Who is My Favorite Hero? - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Who is My Favorite Hero?

 

Do you now, or have you ever…

 

Worked double shifts or double jobs to pay the bills

Read to your children instead of yelling at them

Had to jump-start your car in the pre-dawn cold

Jump-started your neighbor’s car in the pre-dawn cold

 

Do you now, or have you ever…

 

Done some hard time in the military

Served in the volunteer fire department

Attended divine services without making a fuss

Milked cows, chopped wood, raised a garden

 

Do you now, or have you ever…

 

Know which end of a hammer hits the nail

Built a home library for your children and yourself

Set a daily study schedule for developing your mind

Raised your children after your spouse bugged out

 

Do you now, or have you ever…

 

Gone to work zero-dark-early and stayed there late

And did more than was expected of you

Taken your children on nature works

Volunteered at your local hospital

 

Of course you have

 

So who is my favorite hero?

 

You are

Stop Running - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Stop Running

 

1 Kings 19

 

Stop searching. Hold still

Rest now under a broom tree

And He will find you

About Your Poem - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

About Your Poem

 

If you send a poem, and only one or two read it

And no one ticks a box or writes a response

Then have you worked a positive good into the world?

Oh, yes!

 

For you have written a verse upon a page

Upon a leaf that sails upon the air

Upon wild solar winds and to the stars

To where

 

A Voice reads it as a love letter to all

Who are so very blessed in knowing you

Macbeth Will Have No Say About It - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Macbeth Will Have No Say About It

 

 

                       Light thickens; and the crow
Makes wing to the rooky wood:
Good things of day begin to droop and drowse

 

-Macbeth III.ii.50-52

 

 

Finishing the chores as the evening light fails

And high above me in the paling blue

Three crows calling out harshly as they soar

Indeed making wing to a rooky wood

 

Good things of day, good animals, in peace

Are safely penned in their barns and byres

And we marvel at god’s kindness in all things

A warm fire, lanternlight, supper, blessings

 

Let us hear nothing of the tyrant’s foul plans

But instead, happy stories, Evensong, then sleep

About NO KINGS DAY - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

About NO KINGS DAY

 

 

“The King’s under the law, for it’s the law that makes him a King.”

 

― C.S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy

 

Thus we need not worry about such a thing

As our proud president wanting to be a king

The Ruby-Throated Grand Scheme of Things - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

 

The Ruby-Throated Grand Scheme of Things

 

The last hummingbird of the season, perhaps,

A tail-end Charlie, this mid-October pilgrim

Stopping a moment at the dollar-store feeder

On El Camino Real to Mexico

 

To what king will this royal messenger report?

His legions of the air and summer flowers

Are gathering in from all over the Americas

To winter in mysterious valleys and hidden fields

 

 

L’envoi:

 

We can’t know where your long journey will end

But God speed you as you fly with the wind, little friend

Dawn Across the Planet - short poem

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Dawn Across the Planet

 

Soon you will be awake for breakfast and tea

A good cup of tea for beginning the day

As the waning Harvest Moon sails west

And you and the sun rise happily in the east

Forgive Me for not Writing Yesterday - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Forgive Me for not Writing Yesterday

 

I was reclined before a bin of farriers’ tools

Ironmongery smithied in shining steel

In a room shaded institutional green

Fluorescent lights, only one door

 

Gadgets clipped to me, needles poked into me

Surely soon would sound the voice of Number Two:

“Information. We want information.”

Thinking of pain, then poetry, then you

 

But having a dying tooth extracted

Does not lend itself to metre or rhyme!

She Thinks My Tractor's Schleppy - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

She Thinks My Tractor’s Schleppy

 

Anyone who can hear “She thinks my tractor’s sexy”

With a teary eye of sentimentality

For a lost golden age of rural life

 

Da*ned sure didn't grow up on a farm

 

 

 

Cf. Kenny Chesney, “She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy,” lyrics by Jim Collins and Paul Overstreet.

Kind Hearts are More Than Coronets - rhyming doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

“Kind Hearts are More than Coronets”

 

Tennyson – “Lady Clare Vere de Vere”

 

But coronets will get you set

In better seats at Goodwood, you bet

(Doesn't everyone read Tennyson on Sunday afternoon?)

Saint Vincent Ferrer and I Go Fishing in a Toilet Tank - weak doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Saint Vincent Ferrer and I Go Fishing in a Toilet Tank

 

 

And the master-salesman asked of him and me:

Is the flapper-valve, yea, verily, two inches or three?

