.
Moo. Dashboards. Moo. Trackers.
Moo. Asymptomatic.
Moo. 70% Moo. 80%.
Moo. Fourth surge. Moo.
Waves. Moo. Gaps. Moo. Pockets.
Moo. Complications. Moo. Misunderstandings.
Moo. Factors. Moo. Threshold.
Moo. Duration
Moo. Emerging. Probable.
Moo. Data.
Moo. Equation. Moo. Very
close. Moo. Died.
“I don’t know what herd
immunity is…”
Moo.
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Our Antikythera Mechanisms
Chariots of the odds and
ends of life
Wooden boxes of bronze mechanisms
By which we navigate the
memories
Of all the golden islands
of our youth
The hidden anchorages of lost
love
And barefoot beaches of youth’s
innocence
Beneath bright sunlit hills
of wild must grapes
That taste of our desires
in dreaming hours
All lost, alas, fallen
into the sea
The sea of remembrance,
eternally
Lawrence Hall, HSG
On the Necessity
of Merry Old Scoundrels
Whenever the topics of England or the royal family arise,
newsies with limited vocabularies are sure to employ two of the most tiresome
and pointless fillers, “fairy tale” and “across the pond.”
The English monarchy is arguably 1500 years old. There have
been dynastic changes and of course the interregnum of that genocidal maniac
Cromwell, but always the monarchy continued. Even those New Men, those Progressives,
those Men of Destiny, those Modernists Napoleon and Hitler, with all their up-to-date
engines of destruction, could not topple the purportedly out-of-date monarchy. The
continuance of stable government against satanic evil is not a fairy tale.
Further, the Atlantic Ocean is hardly a pond, and the
metaphor sank into the depths of obscurity long before the Titanic.
In sum, fairy tales are for Disney, and the pond is out
back (watch out for the snakes). Adult
reporters should know these things.
The
loss of Prince Philip is very real – he was a survivor of national and family
instability in his youth (it’s never good when your grandfather is murdered and
your father barely escapes a death sentence), a hero of the Second World War, a
patriot, and, essential to all of this, he was a right merry old soul.
Any
institution needs a merry old soul, and they feature in most of Shakespeare:
Bottom the Weaver, Falstaff, the Prologue in Henry V, Macbeth’s doorkeeper,
the cobbler and the soothsayer in Julius Caesar, Constable Dogberry and
the lads in Much Ado About Nothing, and others. Prince Philip’s great
sense of incorrect fun, which never degenerated into mere buffoonery, added a
bit of spice to the necessary seriousness of the monarchy. And he was a loving husband,
father, grandfather, and great-grandfather upon whom all in his life depended.
Harry
could have learned all this from his grandfather, and could have taken his needful
place as Jolly Old ‘Arry, a bit of scandal and naughtiness around him, but
always kind and loving and loyal to the nation and his family.
But
he didn’t.
The
difference is that Prince Philip chose a life of duty to his Queen, his family,
and his nation, and despite a good beginning Harry has not yet found anything
more interesting than his own self-pity.
-30-
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
On Divine Mercy Sunday
Above all, don’t lie to yourself.
