The Fairies Themselves Now Dance Sweet Summer In - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The Fairies Themselves Now Dance Sweet Summer In

 

My work is loving the world.

Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird

 

-Mary Oliver, “Messenger”

 

Everything is sacramental this week:

 

The Strawberry Moon in the fullness of being

Midsummer magic by day and by night

The English quarter day, the Feast of St. John

And holy bonfires in honor of light

 

Good honeybees take Communion at every flower

Soft breezes sing hymns among the ripening corn

The woods and fields are baptized in happiness

The sun and moon bless maidens and swains

 

We need no clocks or calendars to tell us when –

The fairies themselves now dance sweet summer in

1957 : The Year We All Became Soviets - poem

 

Lawrence Hall HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

1957: The Year We All Became Soviets

 

“…we’re going to get science applied to social problems and backed by the whole force of the state…”

 

Mark Studdock in C. S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength

 

Soviet Science launched a beeping toy into space

In the name of Progress; a mass-murderer ordered it so

And a month later Science launched and killed sweet Laika

Abandoned in orbit to die alone

 

Brave America suffered the Aunt Pittypat vapours:

We too must launch our slide-rules into space

And set our children to study Sovietism

Send civilization into orbit to die alone

 

Dogs and apes and men have flamed out in crashes

And Alexandria again is but pale ashes

If Taylor Swift Were Your Principal - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Do You Miss Your Trapper-Keeper?

 

This is the middle of June so why

Haven’t the back-to-school sales begun?

This year’s cooler than cool styles

Have been stored in shipping containers

 

For months or years on Indonesian docks

Or in warehouses in Long Beach

The teeny-boppers who modelled those clothes

Might be in graduate school by now

 

If school were as cool as the ads

Taylor Swift would be the principal

Old and Unselected Poems - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Old and Unselected Poems

 

Why do publishers entitle volumes of verse

New and Selected Poems?

Is it the editors’ lack of imagination?

Or is it some sort of secular rubric

An inky “We’ve always done it that way?”

 

When you finish writing a poem it is new

It didn’t exist before you, and now it does

And someone who reads your poem has selected it

It wasn’t selected until someone picked it up

 

Every poem is forever new and selected

And to the joy of your friends, so are you

 

Somewhere in New Mexico I Tipped a Waitress 25%

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Somewhere in New Mexico I Tipped a Waitress 25%

 

NOT I - NOT ANYONE else, can travel that road for you. You must travel it for yourself.

-Walt Whitman

 

On a cool autumn morning in New Mexico

A greasy spoon along the interstate

Walt Whitman and I enjoyed breakfast together

Bacon and eggs, hash browns, coffee and toast

 

And it was very good – no heaves of gas

But Whitman found an errand in some other soul

And sang a different self to California

McKuen rode with me the rest of the way

 

Mockingbirds at Dusk in a Time of War - poem

 

Lawrence Hall HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Mockingbirds at Dusk in a Time of War

 

They might be fighting; they might be he-ing and she-ing

Their leaf-rich oak could be their arena

Or it might serve them as their bower of bliss

For love in this magnolia-scented dusk

 

They’re still at it, whatever their “it” might be

But breaking off to blitz the subtle cat

Sneaking about in quest of a bunny or squirrel

But who from feathered fury must now retreat

 

They might be fighting; they might be he-ing and she-ing

But then

                   They might be mocking the rest of us

 

 

Bower of bliss – cf. Spenser’s The Faerie Queene

Petite Bourgeois, Personal, and Self-Indulgent - poem

  

Lawrence Hall HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Petite Bourgeois, Personal, and Self-Indulgent

 

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.

 

-Strelnikov to Yuri in Doctor Zhivago (film)

 

In the evenings I sit on my summer lawn

Slouched in an old, much-painted metal chair

That symbol of petite-bourgeois respectability

With a little table for my drink, my pipe, my book

 

(The cat pads by on errands of his own)

 

At dusk a friend or two might amble along

And join me for a glass, a smoke, a talk

We casually swat at mosquitoes and rumors

And argue about Doctor Zhivago and Lonesome Dove

 

(A fast-diving mockingbird mocks the cat)

 

In a fallen world of chaos and suffering

With fear of revolution in the air

Is it right to indulge ourselves with such trifles

As sitting and talking with old friends in the twilight?

 

Oh, yes

 

(The cat and the mockingbird continue their game)

Little Children are Much Like Dachshund Puppies - rhyming couplet

Lawrence Hall HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Little Children are Much Like Dachshund Puppies

 

With wildly scattered toys the lawn is messed -

Little children came to visit – O how we are blessed!

