Lawrence Hall
Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Logosophiamag.com
Hellopoetry.com
Fellowshipandfairydust.com
Does
the Moon Write Back?
Sometimes I wonder: does the moon
ever write
A poem about me or you?
Friday, February 10, 2023
Does the Moon Write Back? - very short poem
Thursday, February 9, 2023
Everybody Writes a Poem About the Moon - poem
Lawrence Hall
Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Logosophiamag.com
Hellopoetry.com
Fellowshipandfairydust.com
Everybody
Writes a Poem About the Moon
Everybody writes about the moon
Often trying to force a balky
rhyme
Along the continuum of spoon and
croon
Which just won’t fill the bill,
the quill, or the time
But the moon is there, whether we
write or not
Silver and cool, beyond our scribbled
praise
In contrast to the sun, golden
and hot
Promoting himself through all of
summer’s days
Everybody writes about the moon
Who in her being is all the rhyme
we need
Tuesday, February 7, 2023
What Communists Learned from History - weekly column, 5 February 2023
Lawrence Hall, HSG
What Communists
Learned from History
Maxwell Smart and The Chief conferring under The Cone of
Silence might have come up with a more effective method of downing the Chinese
spy balloon than our Space Command or whatever it is we’ve got defending us
from The Helium Peril.
Yes, we do have a Space Command [Home (spacecom.mil)]
complete with all sorts of costumes, a theme song entitled “The Space Force
March,” and seven “warfighting units” – yes, that’s what they’re called,
“warfighting units” - with cool shoulder patches.
Photographs show that the Space Command features at least
six different kinds of attractive uniforms, so if this nation cannot control
its own skies it can at least control fashion shows.
One of the uniforms is of a forest leaf pattern, which is
curious given that spacecraft and space itself are devoid of forests.
According to its own site the Space Command is responsible
for defending us against threats (maybe Klingons?) more than 100 kilometres
above the surface of the earth, so technically a Chinese balloon is not in
their remit. Still, it could have been a chance for the Space Command to set
phasers on stun and show the guys from Peking just who’s boss of American skies.
As for the purported civilian weather balloon, nah; no
one believes that form of camouflage. Lots of nations spy on each other with balloons,
airplanes, fishing boats, and other vessels and devices, all of them said to be
civilian craft for the purpose of plausible deniability. Spies lie; it’s what
they do.
An Air Force fighter shot down the spy balloon and its
gadgetry with a missile said to cost over $400,000. The merry lads in Peking claim to be outraged
about the shootdown but probably they are merely amused. A balloon is low-tech
and probably costs less than a missile, and this one was allowed to float over
North America for days while gathering information. Whether or not it was
effective it was inexpensive, and Uncle Xi enjoyed pulling Uncle Sam’s
whiskers.
The irony is that we all read, heard, and saw the story
on electronic devices made in Shanghai. If the Communists want to know what
we’re talking about they could probably tap a few keys and have the
computerized thermostats in our refrigerators listen in.
And, say, don’t you think the coffee machine has been
acting a little suspiciously lately?
This nation has been attacked, not simply watched,
through the military use of balloons. In 1944-1945 the Japanese launched against
North America thousands of balloons armed with explosives and incendiaries [New Documentary Delves into the Japanese WWII Terror Weapon:
The Fu-Go Balloon Bomb (historynet.com)]. Several thousand of these made landfall and
killed six people and caused some damage. Some of these devices might have failed
and if so a few unexploded bombs remain lost in the woods and mountains of the
American West.
Modern Communists learned history well from the imperial
Japanese of eighty years ago – cobble together a few rudimentary barometric
mechanisms for controlling height through the measured disposal of gasses and
ballast and know the seasonal air currents on the same academic level as a
seventh-grader. Launch. Wait. See.
Now, then, what clever boy or girl in some hostile nation
is up to some unexpected mischief based on lessons learned from the German
Enigma or the British Turing-Welchman Bombe?
-30-
Sunday, February 5, 2023
Assisted Living -poem
Lawrence Hall
Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Logosophiamag.com
Hellopoetry.com
Fellowshipandfairydust.com
“Remarkably Like Any Other Place”
For
Tod
Who
is in assisted living
Assisting
others in living
Rich:
This is an awful place.
