Ten Knots Along a Cord
A trewe swinkere and a good was he, Lyvynge in pees and parfit charitee -Chaucer’s Prologue See the plowman walking home from the fields. He plods along with the pace of centuries. There is…
Tag: Lawrence “Mack” Hall
Ever England
Brave Hurricanes and Spits still claw and climbFar up into the English summer sky,At the lingering end of a golden timeAs wild young lads and aging empires die. The Hood and Rodney still the Channel guardAgainst the strident Men…
Books on Watch
A day closes in obedience to the clock,To weary yawns, more yawns, and wonky jointsWords read are unremembered at this hour,And pages lie open, idle, unseenThe windowpanes reflect only this roomAnd its books, neither neat…
Book Shops Offer Us Civilizations
Book shops offer us civilizationsDemocracies of the living and the dead -Wordsworth, Shakespeare, Langston Hughes, and youOver cups of coffee wrangling meter and rhyme Book shops offer us civilizations James Weldon Johnson, Keats, and Claude…
A Reflection on Choices Made
“…they have failed to tell the truth, preferring a safe distance” ~ Yevtushenko Maybe I disappoint, but now I preferThat safe distance Yevtushenko condemnedBecause in media res all is chaosThe immediacy of emotion and pain The best…
Water-Stained Pages in a Missal
Crinkly, wrinkly pages in a missalThey’re water-stained – how did that come to be?Maybe it was when the bishop visitedAnd sloshed us with his shaky aspergillum Or when an infant at her baptismProtested the proceedings…
Praying for Rain on Saint Swithin’s Day
Oh, yes, there are pale necromancers stillLike poor Macbeth’s witches summoning factsThat rise like bloated corpses to the surfaceOf strange electromechanical cauldrons But we consult the winds, the clouds, the starsWhose songs and shapes and…
Bees Disapprove of Us
There’s nothing the bees care to learn from usWe talk to them anyway in our idlenessHaving put away the hose or the rakeWe’re in the mood to gab for a little while But Calvinist bees…
Every Plant is Signed
For each its purpose, every plant is signedEmbedded by the Maker with intentsIn willing service to Creation, thenMaybe we shouldn’t tell them how to live Because if we humans are signed for plantsEmbedded by the…
In Honor of Hagia Sophia (From A Liturgy for the Emperor)
Our eternal Constantinople isNever to be lost, never defeated:In every Christian flows Dragases' bloodEvery village is the Holy CityEvery church is Hagia SophiaEvery prayer is a Mass for the EmperorEvery children's foot-race the HippodromeEvery poor…