Woods Spider at Dusk - MePhone Photograph

The larger spider is about the size of an adult human's hand.  The next morning there were more small spiders, presumably the larger spider's offspring.

The Congress of Vienna Sausage - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

The Congress of Vienna Sausage

How strange to find that we are Metternichs
Among a scape of crumbling institutions
Of cracked and weedy streets, with last night’s screams
Souring in the searing, soulless midday sun

Our dreams deferred, our works falling apart
The processes of being that seemed resolved
Now knotted and tangled beyond all knowing
Our spiritual compasses pointing back at us

But we are here, with shovels, buckets, and brooms,
Lifting the CAUTION tapes, and cleaning up

Again




https://www.historytoday.com/archive/what-was-congress-vienna
https://www.britannica.com/event/Congress-of-Vienna
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-hccc-worldhistory2/chapter/the-congress-of-vienna/

The Centimetre-Worm - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

The Centimetre-Worm

On a summer day

While harvesting the first sunflower seeds
I felt the shyest tickle on my arm
As if the smallest creature in the world
Wanted me to pay attention to it

And it was so – a centimetre-worm
Whose dream was to be an inchworm someday
Arching its little green self in a dance
Of nature: “Look at me too!” was its theme

And when its adagio was complete

I politely bowed the worm-in-training
Stage right onto a refreshing tomato leaf

On a summer day

In Honor of Hagia Sophia - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogsport.com

In Honor of Hagia Sophia

From A Liturgy for the Emperor

Our eternal Constantinople is
Never to be lost, never defeated:
In every Christian flows Dragases' blood
Every village is the Holy City
Every church is Hagia Sophia
Every prayer is a Mass for the Emperor
Every children's foot-race the Hippodrome
Every poor family's poor supper
A banquet under the Red-Apple Tree -
Constantinople lives, now and forever

A Cup of Morning 'Possum - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

A Cup of Morning ‘Possum

Or

The Great ‘Possum Invasion of 2020

A morning best begins with a cuppa joe
(insert an appropriate ad jingle here)
That first reflective cup of optimism
Given us by our beneficent God

But first I must take the nightly ‘possum away
Far into the woods, away from my tomatoes
The trap set every evening, and sprung every night
‘Possums day after ‘possum day, oh, yay

And so

The garden is at peace, the coffee is hot
The dachshunds are happy, the ‘possum is not

Another cup?



Note: Opossums / ‘possums are beneficent animals in so many ways (https://www.littlethings.com/possum-facts/) and should never be harmed, but if they find your garden vegetables delicious they (the ‘possums, not the vegetables) can be gently repatriated to the wild by way of any of the many types of no-pain, no-kill live-traps. After gardening season I trap them only to put them on the other side of the fence in order to keep them save from the dogs.

Your Job is Essential - Weekly Column

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Your Job is Essential

Some say this is the age of the coronavirus (or whatever the deadly infection is being called this week). Perhaps it is, but more than that this is the age of incoherence. No one agrees on what the killer virus is, where it came from, whether it is a perturbation in nature (Macbeth 5:1), an accident of research, or a malevolent plot. No one agrees on masks or not masks, isolation or congregation, work or no work, medical ventilators or not, treatments, schemes, dubious medicines (Macbeth IV:I), numbers of deaths, or the utility of borders (Richard II II:1)

But there is one thing that is, as Shakespeare said, as constant as the northern star (Julius Caesar III.1): your job is essential.

An economy can no more shut down than a state – if it does, it dies. People will die. A parent does not shut down his or her family: “Sorry, kids, no more eating, no more breathing – just shut down. No complaints, please; just die quietly.”

Water does not come from a tap, electricity does not come from a little box in the wall, and food does not come from the store. All goods and services are based on the physical and intellectual endeavors of human beings. The sequencing of water from an undependable and unclean state of nature requires smart, industrious human beings to drill wells, build dams, establish reservoirs, construct pipelines, devise water pumps and tanks, analyze and clean and purify water, and develop a system of maintenance.

Farming and the delivery of clean, nutritious, edible food requires a complexity of physical and intellectual endeavor possible only with a highly developed and thus orderly civilization.