-Father Zossima in The Brothers
Karamazov
On Palm Sunday a shortage
of palms
On Divine Mercy a shortage
of mercy
An onion, a candle, a
moment, a prayer -
We’d better give something
of ourselves away
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Squirrels Without End, Amen
Whenever I take my book to
the front-yard oak
The squirrel stretched
from the feeder to the trunk
Flees in a seed-strewn
panic across the lawn
To a farther tree, free of
human menace
This is a young squirrel;
its predecessor
Arched from feeder to
trunk in exactly the same way
But held its ground, or,
rather, its rough old tree
And chittered defiance in contempt
of me
By summer’s end this
squirrel too will stare me down -
I wonder what Pasternak
wrote about squirrels
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
A Doom of Impending Sense
When you are driving away
for the daily run
Of errands, appointments,
disappointments
You know you’ll enjoy the
company of your MePhone –
Which you have left upon your desk at home
You buy a magazine in the
checkout line
Or find a book in some
cold waiting room
Or read an editorial in
the local wipe
Or remember a poem from
seventh grade
You glory in words, words and
images dense
And feel a doom of near, impending
sense
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Every Poem is a Translation
Wordsworth considered his
rainbow up on high
And what he saw and felt
through it, he wrote -
Translating an arc of refracted
light
Into a transcendent vision
of life
But his considerations
through paper and ink
Are but darkness and silence
without readers
Because the rainbow needs our
vision, our joy
Without which there is no
rainbow at all
We open the book, the
page, the words, the light
To find the rainbow that
he wrote to us
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Send Not to Ask for What the Vulture Seeks
or
Try not to Look Like a Dead Cow
Coragyps atratus, with wings spread wide
In narrowing circles
menacingly
Soars in malignance above
the countryside
I think it seeks…I think
it seeks…for me!
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
“What’s Holding us Back!?”
A video clip from Natuashish
Two little children on a
snowmobile
Which smokes and sputters,
going nowhere
“What’s holding us back!?”
is their merry squeal
Frozen-breath frosty in
the springtime air
Two little children both
ready for a ride
Realize they are held back
by a third
But only for a moment (at
least he tried!)
Three little children, each
a happy snowbird
And off they go, following
their own chosen track -
Dear little children, nothing
will ever hold you back!
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
What I Learned at Breakfast this Morning
A café’ scene
for one flat, nasal, abrasive, loud Voice and any number of Bobbing
Heads:
V:
I’VE GOT A MASK WITH JOE
BIDEN ON IT, MAN!
‘CAUSE THEY BOTH AIN’T NO
GOOD FOR NOTHIN’!
(Heads bob)
V:
THE ‘TTORNEY GENERAL OF
TEXAS SAYS HE’S GON’ SUE
ANY STORE THAT REQUIRES
MASKS, MAN, YEAH, MAN!
(Heads bob)
V:
THEY GON’ TRY THAT
SOCIALISM ON US, MAN
AN’ YOU KNOW THAT AIN’T
NEVER WORKED, MAN!
(Heads bob)
V:
I AIN’T TAKIN’ THAT ****IN’
SHOT, MAN, NO
THAT’S JUST THE FLU AND
SOCIALISM!
(Heads bob)
V:
I’D LIKE TO SEE TH’ SUM B****
TRY TO MAKE ME
WEAR NO ****IN’ MASK, MAN,
YEAH, MAN, MAN!
(Heads bob)
V:
THESE HERE PUBLIC SCHOOL
NEED TO BEAT THEM KIDS
‘CAUSE THAT’S IN TH’ BIBLE
AND I AIN’T-A GONNA HAVE NONE OF THIS COMMUNIST MOHAMMEDAN LGBT **** TAUGHT TO
MY KIDS NOSSIR THEY JUST NEED TO LEARN. TO. CODE AND SHOOT AND BUTCHER A HOG SO
THEY CAN SURVIVE THE TIME OF TRIBULATION THAT’S COMIN’ AND **** ANYONE WHO SAYS
IT AIN’T BY GOD ‘CAUSE IF IT’S AIN’T IN THE BIBLE I WON’T HAVE IT IN THE HOUSE
AND WE DON’T NEED ALL THIS HEATIN’ AND AIR-CONDITIONIN’ ‘CAUSE GOD MADE THE AIR
THE WAY IT IS AND WE JUST NEED TO TAKE IT THE WAY IT IS INSTEAD OF MAKING THIS
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENT **** MAN…
(Heads continue to bob as curtain
falls)
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Snowmobiles,
Horses, and Chocolate Bunnies
Midway through his journey of life a friend in
Newfoundland did not find himself in lost in Dante’s darksome wood or even in a
darksome St. John’s television studio, but at age 50 for reasons best known to
himself took a hiatus from reporting news for the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation and flew to Natuashish on the east coast of Labrador to teach
school children for the winter term.
