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
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
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…
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…
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
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…
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
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…
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
By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … The yellow paint a little aged now / The green metal ring a little bit dull / The eraser now hardened beyond all use / The point well-sharpened with a pocketknife
By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … “‘Tis my limited service” on Sundays to mind the door / To open it to the faithful with cheerful greetings / This is pretty much my skill-level, this modest chore / Such is the ancient custom for Sunday meetings
By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … A dachshund will burrow under the garden fence / For every dachshund thinks she is a wolf / A fearsome apex predator with a squeaky toy – / This is in the nature of dachshunds
By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … 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
By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … An old belt buckle in the back of a shelf / Greening brass on a belt now much too short / Maybe the same one I wore on the Vam Co Tay / Scattered thoughts shift to Thomas; I don’t know why
By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … After summer rains the earth is still green / In the cooling breeze oak leaves dance happily / Old lawn chairs are the humble chairs of poets / Old lawn chairs are the glorious thrones of kings…