From Shakespeare: My Spirit is Thine, the Better Part of Me - poem

 

 

Lawrence Hall HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

From Shakespeare: My Spirit is Thine, the Better Part of Me

 

Cf. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 74

 

No kinsman could offer comfort there,
To a soul left drowning in desolation.

 

-“The Seafarer,” trans. Burton Raffel

 

When we die, our little things disappear:

Hairbrushes and pocketknives, fountain pens

Car keys, spare change, books, clothes, unopened mail

A souvenir coffee cup from Canada

 

An old uniform, a pistol from the war

A clock, a crucifix, Topsider shoes

Family pictures, a graduation ring

A magnifying glass, a radio

 

Bits and bobs, all sorts of trivial stuff

And a poem for you – it’s not enough

 

Book Removal Training - poem

  

Lawrence Hall HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Book Removal Training

 

The orange flames waved at the crowd as paper and print dissolved inside them. Burning words were torn from their sentences.

 

-The Book Thief, p. 112

 

And now burning words must be torn from free people

For if people read they might think about things:

Why does the Party’s Jesus hate everyone

And why are weapons superior to ideas

 

Can a hangperson’s noose teach us to love

Burning crosses comfort a frightened child

Do the cult’s censors fly our flag upside down

While stealing books from our children’s hands

 

A state that trains people to purge library books

Is a slave state

 

 

Florida revises school library book removal training after public outcry

Story by Douglas Soule, USA TODAY NETWORK

 

Florida revises school library book removal training after public outcry (msn.com)

A Congressssssional Hearing - poem

 

Lawrence Hall HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

 

A Congressssssional Hearing

 

 

“But hiss for hiss return’d with forked tongue”

 

-Paradise Lost, X.518

 

 

Men in nice suits meet in air-conditioned luxury

Ties perfectly knotted, Cain’s mark on their lapels

Enthroned behind paneled tables of polished oak

Where by the magic of a secular oath, all are honorables

 

There is a chair, who is a man, not a chair

Who wields an oaken gavel of authority

As he smiles benignly and modestly

An ‘umble adornment to the Republic

 

Then “bash!” goes the gavel, and yelling begins

And no one seems to know why

The God of Children and Blueberries - poem

 

Lawrence Hall HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The God of Children and Blueberries

 

For Theo (who is three today) and Nora (who is more than three)

 

“It is eaten, and renewed, every day.”

 

-Ramandu’s daughter in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

 

God is prodigal with his seasons and feasts -

This is the season of blueberries, each day a feast

Great clouds of fat blue globes hang upon the little trees

Water and sky shading into Prussian blue

 

This is a table-tree, all are invited

To stand with buckets and thirsty lips

To pick and take, to take and eat, each day

The feast magically renewed each dawn

 

Mockingbirds, robins, sparrows, rabbits, and squirrels

 

And children

 

Picking, pecking, plucking, nibbling, biting

 

All at Aslan’s Table, and all at peace

A D-Day Reminder to Every Neo-Nazi Oaf, Including Members of Congress and Justices of the Supreme Court

 

Lawrence Hall HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

A D-Day Reminder to Every Neo-Nazi Oaf

 

Including Members of Congress

And Justices of the Supreme Court

 

There is poetry in this:

Our flag was not flown upside-down at Normandy

Shakespeare: Behold a Man - poem

  

Lawrence Hall HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Behold a Man

 

Cf. Shakespeare’s Sonnets 67 & 68

 

He is a man who needs no oils or scents

The arts of makeup, filters on a lens

A touch of blush upon his honest chin

A photographer’s vanity lights placed just so

 

He is a man who is his own manly self

Washed, shaved, and combed by his own rugged hands

Hands that know shovel, hammer, ax, and saw

A businessman’s hands, a protective father’s hands

 

He is a man who needs no frippery

For he is clean and honest and just, you see

The Doorkeeper of Notre Dame - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

The Doorkeeper of Notre Dame

 

“I pray you remember the porter”

 

-Macbeth II.iii.22

 

“‘Tis my limited service” on Sundays to mind the door

To open it to the faithful with cheerful greetings

This is pretty much my skill-level, this modest chore

Such is the ancient custom for Sunday meetings

 

A family of long acquaintance approached, almost late

They live some miles away and had a long drive

Their youngest son held his hand out at the holy gate

I thought his intent was a youthful high five

 

But with only one finger he greeted me!

And that was my lesson in humility

 

As for the boy

 

While the servers rang the welcoming bell

His momma yanked him outside and gave him (peace)