More:
Except it’s keeping me from you, my dears, it’s not so bad. Remarkably like any
other place.
Alice:
It drips!
More:
Yes. Too near the river.
-Robert
Bolt, A Man for All Seasons
Life
is a pilgrimage from cell to cell:
The
bedroom of one’s childhood, the college dorm
The
noisy barracks, merry in spite of all
Eighty
conscript soldiers bunked out in rows
The
marriage home set forth among trees and grass
A
comfortable chair with a lamp and books
The
office with its official desks and files
And
Sunday liturgies in an accustomed pew
All
these are now condensed into a cell
Where
God has chosen to live and wait with you
(I suppose I'd better clarify that my friend Tod sees his room as a monastic cell, not a prison cell!)
Friday, February 3, 2023
That Chinese Spy Balloon - poem
Lawrence Hall
Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Logosophiamag.com
Hellopoetry.com
Fellowshipandfairydust.com
That
Chinese Spy Balloon
“Number Six is dead. Rover got him.”
-Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner
A spy balloon lurks over Montana
And nobody seems to know what to
do
Against the intruder Top Guns launch
themselves
But only circle around it
piteously
They slink away, intimidated by a
balloon
That takes its pictures and
samples with insolence
Unmenaced by our Merovingian
regime
Generals bemedaled like Russian
doormen
Our leaders stumble over each
other’s gaffes
While in Shanghai the Politburo laughs
MUSICAL TABLES, Billy Collins - a brief review
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
Musical Tables, Billy Collins: A
White-Space Ripoff
If you purchase this volume as a notebook with a few piquant aphorisms already scribbled here and there on its pages you will have some value for your $26 (now under $20 via Amazon). If you buy it as a volume of poetry you will delight in many of those brief witticisms but as a whole might be disappointed that Mr. Collins and Random House have your money and you have lots of wasted wood pulp.
Thursday, February 2, 2023
El Camino Real de los Tejas - poem
Lawrence Hall
Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Logosophiamag.com
Hellopoetry.com
Fellowshipandfairydust.com
El
Camino Real de los Tejas
A WPA highway crumbling in the
sun
Oriented west where dreams disappear
Among the beer cans and the cinder
blocks:
El Camino Real de los Tejas
Sharing a joint, throwing rocks
at snakes
Where the Santa Fe tracks used to
run
Now there’s not even a bus out of
town:
El Camino Real de los Tejas
They don’t even know that they’re
the sons of kings:
In exile along El Camino Real
Appropriating Babushkas from the Orthodox - poem
Lawrence Hall
Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Logosophiamag.com
Hellopoetry.com
Fellowshipandfairydust.com
Appropriating Babushkas from the
Orthodox
(upon the first
Sunday home from the hospital)
A babushka
badly in need of a hearing aid
Asked me
if I would sub for the missing lector
I
apologetically said I really didn’t feel up to it
And would
she please ask somebody else.
I tracked her
progress back to the narthex by sound:
“HE SAYS
HE DON’T WANNA HE’S SICK!” “HE SAYS HE DON’T
WANNA HE’S SICK!” “HE SAYS HE DON’T WANNA HE’S SICK!” “HE SAYS HE DON’T WANNA HE’S SICK!” “HE SAYS HE DON’T
WANNA HE’S SICK!” “HE SAYS HE DON’T
WANNA HE’S SICK!” “HE SAYS HE DON’T WANNA HE’S SICK!” “HE SAYS HE DON’T WANNA HE’S SICK!”
But it’s all
good; God gives us babushkas
To show us that
the Faith, like the babushkas
Will never go
away
Monday, January 30, 2023
The Senate Protects Us from Evil - doggerel
Lawrence Hall
Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Logosophiamag.com
Hellopoetry.com
Fellowshipandfairydust.com
The Senate Protects Us from Evil
Russian ships creep up upon our coasts
Armed with tsircon missiles to make us ghosts
Police gangs “serve and protect” with beatings and scars
Anonymous in hoodies and unmarked cars
Each self-appointed Grand Inquisitor looks
Through school and public libraries for dirty books
The poor can’t afford to buy meat, bread, and eggs
And so
Congress investigates Taylor Swift’s…tickets
Sunday, January 29, 2023
The Road Not Taken (Or Was It?) - weekly column 1.29.2023
Lawrence Hall, HSG
The Road Not Taken
– Or Was It?
