BY LAWRENCE “MACK” HALL

Both of us have grey hair at the temples – Du Fu, “To the Recluse Wei the Eighth”

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

The seasons remind us of our mortality

We sit and ponder the mysteries of change

We will die, to be replaced by other poets

Who will sit and ponder the mysteries of change

And still, whatever these deep thoughts betoken –

I need to mow, but the lawn mower is broken

An Autumn Flight

A leaf fell, a leaf

A life of summer in flight

In bright golden flight

(“To the Recluse Wei the Eighth” quoted from Three Hundred Tang Poems, translated by Peter Harris. London: Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets, 2009)