The Ministry of Clockery
Change for the sake of change – spare change? Spare change?
There must be a Ministry of Clockery
With Cratchit-y clerks drawing clocks at their desks
Supervised by a Scrooge of Clockery
Tag: Lawrence Hall
A Response to Q-ness – I Will Never Take Instruction from a Consonant
Whenever I’m down, and feeling a little blue
I wonder whatever it is I can do
What traditional learning I can pursue
To recover the happiness I once knew
Citizen Potato Head is a Class Enemy
“Mr.” indeed! No, no, Citizen Potato Head!
Bourgeois titles are forbidden by law
As are toys lacking in social realism
Clearly you are no good Comrade of ours
Homeschool, Screenschool, Noschool
Today’s first lesson is that no such construct as “homeschool” exists, either as a noun or as a verb. When your father taught you hunting safety he did not homeschool you; he taught you. If your sixth-grade teacher taught you not to spit tobacco into the classroom litter basket because your parents failed in their duty of teaching basic hygiene, manners, and dignity, he did not schoolhome you.
Read MoreSomeday a New Arthur
Someday a new Merlin among the ruins
Will give a new Arthur a trove of hidden books:
Chaucer and Milton, Shakespeare, Coleridge, Keats
And maybe even long silent Malory…
Ice Wednesday
Many crosses of ice but no ashes
Trees sagging from the icicles dragging
Little birds desperate for last summer’s seeds
The ice ground whitening, whitening, disappearing
A Saint Valentine’s Day Gift for my Daughter Who Lives Far Away
An agent of the federal government
May or may not deliver a package to you
Tomorrow, or not just one but maybe two
Or maybe one package at one time…
Kristin Hannah’s Winter Garden, Sort Of
James Lee mentioned that he really liked Kristin Hannah’s novels, which I pooh-poohed as chick-lit. He assured me that they are really good, and that with my love of Russian literature I would appreciate Winter Garden, parts of which are set in Leningrad…
Read MoreIf Your Life Were a Time Capsule
If your life were a time capsule of sorts
In what cornerstone would you brick in
Against a mysterious opening day
When someone in the future would open you up…
This Fog Won’t Last
Oh, no. The night is misty indeed, but the stars –
The stars still shine; be brave, and look for them.
Some Say This is the End
Some say this is the end of the Trump era
Some with glee
Some in mourning…
Karens
I love me my Karens, good, sweet, and kind:
Junior high love-notes and school yard flirtations…
Yevgeny Yevtushenko Admires Himself
Recently I finished a book only half-remembered from my youth, Yevtushenko’s A Precocious Autobiography. I had no idea that a poet I had long admired was such a phony.
Read MoreStorm Heaven, if You Will
By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall (Rated G) In the midst of a world of light and love, of song and feast and dance, he could find nothing to think of more interesting than his own prestige. -C.S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost Storm Heaven with your selfless prayers, if you willBut not your […]
Read MoreA Covid Christmas
But first we celebrate the great world’s turning
With Advent and the holy Christmas time
With liturgies followed by the Yule log burning
Through feasting and cheer, and each well-sung rhyme
The Advent of Our Discontent
Everyone accuses everyone else
Of treason; they’d call each other Quislings
If they had any history, but they don’t
Only Hochhuth and Unferth on the air…
Waiting for the Messiah Someplace Else
The Magi journey through space and time
Our journey is in waiting for a star
To shine upon us all, and lead us to
The Temple where all waiting finally ends…
The Good, the True, the Beautiful, and the Assistant Principal
Of math the assistant principal spoke:
The elegance of a geometric proof
When it brightens the mind, the eye the sky
Completing a song of the universe…
“I Had a Lover’s Quarrel with the World”
Mr. Frost crafts smooth, flowing iambic tetrameter and iambic pentameter, sometimes rhyming but sometimes not. That he makes rhyme work so well demonstrates the excellence of his art; there are only five – arguably six – vowel sounds in English, which rhymed through the pen or keyboard of a learner usually ends in clunkiness or unintended comedy.
Read MoreA Busy Dachshund Puppy
She bites into cranky old Pepper-Cat’s tail
(Something so twitchy must surely taste good)
And Pepper-Cat spanks her; oh, what a wail!
(Dear pup, there’s a difference between could and should)…
LogoSophia Magazine 