Cheaply manufactured in India
Its fake marbled cover fakier than ever
But not as fakey as this assignment
“Grendl symbolizes existential…”

Cross out cross out crossoutcrossoutcrossout

“Grendl symbolizes…” my senior year
Nobody understands why I don’t want
To go to college, why I quit the band -
Grendl and I are both exiles, okay…?

Cross out cross out crossoutcrossoutcrossout

I love my fountain pen; its deep, dark lines

Just like me

Refuse to be MLA marginalized

“Grendl symbolizes…”

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                                A Deer and I Surprised Each Other

Silence
We paused
We looked
She leaped

I said
Goodbye
But she
Was gone

And I
Was left
There all
Alone!

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

                           A Desk Blotter and the Meanings of Life

Optometrist 17 March 0845 Netgear DirecTV Viasat Verizon Spectrum Xumo? Xuumo? Carlos 1775 1812 PSA Eliot Cohen BRING PLANTS UNDER COVER computer paper brekker c Max 0800 Tuesday find quote from Doctor Zhivago When is Gonculator Day? Intek 10.5 “Did civilians write poetry back in the day?” Subaru password username amazon apple Christus patient portal HUMMINGBIRDS! Astrid-the-Wonder-Dachshund visitation Sat 5-7 funeral Sun 2 1030 St. Elizabeth’s Refresh+ or Lumify water co-op board meeting Kirk Santiago de Compostella breakfast singles orange juice cheese creamer cat food detergent pods taco shells 0900 dentist Epiphany prison at 1700 cancel DirecTV cancel Viasat Mary Oliver OXFORD BOOK OF ENGLISH VERSE Q EDITION LONESOME DOVE as DIGENES AKRITAS life is the meaning of what? Jaw-dropping breaking silence breaking cover breaking bombshells shocking bombshells the shell of a bomb the Alien and Sedition Acts and Frodo

Nazis wear ball caps

The building has left Elvis

“I do none harm, I say none harm, I think none harm.”

-Thomas More in Robert Bolt’s A Man for all Seasons

And yet how schadenfreude to imagine
The purported Melvin from Mumbai
Tipping the executioner for good service
(To Melvin a concept previously unknown):

          “Be not I understand afraid of your office I need your major    
            credit card and your date of birth you but send me I
            understand to that Limited Offer 30G in the Sky I
            understand.”

Or the executives of ISPs
Their eyes blindfolded with their own insolence
Standing before a new Customer Care Team
Drawn from a list of eager volunteers

Now look upon each techno-high-flyer

And

“Customer Care Team – Ready! Aim! Fire!”

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                           A Discarded Cat

She adopted us several weeks ago
And after the usual hissings and spittings
Was accepted by the other cats
And the yapping dachshunds? Well, not so much

Cinnamon-Cat loves to be petted and fed
She follows me about my daily work
With plants and plots and pots and honeybees
But she doesn’t quite trust me, not yet

But I’ll do my best; you can bet on that
For she is no longer a discarded cat

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                      A Disembodied Hand Doomscrolling
                       on the Wall of Tia Maria’s Barbecue

                                       - not Daniel 5

Tiffany was treatin’ the girls to barbecue
The merry ol’ girls from her bowling league
(Dazzling team colors in pink and blue)
She had made herself captain through cruel intrigue

When suddenly a disembodied hand
Appeared with a smartphone by the restroom door
And keyed strange lines that in flickerings scanned:
“You’ll be sacked this evening - your team’s 0 to 4”

That very night Tiffany’s custom ball was taken
And she cried in her trailer, her heart a-breakin’

A Diva’s Demands

Let be set out a wooden crucifix
Of indifferent and artless workmanship
Upon a table where the lamplight falls
In yellow circles on a book or two,
And sheets of paper and a quirky pen.

Let be set up a surplus Navy bunk
With mattress and blanket, and pillow too,
If Brother Guestmaster has them to hand,
Luxury enough for merciful sleep,
Or combat desperate against fearful dreams.

Let be set into the wall a hook or nail
To serve the office of a wardrobe there,
Burdened with little but perhaps too much:
A decent habit for the liturgies,
A worn-out coat, a hat against the sun.