Every bit of honest work contributes to life, to humanity, to civilization: farming, welding, building trucks, driving railway trains, flying planes, delivering the mail, changing the baby, planting a garden, sacking groceries, filling prescriptions, cleaning the ditches for drainage and mosquito abatement, roofing the house, waiting tables, clearing foliage from power lines, building a fence, herding cattle, selling shirts, changing the oil, washing clothes, taking a grandchild fishing, buying, learning, selling, reading, writing, calculating tree volume with a Biltmore stick just as your vocational agriculture or math teacher taught you – all these endeavors feed, clothe, and shelter us now and help carry civilization from one generation to the next.

The Book of Genesis is clear that we humans must work the gifts given us, and that whatever God’s purposes for us, lounging in front of glowing screens and indulging in passive entertainments are not part of them. The Garden is there, yes, but if we don’t turn to and bear a hand, there’ll be nothing to eat.

I don’t have any solutions for the whatevervirus and the current discontents (wear your mask and maintain good hygiene and distance, though), but keeping people from working will – will – make things worse, not only for individual families who will lose their homes and their livelihoods, but for all of humanity. Categorizing any honest labor as nonessential is uncivilized.

Your job is essential.

          Sir, I am a true labourer: I earn that I eat, get that I wear, owe no man hate, envy no man’s   
          happiness, glad of other men’s good, content with my harm, and the greatest of my pride is to
          see my ewes graze and my lambs suck.

-Corin, As You Like It III.ii

-30-

The Last Supper via Zoon - unsourced humor

I regret that I don't know the source of this excellent wheeze. If someone does know, please send the information so that I can give credit. Cheers!

Doctrine of Left-Handed Signatures - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Doctrine of Left-Handed Signatures

For each its purpose every plant is signed
Embedded by the Maker with intents
In willing service to Creation, then
Maybe we shouldn’t tell them how to live

Because if we humans are signed for plants
Embedded by the Maker with intents
In willing service to Creation, then
Maybe they shouldn’t tell us how to live

Dragging hoses for them, weeding for them,
Buying fertilizer – so who’s the boss?


(This is a bit of fun in homage to fictional Sergeant Hathaway in an Inspector Lewis episode, The Soul of Genius.)

Mushroom in a Pot of Mint - MePhone Photograph

Inactive Shooter - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Inactive Shooters

If only there were inactive shooters
And inactive shooting situations -
Cafes where nothing much is going on
And we forget to learn where the exits are

Terrorists too lazy to lock ‘n’ load
Bigots rising up only for another beer
Ku Klux Klankers taking a laundry day
Mad bombers playing barefoot among the flowers

A parking ticket making the front page -
If only there were inactive shooters




Previously published in a vanity anthology, Don't Forget Your Shoes and Grapes, available on Amazon as an e-book and as fragments of dead tree.

The Platonic Tree - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

The Platonic Tree

(If Plato had considered a tree instead of a cave)

cf. Republic, Book VII

For a little child a tree is forever
It is as it was, and will always be
In a dreamy stasis beyond all time
True sunlight flickering pale shadows away

A tree is not a transient republic -
It is a monarchy, and crowned with green
For a royal fellowship ordained by God
This Summer Palace of princes and princesses

As royal children they rule over toys and dolls
Lizards and bees and beetles, dogs and cats
And little chameleons who sometimes pause
To count the coins in their pink moneybags

The ceremonies of ladies and their knights
Are properly observed beneath fair leaves
Upheld by arches and pendentives of oak
Through which sunbeams and magic daydreams fly

And when sweet summer’s children are quite old
Reduced to servitude in paying bills
And answering irrelevant messages
On shrilling importunate telephones:

They will cradle their cave-shadowy ‘phones

And remember that

For a little child a tree is forever

As St. Benedict Did Not Say: Work, Study, Prayer, and a Mask - MePhone Photograph

Sunday-Go-To-Meeting' Mask - Doggerel

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Sunday-Go-To-Meetin’ Mask

Our faces adorned in baptismal white
We carefully approach the Altar of God
Touching each pew because the mask-y blight
Befogs one’s spectacles - awkward and odd

Because his eyeglasses are but a smear
Each obstacle thus is undetectable
The worshipper indeed approaches in fear
Each confusing visual dialectical

And then…

He falls in clumsiness undelectable
And makes himself an unholy spectacle!