Anthony keeps the twooter interesting with his posts. One
of my favorites (or favourites) is a recent posting with children launching a snowmobile:
AnthonyGermain (@AnthonyGermain) / Twitter
The three-year-old piloting the thing asks, in her
language, “What’s holding us back?”
In truth, I don’t think anything will ever hold that
child back.
The video clip was made within the last week; winters in
Nunatsiavut are loooooooooooooong.
An argument can be made that the snowmobile is not part
of the Inuit heritage, but that would be an error – no people or culture exists
in stasis, as a sort of museum.
Labrador Inuit (Labradormiut) (first-nations.info)
There were no horses in North America until the Spanish
brought them. Within a short time the Comanche, more than any other First
Nation, adapted to the technology of the horse and became possibly the world’s
finest light cavalry.
The Comanche – Horsemen of the Plains – Legends of America
How Horses Transformed Life for Plains Indians - HISTORY
For the Inuit the snowmobile is now as essential to travel,
commerce, and hunting as the horse became to the Comanche.
The essential thing is that after the Comanche the Inuit appropriated
and adapted the technology of others they did not then passively hold it in
their hands and stare at it. Okay, neither a horse nor a snowmobile can be held
like a MePhone, but the point stands – technology properly used does not
disconnect any culture from its heritage, but rather enriches it and pushes it
forward.
And there are chocolate bunnies for all.
Life is good.
-30-
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Easter Sunday 2021, the 2nd Covid Year
In some churches the organ
thunders at dawn
Ours squeaks (it might be a
bargain from Sears)
This does not change the
truth, the awe, the Light
That shines upon the Altar
this Easter day
Last year the Holy Mass
was forbidden by law
An eleventh plague
blighted land and air
And so for us there was no
exodus
From the brick pits in
which we found ourselves
And in the pews –
Empty spaces, empty
hearts, absent friends
But there is the Promise,
the Promise fulfilled
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Holy Saturday 2021, the 2nd Covid Year
Lent begins in winter and
ends in spring
The Stations of the Cross,
the self-denials
Are trivial, perhaps, but
then so are we
Better that way:
The harrowing is not here
Lawrence Hall
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Thoughts During that Famous Light Collation on Good
Friday
This morning I mowed the
lawn, the springtime lawn
Then messed about with flowerpots
and bees
In this little safe space of
happy green
A shadow of Heaven beneath
wise Plato’s oak
This evening I will visit
Jerusalem
And follow timidly the
Stations of the Cross
Not wanting to be noticed
by Romans or Greeks
(Setting aside the fact
that I am a Roman)
Time stops - with faltering
steps and a contrite heart
A journey into the dark,
and then – waiting
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
A Sequence of Poems for Holy Week
(Some of these were submitted in past
years)
On this Maundatum Thursday falls a bomb
From the belly of a beast, falling, falling
From the Empyrean and through the blue
Past mountaintops and misted valleys deep
And then into the planet’s earthen flanks
Its pulses to repudiate Creation
In vaporizing the structures of life
Into primeval molecules of dust
Because some bad men might be lurking there
On this Maundatum Thursday falls a bomb
Maundy Thursday – Mass
of the Last Supper
“Bare
ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang”
-Shakespeare
The air is thurified – the incense given
Our Lord upon His birth is fumed at last;
The censer’s chains, clanking like manacles
Offend against the silence at the end of Mass
Supper is concluded; the servants strip
The Table bare of all the Seder service:
Cups, linens, and dishes, leaving in the dark
An Altar bare, prepared for sacrifice
In Gethsemane the flowered air is sweet
But iron-heeled caligae offend the night
6 April
2012, Good Friday
A Night of Fallen Nothingness
The Altar stripped, the
candles dark, the Cross
Concealed behind a purple
shroud, the sun
Mere slantings through an
afternoon of grief
While all the world is
emptied of all hope.