In Memoriam (Easter, 1915)
The
flowers left thick at nightfall in the wood
This
Eastertide call into mind the men,
Now
far from home, who, with their sweethearts, should
Have
gathered them and will do never again.
-Edward Thomas
Those of us of a certain age (cough) remember the dim, blue-ish
television images of Robert Frost reciting from memory his short poem “The Gift
Outright” at the inauguration of President Kennedy. Because of the wind and the
glaring winter sunlight Frost could not read the poem he had written for the
occasion and so made a quick save with an older one he knew by heart.
“The Gift Outright” would now be condemned as imperialist,
colonialist, and all the other usual “ist” suspects if anyone read poetry at all,
so it’s safe enough. Indeed, in an arc from Mexico City to Ottawa via Washington
the idea of any North American carrying a book is now as unthinkable as
Odysseus carrying the Winnowing Oar as directed by Tiresius.
But it was not always so. For most of history literature was
poetry; prose was for recording facts and shopping lists. When you read through
what is dismissed as Victorian parlour poetry you can see that although the
sentiments are often mawkish the technical skills of ordinary people in their
letters and notebooks are also very highly developed.
The First World War created such a crisis of culture and
a failure of hope that although well-written work continued for a generation as
a sort of existential brenschluss,
poetry after Frost is often little more than self-pitying, self-referential free
verse that connects only with whether or not the writer’s feelings have been
hurt today or if he (the pronoun is gender-neutral) has had a satisfactory
bowel movement lately.
In 1912-1915 Robert Frost’s metaphorical road took him to
England where he hoped to develop a career as a poet. He became great friends
with the successful travel writer, Edward Thomas, who encouraged him and made
some useful introductions that indeed began making Frost famous.
Frost admired Thomas’ descriptive travel essays and encouraged
him to render some of his work as verse.
In 1915 Frost returned to America and Thomas remained in
England undecided as to whether to follow Frost and continue his career in the
U.S.A. or, at 36, to join the British Army.
When Frost published “The Road Not Taken,” Thomas, thinking the poem a
criticism of his well-known indecision in most matters, enlisted, and was
killed in action in 1917.
Indeed, the poem may have been nothing more than a little
joke based on the fact that Frost and Thomas, who loved hiking, often really
did argue about what trail or road they should take.
As for “The Road Not Taken,” it is very much alive and
the subject of badly-written undergraduate essays beginning with the
ever-useless, “In my opinion…”
An acquaintance reminds me that even a very young reader
understands “The Road Not Taken” on levels, but that an older reader, looking back
upon the decisions he has made in life, truly feels it.
Most of the poems of Frost are as fresh and relevant now
as they were in the last century, and worth a re-read without the unholy
inquisition of some tiresome English teacher asking you what a line means when
it’s darned obvious what the line means.
Just don’t read in public; people will stare at you.
-30-
Saturday, January 28, 2023
Corporal Karamazov Flies Home from the War - poem
Lawrence Hall
Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Logosophiamag.com
Hellopoetry.com
Fellowshipandfairydust.com
Corporal
Karamazov Flies Home from the War
“Which war?”
“Your war – there’s always a war.”
Every young reader sees Alyosha in himself
A sensitive mystic, misunderstood by most
Questing for an answer to a question unasked
Politely shown the door by Father Zosima
As Old Karamazov? Impossible
53 is an age of antiquity
As Dimitri, Ivan, and Smerdyakov?
