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 4 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.

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.

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

Treadmills, Exercise, Open Cars, Champagne, and Cigars

March 4, 2023.Reading time 4 minutes.

The panther-like litheness of my youth (cough) long ago expanded into the, oh, prosperous look of Chaucer’s merchant, and so I have gotten into the excellent but Calvinistic habit of, well, treading along a treadmill every day.

People of the Book

February 28, 2023.Reading time 6 minutes.

The Thought became Incarnate in Judaea / And thoughts become incarnate in the books we read / For thoughts are tabernacles of our hopes / Tents in the deserts of our wanderings

On the Consumption of Art

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

An artist writes about the consumption of art / As if a painting, a poem, a video / A statue in the lobby of the medical center / Were a tin of meatballs and spaghetti

For Jack On His Birthday

February 14, 2023.Reading time 1 minute.

In the long ago I was reading a book / (And doubtless thinking many brilliant thoughts) / Sitting in my car outside Our Lady’s Church / Waiting for some old-lady meeting to end