Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
“Just One More
Thing…”
A well-chewed cigar
A seven-years’ rumpled coat
A fine-tailored heart
Tuesday, August 25, 2026
"Just One More Thing..." - for Peter Falk
Monday, August 24, 2026
The U.S.S. Doris Miller - a Tall Ship for a Tall Man
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
The U.S.S. Doris Miller – a Tall Ship for a Tall Man
"And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by"
-John Masefield, “Sea Fever
Iron and Steel
For now she is only numbered heaps of steel
Laid out in structure-order at Newport News
Muscled into being through thought and power
Strong craftsmen of the builders’ brotherhood
CVN 81
The lifts, the links, the wirings, the welds, the works
Plans, bolts, tools, heat, sweat, pain, maybe some blood
A touch of salty language for motivation
And then someday
“God bless this ship and all who sail in her”
The Soul of a Ship
The Doris Miller will sail, will range wide and far -
And Doris Miller himself will be her star
An Idyll of the Decorator-in-Chief - intemperate political doggerel
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
An Idyll of the
Decorator-in-Chief
Yes, makin’ mock o’
uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them
uniforms, an’ they’re starvation cheap
-Kipling
Americans are a couch-bound people who
Applaud a souffle being fluffed on t.v.
And argue the fine points of Chef So-and-So’s roux
While their sailors and Marines go hungry
across the sea
Sunday, August 23, 2026
"I Don't Know What's Going on in There!" - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
“I Don’t Know What’s Going on in There!”
“Oh, you have made me very angry, very angry indeed!”
-Marvin the Martian in a Bugs Bunny cartoon
The convention would be to say he stormed out of church
But in his time of life he can’t storm at all
Except maybe like Marvin the Martian
(If Martians suffer arthritis and age) while I held the door for him
(No, not for a Martian, for a creaky, cranky old earthling)
“You saw me come in! I came to Mass! Now I’m going out!
I don’t know what’s going on in there! It’s all a mess!
And I don’t have to put up with it! I’ll watch Mass on t.v.!”
I never learned what was going on in there
Divine services are like that – what do we really know?
But he, and I, and you – we just do our best
Friday, August 21, 2026
Music for Biology Class - doggerel
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Music for Biology
Class
According to the curriculum code
This week we are in dissection mode
Each waving a tiny knife and prick and goad
Let us now sing “Song of the Open Toad”
Thursday, August 20, 2026
Hot Scrambled Verse Comin' Right Up! - poem (of a sort)
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Hot Scrambled Verse Comin’ Right Up!
Too hot to read
Too hot to write
Too hot to think coherently
Too hot to sort an iamb from an iambnot
(Gasp!)
Wednesday, August 19, 2026
When I Was a Child I Saw a Dinosaur - poem
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
When I was a Child I Saw a Dinosaur
There are not going to be many more dinosaurs
-C. S. Lewis, “De Descriptione Temporum,” 1955
When I was a child I saw a dinosaur
A dinosaur at the end of the lane
Rearing its head high above the pasture gate
It might want to eat little boys, I feared
So I held really still, and closed my eyes
And closed my eyes, so tightly closed my eyes
And closed my eyes, and then…opened my eyes –
The dinosaur (it didn’t roar) was still there!
When I was a child I saw a dinosaur
A real-life little-boy-hungry carnivore!
I wish I could see it again
A Typewriter Maps the Battlefield of the Mind - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
A Typewriter Maps the Battlefield of the Mind
Everyone who survived began a book
In basements, cheap apartments, or rented rooms
Underwoods clattering in anger, in rage
For corpses floating down the Vam Co Tay
Coffee cups, beer rings, stolen motel ashtrays
Cigarette smoke wreath around the keys
While muses watched from the crumbling plaster wall
Maybe a crucifix, maybe Miss March
Cheap typing paper from the corner store
A sandwich falling apart along with life
A last assault through a paragraph
Before rushing to the bus stop for the night shift
“Y’all wasn’t in a real war,” the old men said
But the memories and the typewriter keys
Still bled
Tuesday, August 18, 2026
A Critical Topic in Jewish-Catholic Interfaith Dialogue - doggerel
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia
Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
A Critical Topic in
Jewish-Catholic Interfaith Dialogue
When eating hot dogs made with Hebrew National franks
Do we say grace with “Toda”
“Grates”
or
“Thanks?”
Monday, August 17, 2026
Cute Little Biological Markers - poor attempts at Senryu
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Cute Little Biological Markers
For our Emily
Who set a thoughtful challenge
To define the term
The lives of our frogs
Biological markers
Tell us of toxins
If frogs have clean air
And fresh clean water and bugs
We will have clean frogs
Healthy little frogs
To celebrate our health too
They give us great joy!