They are unable to sort out themselves
Lost in thought in a contract airline seat:
A 22-year-old just two days off the line
A patriarchal colonialist ideologue
Friday, January 27, 2023
Memphian Lamentation
Lawrence Hall
Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Logosophiamag.com
Hellopoetry.com
Fellowshipandfairydust.com
Memphian Lamentation
Let us not point to the blood in the street
As if the murder were somebody else’s fault
As if the narrative belonged on a screen
As if we can be healed with a channel change
Let us instead look within our fatal selves
With every resentment validating the Fall of Man
With every snub murdering Abel again
With every lie sentencing Christ to death
Let us not point to the blood in the street:
A Student Does Not Repose in a Passive State of Being - poem
Lawrence Hall
Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Logosophiamag.com
Hellopoetry.com
Fellowshipandfairydust.com
A Student Does Not Repose
in a Passive State of Being
A student is not in a passive state of being
But is rather a soul-probing projectile
Penetrating the wisdom of centuries
And coming out on the other side
Still curious, but a meteor now
Thursday, January 26, 2023
Time is a Falling Leaf (Battery not Included) - poem
Lawrence Hall
Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Logosophiamag.com
Hellopoetry.com
Fellowshipandfairydust.com
Time is a Falling
Leaf (Battery not Included)
A child and a puppy playing on the lawn
Tumbling through soft grass in the bliss of June
We joy in their celebration of life
Everything is new
Except
that it isn’t
An old man and a dog dozing in a chair
Dreaming of their youth in the bliss of June
We joy in their celebration of life
Everything is old
Except
that it isn’t
Time is a falling leaf
Except
that it isn’t
Tuesday, January 24, 2023
Waiting in a Medical Office Parking Lot on a Stormy Day - short poem
Lawrence Hall
Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Logosophiamag.com
Hellopoetry.com
Fellowshipandfairydust.com
Waiting in a Medical
Office Parking Lot on a Stormy Day
Green street signs vibrate in the shifting winds
Oh, gosh, lady, hang on to that little child!
“If this van is rockin’ don’t come a-knockin’”
Okay, but a shiny new Subaru?
Monday, January 23, 2023
Happy Nonsense Rhymes for V.B.
Lawrence Hall
Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Logosophiamag.com
Hellopoetry.com
Fellowshipandfairydust.com
Happy Nonsense Rhymes
for V.B.
From an exchange of rhymes on Hellopoetry.com
A tuppence for your hopes and dreams
A florin for flowers for your hair
A sixpence for some seven sunbeams
A half-crown for a comfy fireside chair
Irresponsible Men with Firearms - weekly column 1.22.2023
Lawrence Hall, HSG
And for What?
In
the midst of a world of light and love, of song and feast and dance, he [Satan]
could find nothing more interesting to think of than his own prestige.
-C. S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost, p. 96
Many cultures follow the lunar calendar rather than the
solar, which is interesting and enlightening. In Viet-Nam the lunar new year is
called Tet Nguyen Dan, which means the first day of the new year. Tet is not
only the new lunar year for Vietnamese, it is also the first day of spring and
everyone’s birthday (Tet Holiday: The Age-Old Tradition Explained | Vietcetera).
Good fun for everyone as another strengthening strand in our national tapestry.
Not all who observe the lunar year do so in exactly the
same way, but it is always an occasion for merriment and gratitude.
Unfortunately, there are those who resent parties and
feasts and dances and cookouts and families and friends simply sitting outside on
a summer night talking or playing dominos while the rug-rats chase lightnin’
bugs across the lawn. Each happy custom or tradition, a “ceremony of innocence,”
as Yeats would say, arouses in some unhappy souls resentment instead of joy.
Last weekend a man unhappy with his life chose to take a pistol
and destroy the lives and hopes of innocent people who were dancing the old
year out and the new year in. To paraphrase Lewis, on an evening of light,
love, song, feast, and dance which he could have joined this man focused only
on his own self-pity.
We can’t really know what was in his mind, but we know the
man got angry – okay, let’s make that down-home plain – a man got mad. He left
home with a gun to take his mad out on people. We need to learn the lesson - that
can never end well for anyone. He killed and hurt innocent folks just because
he was mad at… Mad at what? And then he ended
his own life slumped over the steering wheel of a van in a parking lot.
That’s no way to live.
That’s no way to die.
