By Lawrence “Mack” Hall
Word Count: 190
Rating: G (suitable for all audiences)
Summary: A poem of twilight
Perhaps there is no reason why these thoughts
Should be reconstructed, recalled, re-read,
This dusk in spring, soft-scented, green, and still,
With cumulous clouds rehearsing for the summer,
Silently flinging the westering sun about,
And from the grass the early mosquitoes
With tiny, unseen wings grudge wheeling birds
Utility, charm, sometimes majesty.
Mischievous cats dancing like couplets in rhyme
Along the fence-top in alla breve time
Torment with pirouettes the ground-bound dogs,
Provoking from their playmates envious barks,
Prologue to reconciliation
And Eden’s sleep beneath the ancient moon.
Why should this hour, gentle with Vesper joys,
Be scanned and disciplined as iamb’d lines
In poor remembrance of reality,
A catalogue of senses lived in time
And reconsidered then on ink-marked page,
Or screen luminescent within a box?
Old Adam knew such tranquil gardened evenings,
And generations yet beyond the stars
Will live on earth such happy sunset peace;
Yet still, somehow, this moment of Creation
Is now commended to a leaf or so,
And when the actors of these moments past
Joy in the eternal summer of God,
Someone will read these lines, and delight in them.