Let be set into the cell an exile,
A man of no reputation at all,
Unnoticed in the streets, unseen, unknown,
But who delights in anonymity,
Here in this palace in Jerusalem.

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                        A Dixon Ticonderoga #2 Pencil from 1955

Motorized bathroom vents don’t last forever
The workmen pulled down the old one from ‘55
Amid a tumble of old nails and bits of wood:
A Dixon Ticonderoga #2

The yellow paint a little aged now
The green metal ring a little bit dull
The eraser now hardened beyond all use
The point well-sharpened with a pocketknife

What sturdy craftsman from the long ago
Measured out his work - I’d like to know

On a Morning in June – a Doctor Seuss-Free Graduation Poem

The earth is all before me: with a heart
Joyous, nor scar’d at its own liberty,
I look about, and should the guide I chuse
Be nothing better than a wandering cloud,
I cannot miss my way.

- Wordsworth, Prelude, I.15-19

Soon you’ll depart for your own pilgrimage,
Seafaring through the life God has given you,
To the golden Canterbury of your heart,
Along the sunlit road you’ve chosen to walk,
A pilgrimage, perhaps, to Orwell’s dusty room,
Or deep into the mind of Thomas More
Or far-off Saint James of the Field of Stars,
Or sea-passages swift to Denmark’s shores,
Or fields of sonnets singing in the dawn -
All these you’ll find along your pilgrim road.

Take then, your haversack, and neatly pack
Your book, your song, your dream, a change of clothes
(Your dreams are happier when you wear dry socks)
A prayer that your parsoun will write for you
A cup, a bowl, a pocketknife, a pen;
And do take care to pack those useful words
Learned, shaped, and sharpened, polished from your youth:
The baby-sounds for supper, sandwich, cat,
The childhood sounds for play and your best friend,
Then words from Mom and words from books - and words from you.

Words flown by you in dreams like sunlit sails
Then shaped again in pencil or in ink
And flung in hope upon a waiting leaf
Words made by you for honest purposes
And never employed in wicked deceit,
For thieves might steal your book, your song, your hopes,
And time decay your purposes and strength
But your own words, oh, yes, your good, strong words,
Like an old pair of boots will see you through
To your heart’s desire at your journey’s end.

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                The Cold Kept Me in Today

The cold kept me in today
With a book, my dog, and the fire
The slanting sun, each mote-dusted ray –
It was all very like dear Tolkien’s Shire

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                      A Dog, a Pocketknife, a Twenty-Two

               For Jared Allen Brandon, of Happy Memory

                             And Jared Walker Bess

A dog, a pocketknife, a twenty-two
The rightful possessions of every Texas lad
For working out the values he must live up to
The virtues that he learned from his solid ol’ Dad

A dog, a pocketknife, a twenty-two
Self-discipline, honest friends, a manly stride
A quiet voice that’s sturdy, firm, and true
A man of accomplishment and quiet pride

For you remember your own boyhood, yes, you do -
A dog, a pocketknife, a twenty-two

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                 A Dollar Box of Crayolas®™

I wanted the biggest box of Crayolas
I had to have the biggest box of Crayolas
I could build worlds with the biggest box of Crayolas
I needed that biggest box of Crayolas!

But the wise voice of situational poverty spoke:
“I am not spending a dollar on a box of Crayolas.”

The biggest box of Crayolas is now about four dollars
Allowing for inflation, much cheaper than in ‘55
I should go buy the biggest box of Crayolas
Maybe I can find a Big Chief Tablet®™ to go with it

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                   A Doom of Impending Sense

When you are driving away for the daily run
Of errands, appointments, disappointments
You know you’ll enjoy the company of your MePhone –

       Which you have left upon your desk at home

You buy a magazine in the checkout line
Or find a book in some cold waiting room
Or read an editorial in the local wipe
Or remember a poem from seventh grade

You glory in words, words and images dense
And feel a doom of near, impending sense

Let us now face the sun, and not ourselves
And so forswear the mirrored loop of Us
That zeitgeist chasing its ossified Now
Into a spiral of dark nothingness

A club that looks endlessly at itself
Sharing dismal, universal handshakes1
Can never see the Incarnation dawn
As joyful, laughing Light upon the world

His star is in the east, and too His sun -
Let us worship the Lord, and not ourselves

1Yes, pinched from John Milton

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                   “A Dragon Has Just Flown Over the Treetops…”

                            “We must all show great constancy.”