 

-not exactly according to Ultimate Guide: Plumbing, Creative Homeowner, 2021

 

 

Toilet bowls are fascinating to dogs and cats

Like watering holes on the Serengeti plains

Their cousins hunt among the desert flats

In the seasons between sweet nourishing rains

 

Strange noises in the dark…

 

But when the water gushes both day and night

St. Vincent and I must pray and think and work

To work this ceramic water-hole aright

For Luna and Pushkin to hunt and lurk

 

The animals watch impatiently…

 

Our labors at last are proven to be blest

As water flows like a smooth anapest!

A Sidewalk Table at Pouline's - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

A Sidewalk Table at Pouline’s

 

V: Monsieur…

 

R:                     Oui?

 

V:                              Your life has no meaning

 

Please let it have no meaning somewhere else

 

R: But my coffee, my croissant…

 

V:                                                    Oui, you have paid

 

And have left the perfect tip. The afternoon

 

Is slow and there are certainly plenty of tables

 

Your appearance and demeanor are parfait but…”

 

R: Oui?

 

V:             You have sat here ten minutes into the time

 

At which you commenced to appear desperate.

 

R: But how?

 

V:                If you must ask then you are desperate

You have not been accepted into the mysteries

And never can be. You have been caught out

Please dispose of your Mont Blanc pen

 

Your embossed note cards, your important papers,

And your leather portfolio crafted in understated elegance,

And go deliver groceries or wash cars.

 

R: Does it really show?

 

V:                It’s as if you

Were taking a selfie

At Shakespeare & Co

 

R: Then all is existential despair

 

V:                Oui, former monsieur

Tell Me About Your Day - poem

  

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Tell Me About Your Day

 

The evening air is cool – let’s sit outside in the dusk

Tell me about your day, your work, your friends

I like your friends; they write such lovely verse -

Nothing as nearly good as yours, of course!

 

The evening air is cool

 

I enjoyed breakfast with my friends, our weekly outing

We talked of our children and our hopes for them

Later I worked at chores in the garden and house

And read new lines from my favorite poet

 

The evening air is cool

 

I so enjoy talking with you – do I talk too much?

Too little? Just right? You are such fun to listen to!

 

And the evening air is just right

So I Got to Pike's Peak... - short poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Some Adventure!

 

I saw the sunrise glory of Pike’s Peak

From the window of a car, for I was weak –

While morning freed the mountain from fog and gloom

I mostly saw the fluorescents in the emergency room!

 

(Many thanks to Dr. Lam and the other kind and considerate professionals, including the helpful security guard, at UC Memorial Hospital in Colorado Springs)

Your Heart as a Tabernacle - short poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Your Heart as a Tabernacle

 

From an idea by Blue Sapphire

 

The heart is a tabernacle upon the Altar

Within it reposes our hopes and dreams

We open it as sacrament, as sacrifice

A gift that in the end is given back to us

Lady Macbeth and a Luna Moth - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Lady Macbeth and a Luna Moth

 

A luna moth is elegant in her green

Like Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth

Beautiful and yet somehow sinister

Those wing’ed eyes – they seem to look at us

 

Eyes

 

That measure us for a dagger or a cup

She clings to a lichened brick wall at night

Wings pulsing against that wall, waiting, waiting…

Suddenly wild flutterings as she flees into the dark!

 

Exit, pursued by a cat

Jesus and a Reference to Fowler's Modern English Usage - doggerel

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Jesus and a Reference to Fowler’s Modern English Usage

 

“But who do you say that I am?”

 

“Whom!” boomed a voice from the back of the room

 

And St. Peter asked of him

 

“A community college graduate, I presume?”

(This is from an old joke by C. S. Lewis or in a book about him: "'Whom,' he said, for he had been to night school.")

I am not God - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

I am not God

 

About final judgement

Just give it a rest -

God does salvation

We do our best

An Unhappy O. Henry Ending - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

An Unhappy O. Henry Ending

 

His picture is on the telescreen tonight

Stepping onto a twin-engine executive jet

Then posed in an easy-street seat in the back

Uniformed crew, someone to bring him a snack

 

The same smug grin he had when he dropped out of school

“I’m tired of this nowhere town,” he sneered

“I’m gonna go somewhere and get me a life;

I don’t need you or any of this mess”

 

And life is what he got, and a suit in orange

And a free ride home to his nowhere town

For my Mother's Funeral - couplet

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

For my Mother’s Funeral

 

For my mother’s funeral

I did not sell souvenir tees