-30-
Friday, January 20, 2023
A Field Guide to Fields - poem
Lawrence Hall
Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Logosophiamag.com
Hellopoetry.com
Fellowshipandfairydust.com
A Field Guide to Fields
Watermelons, sunflowers, field corn, sweet corn
Sweet potatoes, green peas, butterbeans, squash
Cabbages, purplehulls, lettuces in rows
And across the fence, red clover in glorious clouds
But the most glorious field is in midsummer hay
Green-dancing beneath the benevolent sun
Crosstracked by beagles, terrapins, foxes, and rabbits
And little boys off to the fishing hole
Those little paths across farm fields, you know
Lead to happy memories of the long-ago
Thursday, January 19, 2023
An Amazon Driver with Skull Earrings - poem
Lawrence Hall
Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Logosophiamag.com
Hellopoetry.com
Fellowshipandfairydust.com
An Amazon Driver with
Skull Earrings
No, of course he’s not an Amazon; he’s a man
Navigating a big ol’ delivery truck through life
Ferrying to addresses this side of the Styx
Brown pasteboard boxes and white plastic envelopes
I wanted to ask him about his goal in life
But he was in a hurry to turn around
And continue his rowing, so I thanked him
And he thanked me, and I don’t know his dream
A man with skull earrings and muscled arms -
I hope he’s steering toward a happier shore
Sunday, January 15, 2023
When the Farmer's Daughter was Late for School - poem
Lawrence Hall
Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Logosophiamag.com
Hellopoetry.com
Fellowshipandfairydust.com
When the Farmer’s
Daughter was Late for School
She was a petite and delicate child
And studious, her work among the best
Beloved of her classmates for her demeanor mild
And all of us who knew her felt ourselves blessed
One day she was late, which had never happened before
There was ‘flu going ‘round – had she caught a chill?
Breathlessly she appeared at the classroom door
I was worried, and asked if she were ill
She smiled most sweetly, and shook her curly head:
“We been busy castratin’ hawgs,” she said
Saturday, January 14, 2023
The Axis of Petulance
Lawrence Hall
Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Logosophiamag.com
Hellopoetry.com
Fellowshipandfairydust.com
The Axis of
Petulance
The North Pole and the South Pole refused to speak –
They accused each other of being polarizing
Friday, January 13, 2023
A Village for Our Exile - poem
Lawrence Hall
Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Logosophiamag.com
Hellopoetry.com
Fellowshipandfairydust.com
A Village for Our
Exile
Far is that City of God for which we hope
Here the cities of man in which we live
Glorious, but still only refugee camps:
Constantinople, Athens, London, Rome
Give us for our exile a village instead
A pub, a library, a shop, a little
school
Cows and sheep grazing on the grass
of the commons
A hay wain lumbering through the summer stream
Draught horses drinking from the little rill
In the ford below the slow-clacking mill
(Cf. John Constable, “The Hay
Wain”)
Wednesday, January 11, 2023
Subverting Poetic Convention - poem (maybe subversive...)
Lawrence Hall
Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Logosophiamag.com
Hellopoetry.com
Fellowshipandfairydust.com
Subverting Poetic Convention
Given that
the convention
Is to subvert
convention
Then to
subvert convention
Is to follow
convention
Or we could craft
poetry
With honesty
and wit
And as for
convention
Give not a
thought to it
Tuesday, January 10, 2023
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Moderated Commentator - doggerel
Lawrence Hall
Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Logosophiamag.com
Hellopoetry.com
Fellowshipandfairydust.com
Sinners in the Hands
of an Angry Moderated Commentator
How comforting to know that at the end of this plod
Despite each fault and flaw and fall and fail
We will be judged by our loving God
And not by the readers of the Daily Mail
(Cf. “Sinners in the Hands of
an Angry God,” Jonathan Edwards)
Sunday, January 8, 2023
Raymond Massey in a Funny Hate - weekly column 8 January 2023
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Raymond Massey in a
Funny Hat
Recently I was a bit under the weather and so was confined
to quarters.
I don’t know why we say “under the weather”; we all live
with weather. We can’t be under or over or beside the weather; the weather
simply is.
Anyway, while I was under the same weather as everyone else and
serving as a warm pillow for the dachshunds I found myself idling before the
Orwellian telescreen and marveling at the images and sounds.
I hadn’t watched Rawhide since I was a rug-rat and
was happy to ride again with Mr. Favor, Rowdy, Wishbone, and all the lads
herding sophomores to Sedalia, Missouri.
Rawhide was one of the most popular television shows
from 1959 to 1965, and with its quality production values and writing attracted
some of the best American and international actors as guest stars.
We remember Frankie Laine’s full-voiced, high-octane, yee-haw
rendering of the theme song but tend to forget that the music for the series
was written by Dimitri Zinovievich Tiomkin. Tiomkin was either Ukrainian or
Russian, depending on contemporary politics and borders, and wrote the music
for a generation of Hollywood films, including many for John Wayne.
