Plough Monday - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Plough Monday

In my boyhood the fields were real indeed:
The winter soil to be awakened and turned
The manure, mulch, and mould lifted and turned
Wise husbandry’s anticipation of spring

My fields are all metaphorical now:
The winter files to be updated and turned
The documentation lifted and turned
Clerkly, accessibly, from A to Z

The files, the plough, to the long seasons fit
Papers or poop, it’s still long rows of (stuff)

The Know-it-All in the Ticket Line (we all know him well) - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Man and a Woman in the Ticket Line

for the Tudors to Windsors Exhibition at the Museum of Fine Art

“SO LIKE SHE SAID THAT HE SAID THAT SHE SAID
I SAID THAT REDNECKS WERE LIKE THAT YOU KNOW
CAN YOU IMAGINE PEOPLE LIKE THAT HERE
I LIKE TRY TO PERSUADE THEM BUT YOU KNOW

“SO LIKE I SAID THAT AXLE WAS BROKEN
SO LIKE I SAID THAT THE BEST COFFEE IS
SO LIKE I SAID THAT WE LIVED TOGETHER
SO LIKE WE WERE JUST FRIENDS YOU KNOW...”

The man speaks loudly, up and down the hall
The woman, well, she hardly speaks at all

Holbein's Portrait of Saint Thomas More in an Aural Halo of Electronic Pings from Rental Earphones - poem (with pings)

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Holbein’s Portrait of Saint Thomas More

in an Aural Halo of Electronic Pings from Rental Earphones

The (beep) painting (beep) dates (beep, beep) from (beep)
Holbein’s (beep) first (beep) visit (beep) to (beep)
England (beep) oil on oak (beep) a (beep) golden
Tudor (beep) rose (beep) over his heart (beep)

The chain of office his aurea catena
Of faith in God and in his king (beep, beep)
Is (beep) the (beep) paper (beep) in (beep) his
Hands (beep) Averil (beep) Manchin’s (beep) petition?

Saint Thomas seems to look so far away –
Perhaps he sees beyond his martyrdom day



Except for the rhyming couplet I’m having a bit of fun here. The Holbein painting of St. Thomas More is beautiful (beep) in every way, and I am grateful for the opportunity to spend some time before it. The Tudors to Windsors: British Royal Portraits from Holbein to Warhol exhibition is brilliant as is everything the Houston Museum of Fine Arts does: https://www.mfah.org/

Saint Thomas More, ora pro nos

Acadiana in January, and Lunch with Kirk and Uncle Bubby - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Acadiana in January

And lunch with Kirk and Uncle Bubby

Even the birds are staying home today
Those flocks and flights whose accustomed spirals
Make animate the skies are grounded by frost
And leave the waters of the marsh in peace

Young men uniformed in Nomex 1 and beards
Spiral into Hollier’s Cajun Kitchen
From the barges and the maintenance shops,
Cracking units, pipelines and hotshot rigs

They are smart, tough, and strong; they fuel the world
And pose for pictures with the concrete pig 2


1 Nomex is a flame-resistant material developed by DuPont and is worn by workers in many industries, especially petro-chemicals. The man or woman in Nomex keeps our cars, our lights, and our lives functioning.

2 There are in fact two concrete pigs outside Hollier’s (pronounced “O-Yays,” says Uncle Bubby).

"Jose was Dead. So was His Fitness Watch" - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Moleskine is Chinese Now

The Moleskine™© is Chinese now, has been for years
And anyway Hemingway would probably type
Into his electronic personal device:
“Jose was dead. So was his fitness watch.”

Still

There’s rhythm in a pen as in a key
One flows, the other taps, syllables dance
Your thoughts into an opera of life
Performed in a theatre of silent stars

The Moleskine is in your hands now, will be for years
So choreograph your thoughts onto that page

Keep Calm and Field Guide a Field Guide to Field Guides about Field Guides, Only They Aren't - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Keep Calm and Field Guide a Field Guide to Field Guides

about Field Guides, Only They Aren’t

A Field Guide to Awkward Silences
The Norton Field Guide to Writing with Readings
A Field Guide to Secure Wi-Fi
A Field Guide to Asset Forfeiture
A Field Guide to “Fake News”
A Field Guide to Lies
A Field Guide to Antibiotic Stewardship in Outpatient Settings
A Field Guide to the Italian New Right
A Field Guide to Getting Lost
A Field Guide to Ripple Effects Mapping
A Field Guide to Murder and Fly Fishing
A Field Guide to Jerks at Work
A Field Guide to Bad Faith Arguments

And so it field guides, and so it field guides
As dear old Kurt Vonnegut did not say
And what field is the writer talking about?
About the farmer outstanding in his field?

