Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Goslings and Quislings
Goslings and Quislings
Die in a reflecting pool
Goslings have no choice
Thursday, July 2, 2026
Goslings and Quislings - haiku
Sunday, June 28, 2026
Who Taught You How to Tie Your Shoes? - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Who Taught You How to Tie Your Shoes?
(a rabbit and a cousin help)
Now when we learn to count our fingers and toes
Learn about laundry hampers and feeding the dog
Eat with a spoon, pick up our toys and clothes
And gently, gently touch the little tree frog
We must then teach another child
To laugh when she counts her fingers and toes
Learn about laundry hampers and feeding the dog
Eat with a spoon, pick up her toys and clothes
And gently, gently touch the little tree frog
Civilization is generational
Pass it on
Saturday, June 27, 2026
Is Life an Open Road or a Blind Alley? - short poem
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
“Is Life an Open Road or a Blind Alley?”
-de Chardin, Pensee
33
You can tell it’s an open road because
Someone has crow-barred the rusty lock and chain
You can tell it’s a blind alley because
Of your dark glasses and your tapped-out white cane
If We are a School of Poetry, Then When is Recess? - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
If We are a School of Poetry, Then When is Recess?
…what we mean to establish is a school for the Lord’s service
-St. Benedict’s prologue to his Rule
1997 English edition, Ampleforth Abbey
When a poet consecrates a poem
(Which is in the nature of what poets do)
And a soul-friend breathes beauty into it
Then they have formed a school of poetry
Which is not a school for the Lord’s service
Except that it is – all this shifting of words
From chaos into meaning and purpose and love
Is a school of life, only without the home-room pledge
(or morning Mass or a chemistry lab)
We write in procession through cloisters of hope
To elevate each other as presentations of truth
Thursday, June 25, 2026
Envision a World Without Mission Statements - rhyming couplet
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Envision a World Without Mission
Statements
Your Thinking has Been
Edited for Time and Format
Let us propose a series of abatements -
Deliver us, O Lord, from mission statements
Wednesday, June 24, 2026
How Big is Our Universe? - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
How Big is Our Universe?
Time goes by – or do we?
- The Once and Future King / Camelot
How big is our universe? How deep? How far?
In youth we learn of planets, orbits, and stars
Of the infinite Great Dance of the Spheres
And God, before forever, Who created all
But meditate upon this pilgrimage -
Will we shrink it into a transient Now
Which with death and dust and ruin and rot
Seems to go away even before the next hour?
Let us stand on this cusp of Creation
And together we will consider the Beyond
Monday, June 22, 2026
Basho's Frog for for Our Time - haiku
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Basho’s Frog for Our Time
An old roadside ditch
A frog leaps into the lane
‘Neath Subaru tires
I suppose I had better apologize to Basho,
his frog, the Japanese people, Subaru, the pretty little tree frog glaring
at me through my bedroom window, and all
lovers of Haiku!
Later: a dear friend reminds me that I have
touched on this topic before:
Flat Frog Floogie
The silent carport
A frog croaks under a tire
Then silence resumes
Pinched from Basho’s
famous pond poem
Music: “Flat Foot
Floogie,” 1938
Saturday, June 20, 2026
A Memorandum of Understanding for Dead Children - short poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
A Memorandum of Understanding
And a Contemplation of the FIFA Peace Prize
The tiny hands of schoolchildren on fire
The tiny hands of schoolchildren sobbing for life
The old men on both sides claiming victory
Over
The ashes of schoolchildren at Shajareh Tayyebeh
The Great Riding Lawnmower Chase - rhyming doggerel
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
The Great Riding Lawnmower Chase
A Song of My People
In the dust beside the highway
Wide ol’ Texas four-lane highway
Ran a fat man in his anger
In his white shorts, in his anger
To another man just like him
Mower-mounted on a lawn
On a John Deere painted green
But this was not a peaceful scene
Like angry Pillsbury Doughboys
Or like dropouts from a Sumo school
They grappled in the roadside dust
In fleshy fury (not in lust)
The mower-man finally thought it best
To steer his steed into the west
Across the highway, a running fight
Dodging traffic in the morning light
The foot-man circled, the mower-man turned
The shrieking brakes of a big truck burned
Combat resumed in the turning lane
Beeps and honks again and again
I never saw the end of this chase
Who won the day, who won the race
Of if by the beginning of the next day’s dawn
Someone had finished mowing that lawn
In this I played with the Longfellow /
Hiawatha meter, which is far more appropriate for serious long poetry, not a short
frivolity. Longfellow sent me a note from the beyond advising me not to do this
again.
