And This the Happy Morn

By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall …
No one has yet messed up Advent (aka “The Christmas Season,” which it is not), and so we are spared Advent sales and Advent gifts and Advent movies and news stories babbling about The True Meaning of Advent. Advent is a season that points to the Nativity, not to itself.

Read More

Negotiating Toilet Paper

By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … Dignity, like treaties, can be broken
In many ways…

Read More

So Fast Thou Growest

By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … Happy children playing in a roadside ditch / Barefoot and laughing in shorts and tees / A boy grabbing up a frog to frighten the girls/ A girl sloshing the boys with a bucket of muck

Read More

Because They Are Young

By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … Little children attend the school of Creation: / A stick, a caterpillar upon a leaf / A pine nut spiraling down upon its wing / A yellow butterfly dancing autumn in

Read More

Hobbit Day

By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … I read that today is Hobbit Day / On the autumn equinox every year…

Read More

August is Unusually Hot – Someone Must be Punished for It

By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … Having only graduated from high school (I think the quarter-credit for driver’s education put me over the top) I am certainly no climatologist, meteorologist, or vulgar Swedish child, but I am not persuaded of the concept of man-made climate change.

Read More

Laundry Day – The Solemnity of All Stains

By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … The washing machine baptizes our busy days: / A shirt freshly stained with this morning’s coffee / Wrinkledy tees in grimy greens and greys / A child’s blue jeans all sticky with toffee

Read More

Make Thee Another Self

By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … After the Order of Saint Joseph, all men are fathers / Commanded by God to protect all children / Permitted by God to protect all children / Empowered by God to protect all children

Read More

Holy Smokes: Habemus Papem

By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … Latins and Sabines may have watched for smoke / From the Vatican Hill across the way / Wondering if a careless shepherd had set a fire / Beyond the Seven Hills of holy Rome

Read More

Shakespeare & Chinese Verse

By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … Dear Will, / About your obsession with mortality: / Transitions and death are essentials in life / And we must face the obsequies of ashes or earth / But there are other topics upon which to write

Read More

Fragments of Life and Literature 

By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … We have mysterious runic messages still / Appearing this morning – there, on the road – see them?

Read More

Fragments of Life

By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … The seasons pass and footsteps pass, leaves fall / But nothing changes for those frozen in place / By the decrees of stasis and stagnancy / Progress blocked by torpidity and time

Read More

We Know Where The Holy Grail Is

By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … We know where the Holy Grail is / Each Sunday we see it on the Altar / As a cup, indifferent in its origins / In the catalogue of a church supply…

Read More

Your Favorite Author is Nothing Without You 

By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … When I was a child I read without discipline: / Robert A. Heinlein, Robin Hood, cowboy yarns / Pirates raiding across the Spanish Main / Penrod and Sam, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn…

Read More

Each Birthday is a Step in the Right Direction

By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … A birthday is not the beginning of something new / But rather part of a continuing story / From its Prologue and its Chapter One / Through the dark leaves of Mirkwood and beyond

Read More

Late January is a Time of Grey

By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … I read a little in Billy Collins just now / Because Tolkien is in the other room / Along with the laundry and an unmade bed / Late January is a time of grey…

Read More

Another Turn Of The Year

By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … About this new year – it doesn’t look so new / But the first sunlight in the bare oak trees / And upon last summer’s ground-shoaling leaves / Lead me to pull on my boots and step outside

Read More

Did You Enjoy Your Christmas?

By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … That merry little Christmas that they sing about – / Did you open your gifts around a tree / Tinsel and ornaments and a brilliant star / Pajamas and cocoa and merriment…

Read More

The O Antiphons, the Star, and Us

By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … Solstice is not a time when the sun stands still / But rather a season when the sun stands aside / That we may better know the mysteries of deep night / In darkness just before deep Light returns

Read More