Alas there is no field guide to writing
A title blessedly free of field guide
Which would be a feel-good fieldless guideless
For which humanity would be grateful

About as original as Keep Calm
Keep Calm and Say Something Original
Let the last field guide be Keep Calm about
A Field Guide to Burying Tired Cliches’

Nonessential Canadian and American Poets - a poem about poems, which is seldom a good idea

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Nonessential Canadian and American Poets

The words still flow, even though the grants do not
And an old scribbler’s name can never appear
On a shortlist of emerging young poets
Or on a shortcake from the Wal-Mart bakery

Unless it’s his birthday. No candles, though
“Good ink,” they say, never “Good electrons”
And so the words don’t flow, they just – emerge?
And, anyway, emerging from what, eh?

But still –

We are poets: we work, we serve, we write;
We pray that we help and heal and give delight

Pictures on Your Map of Time - a poem for the new year

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Pictures on Your Map of Time

A new calendar is a map of time
Showing you spaces in which you might live
And setting off the seasons and solemnities
The penances and feasts in order just

Beneath pictures of cafes’ in Water Street
Arctic-wind hiking trails in Ikkarumiklua
A pint of Quidi Vidi in The Gut
And Peter Pan’s statue in Bowring Park

Or maybe

Our Lady of Walsingham
Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe
Notre Dame de La Salette

Or some puppies and kittens!

And may you find your heart’s desires this year

Is Taos Burning? - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Is Taos Burning?

“…inspired by the pinon nut native to the Southwest.”

- label on a coffee packet

Inspired

Apparently real pinon is not to be had,
Not anymore; the coffee is lesser now
Its taste inspired by a chemistry lab
Although the packet looks the same

Inspired

Instead of coffee flavored with pinon
The bean is only – inspired – and what is that?
It pretends that a chemical is from
The mountain pines of far New Mexico

Inspired

I want to go away to old Taos today
Where they make the best coffee at Michael’s Café

Art in Pursuit of Man - Reaction to a Temper Tantrum in a Fashionable Arts Magazine

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Art in Pursuit of Man

Reaction to a Temper Tantrum in a Fashionable Arts Magazine

Art cannot be but in pursuit of man
Whether or not man is in pursuit of art
For men are shifting shoals of shiftlessness
Artistic absolutes that calendar-clique

But art is not defined, not locked in time
Art does not yield her crown in obedience
To yet another Decree 349
To yet another Order of the Day

Art is herself; her names are Sapientia
And Sophia; she creates; she does not obey

The Ikon Corner - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Ikon Corner

“…and looking at a picture on the opposite wall.”

-C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Ikons are windows to another World
Of Theos and Theotokos, of our saints
Some as merry as yet are others stern
While forming from the prayerful writer’s 1 hand

And in the saints the Light of God shines through
True witnesses to that transcendental Truth
And so we pause and with a candle catch
The prayer-light of their eternity

(As does the bedes-spider 2 who lives there)
Ikons are windows to that truer World


1 In Orthodoxy an ikon is said to be written rather than drawn or painted, but y’r ‘umble scrivener is no authority; the reader might begin a study of ikons / icons with:

http://www.pravmir.com/how-to-sep-up-an-icon-corner-at-home/

2 An Orthodox friend discovered that a spider had made its home among his ikons, and so in peace and hierarchical obedience the little creature served God as a sort of canon, or perhaps a bedes-spider, until its death.