Wednesday, June 17, 2026
Mister, Are You Saved? - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Mister, Are You Saved?
She patrolled the sidewalk and yelled at pedestrians:
“You sinners! You’re all a bunch of HELL-ions!”
I couldn’t escape her, so I smiled and waved
“Mister!” she yelled, “Do you think you’re saved!”
“No,” I replied (might as well be specific)
“Oh,” she said, “Then you’re a Catholic.”
I still have her tract, somewhere around here loose
Assuring me
that the Rosary
is actually Satan’s noose
May God bless and protect street evangelists; as for Hegseth and his Reichskirche, well, they can go (bless) themselves.
Primrose-Cat and the Circle of Lunch - couplet
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the
Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine
– A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Primrose-Cat and the Circle of Lunch
Primrose is afraid of bluejays, and wisely so
She enjoys dining on the occasional cardinal, though!
Letters of Transit - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Letters of Transit
Thanks to an idea from Omni and friends,
“Humphrey Bogart Blues,” Hello Poetry
There are always distracting macguffins in life:
A missing cufflink, Chekhov’s rifle, Tintern Abbey
An anonymous message torn in half
Letters of transit signed by General Weygand
But better are the letters of transit she writes:
Coded soul-maps in her sighs
Secret signals in her eyes
Her dreams revealed as this surprise -
The only true letter of transit is
Her love
Monday, June 15, 2026
A Three-Part Educational Case Study - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the
Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine
– A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
A
Three-Part Educational Case Study
1.
I noted that he was ambidextrous
“You can’t call me that; I’m
straight!
I’m gonna tell my daddy what you
said!”
II.
At graduation he asked me to help
him with his tie
A manly handshake; we wished each
other well
He disappeared among the cheap
plastic gowns
III.
Before he was thirty he died of a
heart attack
A Celebration of Freedom and Our Flag - doggerel
Lawrence Hall
A Celebration of Freedom and Our Flag – Gramps’ Champs
“’Cause the flag still stands for freedom”
-Lee Greenwood
Will the Flag Day bloodfest hosted by Gramps
In the name of freedom, with MMA champs
Be broadcast to America’s
concentration camps?
The Boy Who Wasn't There - poem
Lawrence Hall
mhal46184@aol.com
The
Boy Who Wasn’t There
He was tall and dark,
dramatically handsome
I was a little bit afraid of him
In my skinny little freshman way
High school seniors are the
coolest of the cool
And then he wasn’t there except
as whispers
Whisper whisper whisper cancer whisper
whisper
Algebra whisper pep rally whisper
Occasional whispers around an
empty desk
One day
He returned to school on two crutches
and one foot
He was tall and pale, ethereally
handsome
And after that, like a wraith he
disappeared
Sunday, June 14, 2026
The Drum-Song of the Cicada - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
The Drum-Song of the Cicada
The cry of the cicada
Gives us no sign
That presently it will die
- Basho
Cicadas are living drums singing the summer
Self-rattling so fast that the beats become a buzz
A whining buzz that intensifies the midday heat
Through thin-throbbing tympanic hypnotism
Rising and falling, the leaf-borne chorus
In defiance shrills against the peace
The blessed peace of leaves and lawn and sky
That properly belongs to summer days
Even so, summer days, all summer long
Are not complete without the cicada’s song
Saturday, June 13, 2026
A Response to Nat Lipstadt's "We are Transitory" - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the
Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's
Journal of Life, Literature and Love
A
Response to Nat Lipstadt’s “We are Transitory”
“Time goes by – or do we?”
- from Camelot / The Once and Future King
Your poem is forever
You are forever
This waiting room of a world (C.
S. Lewis) – maybe not
Friday, June 12, 2026
You're the Best! - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
You’re the Best!
and love
with hope
our friends
lift up
When we
Then we are doing our proper job today
And knowing you, I am happy to say
You do even better, each bles’sed day
You’re the best
Wednesday, June 10, 2026
Love Must Be Held for Questioning - Senryu
Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's
Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Love Must be Held for Questioning
He felt pity for those…whose love is bounded by the frontier of a nation.
-“The Spiritual Power
of Matter”, Teilhard de Chardin
Bombers cross borders
Easily enough, but love?
Held for questioning
Batter Our Hearts - poem
Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
Batter Our Hearts
“Batter my heart, three-person’d God,” said Donne
And we’ve all of us agreed with that
So now, God
You can stop battering
Really. Stop it. It’s gone on long enough.
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