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

Dragons! They seem to land among us daily
Blotting out all happiness, all innocent joys
In appearance and demeanor ugly and scaly,
Suppressing silence through foul foolish noise

Dragons! They don’t like anything about who we are
Our words, our works, our walks, our dreams, our tunes,
Our happy memories of a long-ago star
Our lazy moments in barefoot afternoons

Dragons! They want to crush us in the end
But we’ve read the story – we always win

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
Hellopoetry.com­

                                                 A Dream About Birdcage Walk

In the perfection of an impossibility
I was tagging along behind Margaret Thatcher
And Saint Thomas More; they were speaking
Of great and transcendent ideas

I asked them if we could go to Victoria Station
And look at the trains

Lefttard fascist libtard Russian troll loony mother * *er freaks stupid idiotic childish rant Antifa **** troll comrade idiots like you tide pod generation snowflakes * you Marxist serial felon MSM useful idiots street justice fanboy alt.right * dunal trumpf lunatic leftist *phile ** * in your * your ****** loser freak pos pack heat ammosexuals smh screwball lefties community organizers trumptards professional agitators if we could ban idiots like you you donkey *s you lying * comrade Lefttard fascist libtard Russian troll loony mother * *er freaks stupid idiotic childish rant Antifa **** troll comrade idiots like you tide pod generation snowflakes * you Marxist serial felon MSM useful idiots street justice fanboy alt.right culy dunal trumpf lunatic leftist *phile ** * in your * your ****** loser freak pos pack heat ammosexuals smh screwball lefties community organizers trumptards professional agitators if we could ban idiots like you you donkey *s you lying * comrade Lefttard fascist libtard Russian troll loony mother * *er freaks stupid idiotic childish rant Antifa **** troll comrade idiots like you tide pod generation snowflakes * you Marxist serial felon MSM useful idiots street justice fanboy alt.right culy dunal trumpf lunatic leftist *phile ** * in your * your ****** loser freak pos pack heat ammosexuals smh screwball lefties community organizers trumptards professional agitators if we could ban idiots like you you donkey *s you lying * comrade Lefttard fascist libtard Russian troll loony mother * *er freaks stupid idiotic childish rant Antifa **** troll comrade idiots like you tide pod generation snowflakes * you Marxist serial felon MSM useful idiots street justice fanboy alt.right culy dunal trumpf lunatic leftist *phile ** * in your * your ****** loser freak pos pack heat ammosexuals smh screwball lefties community organizers trumptards professional agitators if we could ban idiots like you you donkey *s you lying ** comrade

*Employ all caps and strings of exclamation marks ad lib

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                         ­  A Dusty Drum Kit

                             In a re-sale shop in Huntington, Texas

Fronting for decaying videotapes
And clocks that will never again chime the time
Through tinny mechanical syncopation
A drum set reposes without percussion

An arpeggio of silent despair
Whose cymbals and snare impatiently wait
As do the bass and other impedimenta
For the hand of a youth who has something to howl

The next kid through the door might bell the cat:
“There it is – I will rhythm the truth with that!”

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                Advent – a Gift of Becoming

                   “The old order changeth, yielding place to new”

              -“The Coming of Arthur” and “The Passing of Arthur”
                                              in Idylls of the King

There is much to be said for Ordinary Time
Its very ordinariness is kind to us
The daily hours that end with the Vespers chime
Free of formation and pageantry

But Advent comes as part of the dance
Of seasons wheeling through the universe
And we must shift our thoughts back into time
In anticipation of the Nativity