"They Knew What They Signed Up For" - poem
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
“They Knew What They Signed Up For”
That
cruel dismissal is from some keyboard commando
Who
memorized every line from Patton
But
never volunteered for anything himself
Except
for a two-layered two-fer at McDonald’s
Sunday, August 16, 2026
Tom Swift of I.C.E. and His Electric Gloves - doggerel
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Tom Swift and His Bully Electric Gloves
The G.L.O.V.E. — CD3 Compliance Tool | Compliant Technologies
Compliant Technologies of Kentucky
Makes gloves for you – “low voltage” electric love
To hurt your face better than mace (if you’re lucky)
So be Compliant, or else
- Your Loving Gov
The End of August, and the Dragon is Here - poem
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
The End of August, and the Dragon is Here
We
are taught in science class that heat rises
Because
molecules bash each other
And
thus thinned are lifted by denser air -
Raise
your convections if you believe it is so!
The
month of August persuades us otherwise
Late-summer
molecules are dragon-hot
Ssssssteam-blooded
reptiliansssss ssssssucking our sssssssouls
While
hisssssing their sssssibilant sssssssatanic hymnsssss
Heat
rises, we are taught in science class -
But
in August it slithers lowwwww in the grass
Friday, August 14, 2026
A Summer Processional in Honor of Structured Poetry - poem
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
A Summer Processional in Honor of Structured Poetry
[I]ambic
pentameter…is the very breath of English verse.
-Stephen
Fry, The Ode Less Travelled
Wind
August heat drought grass shade lawn tree crows ‘possum headache mourning doves
clouds and sun blue jays humidity cardinals longings for autumn egrets unseen
airplanes lawn chairs heat-shimmering hayfield early acorns bees grapevines
trumpet vines porch fans spinning in futility just any old way
Bolts
and locks in chaos waving and rushing up against and to and into our exiled poetic
minds
Ahem!
Order and method, please, poet 1
Who
amid the alien Saint Augustine grass 2
Sets
fading roses in order serviceable 3
Sets
the sky aright, above the oaks
Sets
meter, orderly and elegant
Sets
doves in chortling chorus to coo the hours
Sets
flowers about in casual good taste
Sets
lawn chairs in English here-and-there-ness
Those
thrones from whence we serve rather than rule
And
the days, bearing blessings as vexilla
Process
among us with quiet dignity
Singing
the verses we write from nature
Until
all manner of things shall be made well 4
1 “Order and method,” Agatha Christie’s Poirot
2 “Amid the alien corn,” biblical book of Ruth and numerous other sources
3 “On the Eve of Christ’s Nativity,” Milton
4 “Showings,” St. Julian of Norwich
Thursday, August 13, 2026
The Leader of the Free World Aboard His Chariot of the Gods - doggerel, but no dog
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
The Leader of the Free World Aboard His Chariot of
the Gods
When
the food truck speeds off, making a run
Just
think of it as our majestic Air Force One
Wednesday, August 12, 2026
Poets Speak of Hay - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Poets Speak of Hay
For Nat Lipstadt, Ken Pepiton, VerseBuster, and Billy Collins
I was raised on a farm
Which did me no harm
But bales of hay
And stacks of hay
Pitching hay
Filling the old pickup with hay
And a trailer of hay
Hay and hay and more hay
In the heat of each midsummer day
Day after day after day
(You may channel Coleridge's Ancient Mariner here)
The old barn full of hay Hot, musty, fusty, allergenic hay
Day after musty, fusty, allergenic day
Hot day, hot, hot, hot every da®ned day
You may
Have my hay
As Dimitri Karamazov did not say
"A ticket for hay? I herewith return my ticket!"
Night of the Murdered Poets, 12 August 1952
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life,
Literature and Love
Night of the Murdered Poets, 12 August 1952
Not
a poem, just a plea:
Of your mercy please pray for the repose
of the souls
of all people murdered for their
witness to truth
The Night of the Murdered Poets – For Reading Addicts
Tuesday, August 11, 2026
The Girl with the Pearl Nose Ring - a poor attempt at senryu
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia
Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
The Girl with the
Pearl Nose Ring
Not
from Vermeer
“Girls purty as me
Shouldn’t have to work for a livin’
That’s what men are for”
Sunday, August 9, 2026
That Famous Participation Trophy - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
That Famous Participation Trophy
One hears of that participation trophy-trope
A theme, a meme, mostly by cranky old men
Withered gaffer-gossips condemning the young
For being rewarded simply for showing up
Like Santa Claus it might be a good idea
I still listen for sleigh bells every Christmas
And yet – I have never seen a participation trophy
If you find one, call; you have my number
And, speaking of unearned rewards,
We’re presented a trophy each morning, just for fun
When God gives each of us a golden sun!
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