Logging, July 2020 - MePhone Photograph

The Good, the True, the Beautiful, and the Assistant Principal - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

The Good, the True, the Beautiful, and the Assistant Principal

(Well, three out of four, eh?)

For David Pitts,

Who Honors his Students

Of math the assistant principal spoke:
The elegance of a geometric proof
When it brightens the mind, the eye the sky
Completing a song of the universe

Of poetry a teacher rattled on:
The elegance of rhythmic verse that tells
Of dancing stars and dreaming mists and life
Completing a song of the seasons of man

Because

All learning is not only right and dutiful
It is a matter of
                           The Good, the True, and the Beautiful

Veterans Drinking Coffee at the Angkor Wat Happy Doughnut Shop on the Fourth of July - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Veterans Drinking Coffee at the Angkor Wat Happy Doughnut Shop

on the Fourth of July

Everything else was closed, so here we are
At the next table three textbooks are spread:
Physics, Algebra II, and Calculus
The owner’s kid, wiping counters today

Come-from-away children cook and clean, sweep floors
And in between their chores are at their books
The native-born are still abed, asleep
In a smart-phone hangover of lethargy

Last night a man rattled on about glory
He wasn’t with us on the Vam Co Tay

Isolated from the Book Shop for Four Months - poetry

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

Isolated from the Book Shop for Four Months

But maybe not much longer…

A Barnes & Noble is a happy place
Where my book budget goes to lose itself
In the poetry section first, and then
To the music by way of the magazines

A Barnes & Noble is that happy place
Where my weary soul goes to find itself –
And that errant budget – among the shelves
Of civilization in a quiet room

Then coffee and croissants (and a six-foot space!)
Yes, Barnes & Noble is my happy place

"Your Call is Important to Us" - weekly column

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

“Your Call is Important to Us”

In the garden of my electronic dreams:

1. Electronics manufacturers and service providers would build better stuff and hire more skilled people to make the gadgets work and the electrons flow instead of hiring script-readers who take an hour of the customer’s time to explain in vague terms why nothing is working and somehow infer that it's your fault for not knowing a superheterodyne bus bar from the Tiki Bar, but, hey, “Your call is important to us.”

2. The FCC and the FTC would DO THEIR JOBS about sneaky offshore billing, foreign and domestic scams, tricky contracts, and corporate bullying of the vulnerable.

3. “Tiffany” and “Brian” at customer service would be honest about what their names really are and what country they are calling from, and that they are working at a ‘phone bank for rotten wages because they were never able to pass freshman English.

4. Any service provider saying “Your call is important to us” would not be executed – not for a first offense, that is.

5. Whatever sick, twisted wretch who generated the latest (Famous Brand Name) series of browsers should receive life with only a slim possibility of parole.

6. InterGossip providers would stop LYING about everything.

7. InterGossip service for the rest of us would work as well as it does for rioters.

8. For every minute a customer is on hold he or she receives a dollar off the next bill.

9. Criminals, not police, would have to wear body cams, and if the cameras didn’t work then the U. K. Daily Mail and the electronic mob would presume guilt.

10. There would be no telephone trees (“If you know your extension…”). Just answer the da®ned phone.

11. Every time a customer receives a message saying “All our lines are busy right now…” the president of the company receives a mild electric shock.

12. Customer service representatives would answer the question that was asked, not drift off into an alternative universe.

13. NO ROBOTS (“I’m sorry, I didn’t understand that…”).

14. Every time MicroPlop declares a browser outdated (“heritage” or “legacy”), the customer receives a $500 rebate for the nuisance of having to learn the eccentricities of an unnecessary new dashboard which doesn’t work as well as the old one anyway and which loses all your bookmarks and addresses.

15. Every time a tech company says, “You’re due for an upgrade” instead of “We want to sell you a more expensive ‘phone,” someone gets a spanking.

Bonus: Mark Zuckerberg would be arrested for his haircut, and his barber subpoenaed for testimony.

And, hey, your call is important to us.

-30-

Sometimes We Must Wait - MePhone Photograph

Sunflower Apogee - Haiku

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Sunflower Apogee

The sunflowers droop
And so do we – Midsummer
Is a sleepy time