And other poems by Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall
A Row of Missals on the Chimneypiece
Those inexpensive missals, all in a row
Upon the chimneypiece of their little home
Each with its ribbons in orderly place
Like children in line for the Eucharist
I envied my friend for his family’s faith
The daily liturgies of a Catholic home
Rhythms and usages giving order to life –
They are all gone now, dead or dispersed
And in a garage sale some fifty years on
I found his missal, ribbons still in place
What Did Jesus Look Like?
What did Jesus look like when He was on earth?
He looks just like the boy or man you’ll meet next
What did Mary look like when she was on earth?
She looks just like the girl or woman you’ll meet next
A Village for Our Exile
Far is that City of God for which we hope
Here the cities of man in which we live
Glorious, but still only refugee camps:
Constantinople, Athens, London, Rome
Give us for our exile a village instead
A pub, a library, a shop, a little school
Cows and sheep grazing on the grass of the commons
A hay wain lumbering through the summer stream
Draught horses drinking from the little rill
In the ford below the slow-clacking mill
(Cf. John Constable, “The Hay Wain”)
An Extended Warranty
You buy something and the man behind the counter
Asks you if you want to pay extra for a warranty
And when you ask why, doesn’t the gadget work
He’s grumpily ready for you to move on
Most things in life don’t have extended warranties:
Love, Hershey bars, tree frogs on the window screen
The John Wayne movie machine that broke long ago
But memories of MeeMaw are always fresh
You live through pain, and He who is beyond the stars
Gives it meaning – that’s the warranty
The Bronze Serpent
Moses established a serpent within the camp
A fiery brazen serpent upon a pole
And all who looked upon it were thereby cured
Cured of their judgments slithering through the dust
Will There be Coffee after the Crucifixion?
“Everything’s going to be discovered
And understood in the course of time,
Only we have to go on thinking”
-Yevtushenko, “Zima Junction”
Not all are crucified, but all are wounded
We bring our gifts to the Altar; they fall apart
In secretly clinging to them for ourselves
Our claims to be defined by an era
But rotting corpses in a tangled wood
The celebrant elevates the Host
We lift unfocused eyes in grave pretense
Inattentive at the Wedding of worlds
The Mass is the central Act in Creation
Not all are crucified, but all are wounded
Creation Sings Hatikvah
The Torah unrolls in a soft, whispered wind
The wanderer finds shade under its protection
The scholar refreshes himself with its words
The nations sit and attend to its truths
Creation sings Hatikvah, sings our Hope
The voice of God is in the whispered wind
His Words from before the first ever dawn
Flowing through the Beginning and even now
A blessing upon Jerusalem, upon the world
Creation sings Hatikvah, sings our Hope
Our voices too are in the whispered wind
The Torah unrolled for us in a whispered wind
Creation sings Hatikvah, sings our Hope
“I Called to the Lord from my Narrow Prison”
“I called to the Lord from my narrow prison and he answered me in the freedom of space.” –Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl
Dark prisons of the mind are narrow too
A lack of light to fall upon a page
A page where hopes are written in words of hope
And spoken in hope through layers of shame and guilt
Dark prisons of the heart are narrow too
So reach into your mind, your heart, your soul
And even in the darkness of a narrow cell
Call softly to the Lord through the fetid air
Dark prisons of the soul are narrow too –
Perhaps you are the one who locked the door?
Open it.
Try.
At Yevna Something Happened
“The Talmud is to this day the circulating heart’s blood of the Jewish religion. Whatever laws, customs or ceremonies we observe – whether we are orthodox, conservative, reform or merely spasmodic sentimentalists – we follow the Talmud. It is our common law.” -Herman Wouk
At Yevna something happened, something quite real
Though no one seems to know exactly how
Those who entered as priests arose as rabbis
Carrying Talmud out into the world
At Yevna something happened
Ben Zakkai and Gamaliel sit at your table
Your study table, a house of wisdom in Yevna
Where all may come to study Mishnah and Gemara
Where the lamp of peace is lit on Sabbath eve
At Yevna something happened
G-d sees to it that even a few holy books
The wisdom of the sages
The library of the ages
Are Yevna written into your modest home
At Yevna something happened
People Who are Late for Mass Apologize to Me
“I pray you, remember the porter” -Macbeth II.iii.23-24
Like Macbeth’s poor porter I am a doorman too
An ‘umble man with a minimal set of skills
“’Tis my limited service” happily to meet
And greet the faithful while opening the door
When the server rings the bell, latecomers rush
Some glance at me guiltily and apologize
For being late to the divine liturgy –
Am I an attendance officer for God?
After the Order of the Porter I am a doorman
And will judge the timeliness of no man!
LogoSophia Magazine 