The Smart Cave (but with nice curtains) - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Smart Cave

This house is silent now, this new smart house
The storm has downed the power lines; wild rains
Against the windows beat like hungry wolves
And all house gadgetry is silent and still

And just as still: the Barnes & Noble Nook™®
The Ipod™® unsupported, the dead FitBit™®
That failed before its third Christmas day
The La Crosse(tm)® that failed before its second

And dead are all the promises that they gave:
Our silent gadgets in this cold, dark cave

Ramandu's Island - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Ramandu’s Island 1

Long-fallen stars and quarrelling lords must wait
For seasons upon seasons to pass in flight
Seasons, and Feasts upon a Table set
Untasted by sleepers, and winged away

But, exiles, you may taste of mercy here
And you may taste forever of that Feast
If you are not afraid to hear the silence
Where out of time all healing will be given

If you can trust that which you cannot know -
Long-fallen stars and quarrelling lords will wait


1 C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

The Window Frog - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Window Frog

The human and the tree frog say good night
The human inside and the tree frog out
Sharing a pane of glass but little else
For frogs maintain their standards, don’cha know

And sticky pads and frontal lobes don’t mix
Not in polite reptilian society
Since humans, you know, they’re not really green
Nice enough in their place, of course, but still…

Good frogs dismiss the human as a lazy jerk -
For sleeping while all honest creatures work

The Robin's Christmas Dinner - a merriment (a bit rough on the worms, though)

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

The Robin’s Christmas Dinner

(ripped from the pages of the Middle Ages – “Sumer is icumen in”)

Merrily he eats the worms
Pull them from the ground!
Their heads pop up
On them he sups
As they squirm around
Chirp, robin!

The squirrels are eating all the seeds
The cardinal’s head’s a-bobbin’
The doves are cooing
The cows are mooing
Chirp merrily, robin!

Robin, robin
How well you chirp
Now eat the worms and burp!

Burp, burp, burp!


On seeing dozens of robins, a squirrel, a woodpecker, a cardinal, and a dove outside my window on Christmas morning.

But the Animals were First - Poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

But the Animals were First

“We read in Isaiah: ‘The ox knows its owner,

and the ass the master’s crib….’”

-Papa Benedict, The Blessings of Christmas

The ox and ass are in the Stable set
In service divine, as good Isaiah writes
A congregation of God’s creatures met
In honor of their King this Night of nights

And there they wait for us, for we are late
Breathless in the narthex of eternity
A star, a road, a town, an inn, a gate
Have led us to this holy liturgy

Long centuries and seasons pass, and yet
The ox and ass are in the Stable set

For Our Mothers on Christmasd Eve - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

For our Mothers on Christmas Eve

For Katherine Mattie Bevil Blanchette Hall, 1922 – 2010

and all our mothers

Beyond all other nights, on this strange Night,
A strangers’ Star, a silent, seeking Star,
Helps set the wreckage of our souls aright:
It leads us to a stable door ajar

And we are not alone in peeking in:
An ox, an ass, a lamb, some shepherds, too -
Bright Star without; a brighter Light within
We children see the Truth those Wise Men knew

For we are children there in Bethlehem
Soft-shivering in that winter long ago
We watch and listen there, in star-light dim,
In cold Judea, in a soft, soft snow

An Annotated Study in December's Leaf Litter - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

An Annotated Study in December's Leaf Litter

Leaves fallen are summer’s tabernacle
Upon earth as altar, bearing life within
And life without: children, a protesting squirrel
And that storied grasshopper, unprepared

Neither blanket nor carpet, but a studio
Of life, in which cellular structure frames
The secrets of green chloroplastic life
And graphs the sweet, wind-chorused songs of summer

They fall asleep for a time, to awaken in spring:
Leaves fallen are summer’s tabernacle

Sale - Communion Cups, Recyclable, 1000/box, $9.99 - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Sale – Communion Cups, Recyclable, 1000/box, $9.99

The Holy Grail, the Chalice of Our Lord
Borne to Glastonbury, the Isle of Avalon
By the holy man of Arimathea
Then lost, and quested for by noble knights

The Holy Grail is present still, each day
In vessels blessed for sharing Eucharist
Whose Elevation in the Upper Room
Was then, is now, and forever will be

In setting fit, in prayerful accord:
The Holy Grail, the Chalice of Our Lord

Winter Solstice - The Year's Compline - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Winter Solstice – The Year’s Compline

The winter solstice is the year withdrawing
From all the busy-ness of being-ness,
And life in all its transfigurations
Seems lost beyond this cold, mist-haunted world

Time almost stops. Low-orbiting, the sun
Drifts dimly, drably through Orion’s realm
Morning becomes deep dusk; there is no noon
Four candles are the guardians of failing light

Until that Night when they too disappear
Beneath a Star, before a greater Light


Lawrence Hall
Coffee and a Dead Alligator to Go
Available from amazon.com on Kindle and as bits of dead trees