Gazing deep into the well
Where hope was thrown
With abandon so unthinking,
I see no small reflection
That could tell me if
The sun will shine again.

I see the place where parity
Was smashed against the wall
And opportunity ran down the shaft
And disappeared in darkness.

I have a penny that I brought
But I never got to toss it.
All the wishes it embraced
Are left there in my pocket.
          ljm.

Stop berating
Start appreciating

Stop denigrating
Start Congratulating

Stop befuddling
Do more cuddling
ljm

Most of the snow has melted now,
gray dough-banks ****** on curbs
under a wind-lacquered gloss.

The Thai salt sits in me, hours after,
stirs thru blue yarn veins,
sharp in the stomach's wax-pit.

Night declines when lamps snap on:
dead, reclusive salmon eyes that broadcast
onto the cold screens dotting the walk.

I haven't seen anyone for so many days -
my tongue is still as a lake skin.
Lost hearts voyage in whitened dunes

of all my yesterdays. The winter pattern
is so quiet. I am a crease in the fabric,
a black ache in the ruined prism.

Today I began to hem,
rein in the threads that grow free
when left unstitched

I ticked a set of books
and, though I love my charges,
my heart hurt

My language is another,
my experience of this globe
unutterably different,
though geographically the same

And I want to help them play the game, I do,
but I don’t trust those
telling me how to

My instincts,
honed by humans I trust, unless
I’m lost in my own Truman Show,
show me the right way to go,
divergent  from this current shitshow

The pedagogy of care
is somewhere way, way
over there

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                                    Overserved

                                            New Year’s Eve 2021

Oh, TV guy, we most clearly observed
That in your speech you swiveled and swerved
But in the dawn’s clear light you’re now unnerved
An apology, yes, that’s well deserved
But please don’t tell us you were overserved

The limited palette of the January riverbank,
#nomakeup #nofilter
just the burst capillaries and thread veins
bare

A tired earthy visage,
still allures the blackbird and wren
who never truly got the hang
of saying when
and feast past decency

The idea is to recuperate
and re-emerge fresh and green
but truth seems more like this molasses mud
that hold boots firm

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                 On my 74th Birthday

                  The eternal magic of eternal things
                  sends the dreamer out into the world

                          -Rod McKuen, “January 2”

I didn’t mean to be 74
That wasn’t part of my master plan
To be young forever, cooler each year
But suddenly I’ve become invisible

Once upon a time and long ago
I drove my old MG to California
A sleeping bag, a few books, a few poems
A portable typewriter, some portable dreams

I remember breaking down in Tucson
But best of all, I remember the dreams

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

      6 January 2021: To Ask to be Exempt Would be Unreasonable


        “Death . . . comes for us all, my lords. Yes, even for Kings he
          comes…”

             -St. Thomas More in Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons


A slip of paper which I have since misplaced:

“SARS coronavirus 2 RNS
Detected”
Detected
DETECTED
Me? But I’m special (my mother always said so)

“If you have a question regarding your…”
Well, no, I guess not. Time to pause and think
To ask to be exempt would be unreasonable
But will my corpse be stored in a ****** truck?

To ask to be exempt would be unreasonable
And so
What must I do in service to God and man?



I wrote these clumsy lines in January after my daughter recovered from the CV; she almost died of it. My pharmacist was diagnosed at about the same time as I was, 6 January, and died within two weeks. My wife was quite ill for a week but recovered. Some fifteen of my friends and acquaintances died from it this year. One friend died in a three-hospital shuffle, and because of the paperwork his body was not released to his family for months.

Vaccines, as you will remember, were available to Congress in December of 2020 but not to most citizens until March of 2021 (AOC gets coronavirus vaccine on social media, as Congress begins to receive Pfizer injections | Fox News), and  (The Distribution Timeline for the COVID-19 Vaccine | coronavirus (utah.gov)).

My symptoms were only something like a prolonged bad cold, an undeserved mercy.

The CV is real.

May our new year be free from it.

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]  
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                            We’ll Write a New Idyll This Year

                The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
                And God fulfils himself in many ways

             -Idylls of the King, “The Passing of Arthur,” 8-9

Janus faces both ways, and so do we
A last, lingering look at the year that was
And then a turn to the year we must meet
Marching to it through Janus Pater’s doors

We will most remember about the past
Our friends whose pilgrimages came to their ends
We joy in the remembrance of their happiness
Their stories and songs, their unfailing kindness

Janus faces both ways, and so do we;    
But now our friends, our happy friends, they see
Light


                 And the new sun rose bringing the new year

                       -Idylls, “The Passing of Arthur,” 469