The dead remain, the failing
light withdraws
As do the broken faithful,
silently,
Into a night of fallen
nothingness.
7 April
2012, Holy Saturday
Easter Vigil, Sort Of
A vigil, no, simply quiet
reflection
Minutes before midnight, with
all asleep
Little Liesl-Dog perhaps
dreams of squirrels,
For she has chased and barked
them all the day;
The kittens are disposed with
their mother
After an hour of
kitty-baby-talk,
Adored by all, except by
Calvin-Cat,
That venerable, cranky old
orange hair-ball,
Who resents youthful
intrusion upon
His proper role as object of
worship.
All the house settles in for
the spring night,
Anticipating Easter, early
Mass,
And then the appropriately pagan
Merriments of chocolates and
colored eggs
And children with baskets
squealing for more
As children should, in the
springtime of life.
Easter, 2014
Christos Voskrese!
For William Tod Mixson
The world is unusually quiet this dawn
With fading stars withdrawing in good grace
And drowsy, dreaming sunflowers,
dewy-drooped,
Their golden crowns all motionless and
still,
Stand patiently in their ordered garden
rows,
Almost as if they wait for lazy bees
To wake and work, and so begin the day.
A solitary swallow sweeps the sky;
An early finch proclaims his leafy seat
While Old Kashtanka limps around the yard
Snuffling the boundaries on her morning
patrol.
Then wide-yawning Mikhail, happily
barefoot,
A lump of bread for nibbling in one hand,
A birch switch swishing menace in the other
Appears, and whistles up his father’s cows:
“Hey!
Alina, and Antonina! Up!
Up, up, Diana and Dominika!
You, too, Varvara and Valentina!
Pashka is here, and dawn, and spring, and
life!”
And they are not reluctant then to rise
From sweet and grassy beds, with udders
full,
Cow-gossip-lowing to the dairy barn.
Anastasia lights the ikon lamp
And crosses herself as her mother taught.
She’ll brew the tea, the strong black
wake-up tea,
And think about that naughty, handsome Yuri
Who winked at her during the Liturgy
On the holiest midnight of the year.
O pray that watchful Father did not see!
Breakfast will be merry, an echo-feast
Of last night’s eggs, pysanky, sausage,
kulich.
And Mother will pack Babushka’s basket,
Because only a mother can do that right
When Father Vasily arrived last night
In a limping Lada haloed in smoke,
The men put out their cigarettes and helped
With every precious vestment, cope, and
chain,
For old Saint Basil’s has not its own
priest,
Not since the Czar, and Seraphim-Diveyevo
From
time to time, for weddings, holy days,
Funerals,
supplies the needs of the parish,
Often
with Father Vasily (whose mother
Begins
most conversations with “My son,
The
priest.…”), much to the amusement of all.
Voices
fell, temperatures fell, darkness fell
And
stars hovered low over the silent fields,
Dark
larches, parking lots, and tractor sheds.
Inside
the lightless church the priest began
The
ancient prayers of desolate emptiness
To
which the faithful whispered in reply,
Unworthy
mourners at the Garden tomb,
Spiraling
deeper and deeper in grief
Until
that Word, by Saint Mary Magdalene
Revealed,
with candles, hymns, and midnight bells
Spoke
light and life to poor but hopeful souls.
The world is unusually quiet this dawn;
The sun is new-lamb warm upon creation,
For Pascha gently rests upon the earth,
This holy Russia, whose martyrs and saints
Enlighten the nations through their witness
of faith,
Mercy, blessings, penance, and prayer
eternal
Now rising with a resurrection hymn,
And even needful chores are liturgies:
“Christos
Voskrese – Christ is risen indeed!”
And Old Kashtanka limps around the yard
Snuffling the boundaries on her morning
patrol.