In solitary splendor a wonderful Star
Gives us light for our pilgrimage renewed

Advent at the Dollar Store

The *****, roachy desperation of
the unswept dollar store’s cellophane dreams
At Prices You’ll Love boxes of oilless
popcorn poppers deep-fat fryers massagers
to sweeten generational desperation
behind the counter cigarettes locked up
We Cash Work And Welfare Checks can’t afford
Lives collapsed so we console ourselves with
electric hair-curlers and boxes of chips
singing NFL coffee machines
shiny new bicycles to be stolen
before the end of January or
left out to rust in the February rain
dusty plastic holly shiny CD
players for the administration of
anaesthesia Jumbo Bargain Gift Wrap
for Your Happy Holiday Shopping Pleasure
No Shirt No Shoes No Service No, No, No
Hyphenated Industries of Chicago,
Tokyo, Seoul, and Taipei wishes us
a Merry Christmas

Advent Remains Unoccupied

Advent remains at peace, unoccupied
There are no Advent trees to buy or steal
No seasonally-discounted lingerie
No Advent hymns background the lite-beer ads

At Mass: a wreath, a candle every week
And music set to God, not to the sales;
The missal now begins again, page one
And through the liturgy so too do we

Almost no one notices this season, and thus
Advent remains at peace, unoccupied

Advent Rosary

Dark Advent is a silent waiting time
When autumn chills into pale, year-end days
And joy seems smothered by hard-frosting rime:
Cold is the debt that spring to winter pays

The seasons link to seasons in a chain,
The chain of being that links, also, our souls,
Seasons and souls, not always without pain:
Summer’s wild lightning falls and thunder rolls.

Linked to us too, rose by mystical rose,
This holy Advent is Our Lady’s Grace
To us who wait in exile sad; she knows
Where souls and seasons sing, the Night, the Place.

Seasons and souls, linked to days dreary-dim:
Follow them with roses to Bethlehem

Adventures with an Olivetti

(In which the scrivener violates his rule never to write in the first-person)

My bed was a Sears & Roebuck sleeping bag
And my world headquarters that old MG;
An Olivetti portable processed
My words, my fresh young words, that no one read

I owned more books than clothes, and only those few
That could be stowed in the passenger seat;
I fancied myself the new Rod McKuen
And I wasn’t - but I remember the road

When the world was new, adventures every day
And I miss that - but mattresses are nice

If you annoy a Sicilian woman
She will fling herself at you shrieking,
Her hair and eyes wild with rage; she’ll plunge a dagger
Into your heart three times before you fall

And then she’ll spit on your corpse and curse your memory

If you annoy a French woman
She will fling at you a stiletto heel
Or a saucepan (with sauce veloute’, oui!)
Either one will take you down, mon ami

And then she’ll dial a friend for company

If you annoy a Russian woman
She will make a discreet telephone call
And when in spring the ice of the Neva thaws
Your frozen body will at last pop up

And then she’ll write a poem in your memory

If you annoy an English woman
She will smile sweetly, and poison your tea
And as you collapse, gasping desperately for breath
She will smile again, and ask if anything’s wrong

And then she’ll ring for Jeeves to tidy up

Finally:

A Canadian woman  (I’m telling no tales) -
You mess with her, and you’re bait for the whales!

                               -fin- (so to speak)

Predatory ads from the N.R.A.
Site-blocking ads from them throughout each day -
O obtuse Google, make them go away

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                I’m Tired of Everything as Lent, He Said

I’m tired of everything as Lent, he said
I just want to drop dead
Dead before I hit the ground
With God’s voice telling me that I messed it all up
But inviting me into the Light anyway

A Family Luncheon in Honor of Independence Day

The flag posted without enthusiasm
The interior doors locked against children
Whose mothers aver that their pryings and thefts
Are expressions of their authentic selves

Dutiful hot dogs, Chinese paper plates
Surgeries, diets, and bowel movements
Articulated in autopsic detail
And catalogues of recent family deaths

The in-laws sit for hours; they won’t go away -
Now speak again of Independence Day!