Wagon Train, 1957 - 1965, in many ways parallels Rawhide
as a pilgrimage or quest featuring a solid core cast and a brilliant series of
guest stars.
One of the stranger Wagon
Train episodes, Princess of a Lost Tribe, has scout Flint McCullough
(Robert Horton) encounter a lost tribe of Aztecs and the requisite beautiful
princess on a mysterious mountain. Montezuma IX (Raymond Massey in a funny hat)
is a descendant of Montezuma and he and Flint have several clunky discussions
on the nature of faith and sacrifice. The dialogue is groan-worthy, but Massey
and Horton manage to keep straight faces throughout.
In the end Flint wins the
princess’s heart but some bad Aztecs rip it out as a sacrifice to the gods
after killing the good Montezuma. Flint escapes down the mountain mourning the
most beautiful woman he has ever known.
Now all of this sounds silly and cheesy
and impossible, like a lesser Edgar Rice Burroughs story or a Star Trek
episode, and it is. One simply accepts it as a yarn.
But then for something truly silly
and cheesy and impossible on television, there was the House of
Representatives.
-30-
Saturday, January 7, 2023
An Accident in the Scriptorium - doggerel
Lawrence Hall
An Accident in the
Scriptorium
One of the monks fainted, and bruised his head;
“This copier is broken,” Brother Armarian said
Wednesday, January 4, 2023
The Machine Pauses (and then Restarts) - Three Days in ICU
Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
The Machine Pauses (and
then Restarts)
Within a Dark-Lit Egg
Mechanical Air
Mechanical Light
Electronic Beepings
Procrustes is a Short, Bitter Man Who Doesn’t Like Anyone
Mechanical Air
On the day Papa Benedict died
I lived
And so prayed with him
As the electronics beeped in the new year
Mechanical Light
A crucifix on the wall faded away
And gas was silent in a tube
And when the haze was gone
The crucifix was still there
Electronic Beepings
BeepBEEPBEEPBLEEP beep beep
beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep
I turned to my wristwatch
But it was dead
Procrustes is a Short, Bitter Man Who Doesn’t Like Anyone
Tubes in both arms, and arms must not be bent
Hard plastic bubbles beneath
weary sheets
A plastic paddle of obscure call
buttons
There is no time within no time
All made better
Heilige Elisabeth von Thuringen
And those who serve with her
Quiet voices beyond the door, beside the bed
Soft footfalls hastening to come to us
With baskets from the Lord’s table
(Cf. The Machine Stops,
E.M. Forster)
Wednesday, December 21, 2022
We Haven't Had to Bury Anyone in the Garden - poem
Lawrence Hall
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
We Haven’t Had to Bury Anyone in the Garden
Hands shivering while
insulating the pipes
Extra cover and food for
the animals
Antifreeze for the car;
are the neighbors okay
Some of the store shelves
are empty, but we’ll make do
We have a generator if the
power fails
And lots of wood for the
stove in the den
A good camp stove and a
coffee pot
A roof over our heads and intact
walls
Because we’re on this side
of the ocean
No gunfire, air-raid
warnings, or bombs
Monday, December 19, 2022
A Komboskini for Christmas - short poem
Lawrence Hall
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim’s Journal of Life, Literature
and Love
Fellowship & Fairydust
(fellowshipandfairydust.com)
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
A Komboskini for
Christmas
For Christmas I gave my
friend a komboskini
The seller said it was
made on Mount Athos
Though I in my modern
cynicism suggested Shanghai
But I might have been wrong
Sunday, December 18, 2022
And This the Happy Morn - weekly column 18 December 2022
Lawrence Hall, HSG
And This the Happy
Morn
This is the month,
and this the happy morn,
Wherein
the Son of Heav'n's eternal King,
Of wedded Maid, and
Virgin Mother born,
Our
great redemption from above did bring
-From
“On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity,” John Milton
The Bee Lady and her helper visited the other day, bringing
jars of honey to help us celebrate Advent, Christmas, and breakfast. We host some
of her hives, and it is a joy to see those bees working the seasons of
flowering plants and trees and sipping from the pools of fresh water we keep
for them. Bees are essential for our lives, for without their industry in
pollinating crops we would not eat. Flowers and honey are a happy bonus.
