A Garden is a Department of Metaphysics

A collection by Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall

Wild Insects I Have Known
(as Ernest Thompson Seton did not say)

 Please don’t tell me that red wasps are benign
A recent one I met had my behind in mind
Its sting by design was most malign
So as I softly sit please be patient and kind
If I indulge in an unmanly whine!

There’s Nothing Old to Write About the Moon 

The newest moon – it blessed us tonight
A sharp bright crescent within a rim-glowing orb
Following the sun’s afterglow deep into the west
Ornamented with a frosting of stars

Time is not a Bloody Tyrant 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 16

Time cannot be a tyrant; it is but a created thing
Like bluebonnets, butterflies, and bumblebees
Painted with pencil or pen by a Hand divine
And set in place as a measure of being

Time cannot be our enemy; we live along it
And like the ground it stabilizes us in place
And like our eyes it gives us vision to see
Each other in our Spirited nobility

Life is not what we take nor what is taken
But what we bring –
Time cannot be a tyrant; it is but a created thing

Mockingbirds at Dusk in a Time of War

They might be fighting; they might be he-ing and she-ing
That leaf-rich oak could be their arena
Or it might serve them as their bower of bliss
For love in this magnolia-scented dusk

They’re still at it, whatever their “it” might be
But breaking off to blitz the subtle cat
Sneaking about in quest of a bunny or squirrel
But who from feathered fury must now retreat

They might be fighting; they might be he-ing and she-ing
But then
                  They might be mocking the rest of us

A Small-Minded Man

Oh, yes, I am a very small-minded man
Whose horizon stops at the apple trees
Whose vision is much upon the little things:
A tiny snail upon a pepper-plant leaf

A placid rabbit nibbling at the lawn
A squirrel feasting on his daily grains and seeds
A bluebird shyly hiding among the oaks
A mockingbird mocking all the rest of us

No grand visions for me; I will not leave
Small villages of dead bodies and wicked smoke
The rotting bodies of children and animals
Cratered cities of bomb-blackened ruins and stench

I promote no world-changing master plan –
Deo Gratias, I am a very small-minded man

A Garden is a Department of Metaphysics

 “When the soul lies down in that grass, / the world is too full to talk about.” -Rumi

A garden is a Department of Metaphysics
Promethean fire and shadows in a cave of light
Leaves of trees falling upon more leaves
The leaves of books left open to the sun 

The lecture lawn is furnished with old chairs
Old garden chairs rusty with wisdom and age
From duty to weather and men, the several cathedrae
Of the learned Order of Gaffer Swanthold 

Athena’s owl calls from the nearby wood
Calling all men to silence and reflection