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                 A Faraday Cage of the Mind

                                The dwarfs are for the dwarfs

                                 -C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle

They wire themselves into a Faraday cage
As they make ossification great again
Raising their hands not in salutes but in fists
Their voices not in hymns but in foul hate

They wire themselves into a Faraday cage
Hug to themselves a past that never was
And circulate deception among themselves
In closed incestuous loops of rumors and chants

They wire themselves into a Faraday cage
So that a genuine thought will never penetrate

A child smiles at the moon; the moon smiles back
For they are friends, you see, both peek-a-boo
Behind and through the leaves of their favorite oak
In an ancient world that is forever young

Adults are children who have forgotten how
To see, and who have lost their bearings, their course
Their pirate-maps for sailing to the stars
And their lunar love-letters to be read in dreams

Among the fireflies, on the cooling-dusk field
A child smiles at the moon; the moon smiles back

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                     A Few Kind Thoughts for Roman Soldiers

If you have stood your watch throughout the night
To guard a clothesline of national importance
Dug foxholes only to fill them up again
And then patrolled through long days in the heat

If you have enjoyed Cinderella Liberty
And talking about poetry and girls
With a few mates down at the coffee shop
Because that’s all your poor pay can afford

You will then understand the conscript guards
Posted to keep order on Calvary

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                              A Steady Diet of Invaders

“And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear:  "A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the East”

                             -Kipling, “The Decline of the West”

This is the day, they say, that Kabul fell
A year ago - but Kabul did not fall
It’s still there: invaders come, invaders die
Pale British, Russians, and Americans

Afghanistan has eaten all of them
It even devours its own, and gnaws the bones
And all are dust along the Hindu Kush
Where lizards scuttle among imperial dreams

That land where caravans and mystics roam -
(Let’s mind our own business and stay at home)

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

                       Afghanistan, Graveyard of 19-Year-Olds

Ghosts shriek in the wind from the Hindu Kush
Falling upon the lowlands in despair
Of any reality beyond death
In the blood-sodden sands where sinks all good

Walls, monuments, souls, hopes – all blow away
In the wreckage of long-fallen empires
Their detritus trod upon by tired men
Whose graves will be the howling dust of time

And yet the empire masters will return
And leave fresh offerings, remnants of the young:
A British Enfield, a Moghul’s lost shoe,
A cell phone silent beside the Great Khan’s skull

2012, The Road to Magdalena

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                      Afghanistan, Graveyard of 19-Year-Olds

                     “You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.”

                             -Holmes’ first words to Watson in
                                     A Study in Scarlet, 1887

Ghosts shriek in the wind from the Hindu Kush
Falling upon the lowlands in despair
Of any reality beyond death
In the blood-sodden sands where sinks all good

Walls, monuments, souls, hopes – all blow away
In the wreckage of long-fallen empires
Their detritus trod upon by tired men
Whose graves will be the howling dust of time

And yet the empire masters will return
And leave fresh offerings of more young men:
A British Enfield, a Moghul’s lost shoe,
A cell phone silent beside the Great Khan’s skull


From The Road to Magdalena, Lawrence Hall, 2012, available via amazon.com

“Afghanistan, graveyard of empires” is a common saying whose source is unknown.

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
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

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                            A Finely Crafted Swiss Frog

Its crystal is the windowpane
Through which its tiny heart is seen
And its splayed and spatulate toes
Grasping securely the eternal

A Fish on Ice at Mixson’s Grocery

As with my teacher’s disapproving eyes
A poor iced fish glared out upon the world -
Without her sanction everything had changed
And silent on the ice she watched life pass

Holding my mother’s hand, I was passing too
From baby food to breakfast cereal
Somehow the fish appeared to feel that this
Was an affront to her cold dignity

And thus her eyes – they seemed to follow me
And since the fish was dead, what could she see?

A five-dollar garage-sale record player
A five-cent-piece Scotch-taped onto the arm
A plastic K-Mart special from long ago
A groovy thing for a junior high kid

But he was a thirty-something day-laborer
And in the silent cell of his solitude
Wanted to spin some tunes in the darkness
Just like he did when he was a junior high kid

A five-dollar garage-sale record player
Wagner, Sinatra, McKuen - and hope

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                A Flaneur in Old Khakis

A rustic dilettante, all ready to flirt
In his old khakis and a chambray shirt
Old boots, old gloves, a mattock or rake to wield
A boulevardier of row crops in the field

He tips his old straw hat to the morning sun
Considers the corn silks’ latest fashion for fun
Discusses pitch and tone with a passing breeze
And notes the colours in the apple trees

