Come Laughing Home at Twilight

July 3, 2023.Reading time 1 minute.

By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … He was my beautiful boy, and, sure, / The girls they thought so too: his eyes, his walk; / A man of Newfoundland, my small big man, / Just seventeen, but strong and bold and sure.

Saint Joseph and Ice Cream

June 27, 2023.Reading time 1 minute.

By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … Every man is a father after the Order of Saint Joseph / Every child is his to nurture and protect / A man must practice wisdom and honor / In order to pass them on to a new generation

In Search of Lost Timepieces

June 19, 2023.Reading time less than 1 minute.

By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … When clocks were electric and mechanical / They almost never agreed with each other

A Field Guide to Fields

June 13, 2023.Reading time less than 1 minute.

By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … the most glorious field is in midsummer hay…

Is Peter Rabbit a Democrat or a Republican?

June 10, 2023.Reading time 6 minutes.

By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … Once upon a time people regarded public and school libraries as repositories of thousands of years of civilization, open to all, with John Milton shelved uneasily close to Geoffrey Chaucer and with Phyllis Wheatley a few aisles away from Margaret Mitchell. An old saying is that if a library doesn’t contain books with which you vehemently disagree, it’s not a good library.

A Dream About Birdcage Walk

June 6, 2023.Reading time less than 1 minute.

By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … In the perfection of an impossibility / I was tagging along behind Margaret Thatcher

Lest Our Old Shoes Sit Easier Than Our New

May 30, 2023.Reading time 1 minute.

By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … When we were children we were proud of our new shoes / Our once-a-year shoes in situational poverty / Although we went barefootin’ most of the time / As long as the weather and parents allowed

“Remarkably Like Any Other Place”

May 23, 2023.Reading time 1 minute.

By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … Life is a pilgrimage from cell to cell: / The bedroom of one’s childhood, the college dorm / The noisy barracks, merry in spite of all / Eighty conscript soldiers bunked out in rows

Time is a Falling Leaf (Battery not Included)

May 16, 2023.Reading time less than 1 minute.

By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … A child and a puppy playing on the lawn / Tumbling through soft grass in the bliss of June / We joy in their celebration of life / Everything is new / Except that it isn’t

The Pale Lady of the Well

May 9, 2023.Reading time less than 1 minute.

By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall …when outside at dusk with poetry and pipe / And a whisper of single-malt offered to the earth / Sometimes I seem to see visions proper to a Celt / And hear soft songs from the dawn of time

Spring 2023: An Issue of Liberty

May 6, 2023.Reading time 2 minutes.

Join us as we explore the issues of Life! In this issue you will find thoughts on history, Jesus, the prison system, motherhood, and plenty more!

The Saturday Morning Tee-Ball Hero

April 25, 2023.Reading time less than 1 minute.

By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … A little moppet scampers around the tee / Waving her plastic bat as a warrior’s sword / Or as a fairy-wand to magic the day / Her first-ever tee-ball lesson with Dad…

Who Has Been Eating My Chair?

April 18, 2023.Reading time less than 1 minute.

By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … Lawn chairs are for lawn-sitting quite at our ease / Soft summer evenings with a book and a glass / With birds and squirrels chittering away / Merrily over their supper of chicken scratch

Send Them Your Dawn, O Lord

April 11, 2023.Reading time 1 minute.

By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … We repudiate Putin and all his works / And all his pomps and all his engines of death / And all his malignant servile orcs / Who crucify humanity with lies

The Shape of a Poem, the Shape of a Life

April 4, 2023.Reading time 1 minute.

By Lawrence “Mack in Texas” Hall … Yes, they are awkward, those poems written in shapes / But if God writes our lives as poetry / Limned and formed for our continuation / We ask that He shape us with clarity and charity

Everybody Writes a Poem About the Moon

March 28, 2023.Reading time 1 minute.

Everybody writes about the moon / Often trying to force a balky rhyme / Along the continuum of spoon and croon / Which just won’t fill the bill, the quill, or the time

Wake Up, Back Yard!

March 21, 2023.Reading time less than 1 minute.

Brave seedlings from last year’s sunflowers arise / Among the tiny wings of zinnia buds / And the pushy skunk cabbages who hang around / Like playground bullies who ought to go find jobs

On the Consumption of Art

March 14, 2023.Reading time less than 1 minute.

But we do not consume a work of art / Sometimes we almost seem to marry it / Joining art in a sacrament of love / Beyond the velvet ropes of ownership

Don’t Follow the Science

March 11, 2023.Reading time 6 minutes.

“Follow the science” is itself an unscientific expression, personifying science as a sort of cosmic Boy Scout troop leader or perhaps a soldier taking the point. It suggests that we should not follow our hearts (which is just as illogical), our music, our dreams, or anything else except science personified almost as a deity.

All Intelligence is Artificial

March 7, 2023.Reading time 5 minutes.

No, no, we are not banks of blinking lights / And random teletype-type taps and beeps / Like Patrick McGoohan’s educational General / Or George Jetson’s mainframe at Spacely Sprockets