A Casual Conversation with a Goddess
What if the moon wants to whisper back to me?The sky is dark and lonely high up thereWhere the goddess sails through an eternally starlit seaIn orbits fixed above earth’s guarded air Perhaps she is…
Tag: Lawrence “Mack” Hall
Plautus and Tarzan
The plays of Plautus all repose in peacenext to my boyhood’s tattered Tarzan books,University classes, and summer days.I suppose Mercury brought his own vines. Kafka is up against Rilke and Parzival;they seem to get along…
On Reading Thomas Merton: I Didn’t Know a Brow was Involved
To read Thomas Merton, we are scold-told,is middlebrow spirituality. I never knew that a brow was involvedbecause I see the barber every week But I like Father Louis (bourgeois or not)and his brave travelogues of…
Fleur D’espoir
The deep blue spiderwort – she does not knowAn epidemic now has been declaredAnd all the world beyond her cobalt glowHas found itself panicked and unprepared The sunbright spiderwort – upon the lawnReposes in her…
Dragging Hoses on Saint George’s Day
Drag those hoses when the weather is dryApril’s grass is paling, and oak leaves witherAll the new plantings cry for a drink of waterAnd the rains of winter have now retired Drag those hoses when…
Creation’s Intermittent Rain
Soft rain to make the apples plump with prideBright sun to make the apples blush with redSoft rain to batter at the sunflowers’ strideBright sun to make each sunflower lift its head Soft rain to…
Dostoyevsky’s House of the Living: A Review of “The House of the Dead”
“I was in prison…and you came to see me.” ~ Saint Matthew 25: 34-26 Dostoyevsky is possibly the best writer of narratives of redemption, probably because of his time in prison. I first read The House of…
But the Magi Did Arrive
We can’t be sure when the Magi arrivedOr where But if they hadn’t arrived at allThey still would have arrived because they beganEven if their bones in the desert disappeared We can’t be sure of…
Isolated from the Book Shop for Four Months (But maybe not much longer…)
A Barnes & Noble is a happy placeWhere my book budget goes to lose itselfIn the poetry section first, and thenTo the music by way of the magazines A Barnes & Noble is that happy…
Negative Capability in a Basket
Negative capability is notA basket that bore hens’ eggs yesterdayAnd will carry tomatoes tomorrowIs not empty today An empty basket is a positive spaceWhich is laden with possibilitiesA book, a dream, a hope, a picnic…