The latest songs and jokes he very well knows
And shares the latest gossip with clever crows
This rare sophisticate whose sidewalk cafes’
Are nature’s dreamy scenes along nature’s ways

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                       A Footprint on the Road to Santiago

A footprint on the road to Santiago
It has meaning - a footprint, and another
An indent from the ferrule of a stick
Toward a vision of a Field of Stars

Sin-weary and sunburnt, a pilgrim plods
Through weeds and dust and sometimes traffic lights
And idlers mocking from across the road
Toward a vision of a Field of Stars

Where free from sin and pain and blood and scars
He may at last find peace in that Field of Stars

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

               A  Former President and his Former Ambassador

                          “…a drab assortment of mediocrities.”

   -William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third *****, p. 1142

There is a very obvious thing
About that kissing that shouldn’t be missed:
It wasn’t the former president’s ring
That the former ambassador kissed

22 May 2024

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                        A Fragment of Machinery in the Road

Part of a specialty clamp in asphalt trapped
Like a primeval animal, jaws apart
A mechanical protest locked in place
When steaming pitch was rolled upon the road

The seasons pass and footsteps pass, leaves fall
But nothing changes for those frozen in place
By the decrees of stasis and stagnancy
Progress blocked by torpidity and time

The seasons pass, my daily footsteps pass
A fragment of machinery in the road

He asked me to review his book (I must be nuts)
I did just as he asked:
                                       and now he hates my guts

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                                    After a Night of Thunderstorms

The zinnias are rich with the works of the bee
Meanwhile the mosquitoes are working on me!

After Epiphany 1

Epiphany is the door into winter
Into those bleak, grey days, into the cold
When time itself is huddled in the dark
Asleep, suspended in the drifting mist

In clouds of icy mist among the trees
Above the somnolent, shivering earth
The brief, pale sun in silence disappears
The moon in silence rises high to watch  

Over a world asleep until far spring
Epiphany is the door into winter

After Epiphany 2

The stripping of the tree is almost Lenten
The ornaments gone, only “bare ruined choirs”
Remain, no comfort of carols or hymns
As it is dragged outside into the cold

It almost seems to shiver in the winter sun
Reduced to poverty and then to scraps
Which in the months to come enkindle then
An evening fire after the cows are milked

But not celebrated with festive lights
The stripping of the tree is almost Lenten

After Epiphany 3

There will not be a gay bonfire tonight
The outside animals were early fed
And early sheltered in their straw-strewn barn
To chew and low and snuffle through the hours

Then folks withdrew from duties and the dark
Into the house to hang their coats and find
A chair next to the stove; they sigh the time
And mourn the emptiness where was the tree

And linger drowsily over a Christmas book
There will be not be a gay bonfire tonight

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                  After Fifty Years It’s Time to Change the Linen

One does not wish to live in a culture where crowds
Have persuaded themselves that “Imagine”
Is worthy of the hearing

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                 After Momma’s Funeral

Three Voices:

Where does – I mean, did – Momma keep the coffee?
That cupboard over the coffee maker
The preacher prayed a fine funeral for her
He’s an idiot; no one believes that stuff

Momma did; I say that’s what important
Let’s not argue; Momma wouldn’t like it
It doesn’t make any difference; she’s gone
And let’s not babble about what Momma wants

I’m not babbling; Momma raised us right, okay?
I want her Bible.
                                   Fine; I want her car

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                After St. Petersburg, St. Giles’ Street

Today we’re visiting Russia with a friend
Perhaps a Russia that never really was
Ideas, tea, and holy earth; just now
We’re asking a blessing from Father Zosima

Tomorrow we’re off to England, all of us
Perhaps an England that never really was
Ideas, tea, and holy earth; and soon
We’ll stroll through Oxford with poems on our lips

And exchange Shakespearean bon mots
With the ****** barmaid at the Eagle and Child

After Thanksgiving - We Are One Debris

A paper napkin with a turkey on it
Discarded outside by an errant child
Culturally appropriates among the leaves
It seems to want to join its fallen brothers

Raw and natural in their native state
In multicultural deconstructions
Like, you know, all spiritual and stuff
Becoming one existential leaf-mold

Filtered through November’s hipster glasses
A paper napkin with a turkey on it