No one has yet messed up Advent (aka “The Christmas Season,”
which it is not), and so we are spared Advent sales and Advent gifts and Advent
movies and news stories babbling about The True Meaning of Advent. Advent is a
season that points to the Nativity, not to itself.
But this liturgical season of quiet anticipation is blessed
with quiet joys anyway: gifts of local honey, for instance, and folks sending
each other homemade cookies and homemade pies and homemade rum cake. A neighbor
gave us a bundle of lightered-pine kindling, now relatively rare. I’m not going
to start a fire with it anytime soon; simply to smell the scent, the East Texas
incense of lightered-pine is to be taken back to childhood on the farm.
Advent and Christmas are seasons in the liturgical calendar,
of course, but culturally they are also seasons of remembrance. This part can
go wrong because of the unreasonable expectations in our cargo-cult
sub-culture. Things are nice (I’m open to a Rolex, a Leica, and a new car,
okay?), but as an old saying goes, God is not at the end going to ask any of us
how much our car cost. I’m a
sentimentalist – I think that years from now a man or woman will remember
happily a childhood doll, train, Christmas dress, fire truck, or first purse
much more than expensive, look-at-how-much-I-spent, battery-powered gimcrackery
that was outdated even as it was manufactured.
I have such a happy Christmas remembrance of my Uncle Bob
giving us boys lengths of small, kid-size rope which he had worked into real
cowboy lassos. I was never good at lassoing anything other than fence posts and
my father’s deer-dog (and I got into trouble for that), but that bit of hand-worked
line is the sort of memory that stays with a man in a way that expensive,
plastic, made-in-Shanghai landfill cannot.
And then there was Aunt Lola’s divinity candy. And
Grandmama’s teacakes. And a Christmas tree from our own patch of woods. Bing
Crosby on the pickup truck radio. The Rug-Rat playing with her new Barbie in a
sunlit window. Sigh.
As Mr. Milton says, the center of Christmas is “the happy
morn,” but all the other joys are wonderful too.
Merry Christmas.
-30-
Friday, December 16, 2022
Here May You See the Tyrant - poem
Lawrence Hall
Here May You See the Tyrant
And live to be the show and gaze o’ th’ time.
We’ll have thee, as our rarer monsters are,
Painted upon a pole, and underwrit
“Here may you see the tyrant.”
-Macbeth V.viii.28-31
Once upon a time he strutted across
the stage
Peering into a cauldron
presented to him
And stirring it about for a
viler taste
Soul-sickness for sale from a
poisoned chalice
But now he lurks in his dime-store
Dunsinane
Conjuring magic baubles that
do not exist
Comic-book ikons of himself for
sale
To sucker the intellectually
innocent
He cannot admit that his life was a lie
A non-fungible token to its end
Thursday, December 15, 2022
Children Following the Star on Christmas Eve - poem
Lawrence Hall
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim’s Journal of Life, Literature
and Love
Fellowship & Fairydust
(fellowshipandfairydust.com)
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Children Following the Star
on Christmas Eve
For Jack and Cate
Who aren’t exactly children now
Except to us old folks who love them
Good children dress warmly to watch for
the star
The star of Bethlehem, the shepherds’
star
The star of the magi, true-guiding star
And more than all of these, the
children’s star
If children fall asleep during the royal
night
It is fitting and just; they wait for the
Light -
The star has led them in its arcing
flight
To worship God in Christmas’ ancient rite
Then home to a late supper, and so to
their beds -
The Infant Jesus blesses our dear little sleepyheads!
Wednesday, December 14, 2022
A London That Never Was - poem
Lawrence Hall
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim’s Journal of Life, Literature
and Love
Fellowship & Fairydust
(fellowshipandfairydust.com)
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
A London That Never Was
The London of Boswell
never truly was
And yet it is the truest London
of all:
Coffee at The Turk’s Head,
beer at The Mitre
Not much minding either
bishops or Turks
A pipe and a pint with
Johnson and the greats:
Oliver Goldsmith, Reynolds
and Garrick
Hester Thrale, and
Boswell, of course
Books and papers and arguments
and poems
If we are going to visit London
someday
We had better visit
Boswell and Johnson first
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