Weighty Issue

The Price of Gravity

How much of this life do we own?
Payments are always coming due.
We are the ones who signed the papers,
but there’s something more,
there’s something that can’t be helped.
You and I look different
than we did in morning light.
Now we wade in lead boots
and gather no speed
away from this dead center,
or toward something brighter.
Which is to say away from here,
where the embers have dwindled.
Which is to say we can fly only
with the creatures of dreams,
if we can fly at all.
The dreams will become family,
the dreams will become clan,
scattered like dust among stars
in the cages of our ribs,
in the cages of our cries,
in our breath in the night.
Sometimes the dreams may be of falling
and cold earth rushing to us,
but, travelers now,
they’ll call us travelers,
amid the dust
and the stars
where we’ve known the dark eclipse,
and we’ve flown with
those creatures of dreams
between galaxies.
We won’t be in lead boots
once we’ve started to dream.
We’ll no longer make payments
on things that hold us down.

This is not the end of this poem --
something pulls at us forever.

~ Ralph Murre

This piece was first published in Iconoclast, and subsequently became the title poem for my latest book. (Auk Ward Editions 2010, littleeaglepress@gmail.com )

Reminder: as with all the graphics on the site, you can see the drawing in full-size by clicking on the image.

Ta - Da !

My new book, The Price of Gravity, from Auk Ward Editions, is just in from the printers and though this is my third, I am as excited about this one as a bear about salmon, a baron about mousse, a mouse about brie. I was lucky to have editor Charles Nevsimal to save me from myself. A real wheat-from-chaff man, Charles, though I sneaked in a few things when he wasn't looking.

Poems in this book run the gamut of subject matter (perhaps something to offend everyone, as the tag-line for the film, The Loved One, put it) and the writing ranges from about seven weeks to seven years old, many of the pieces having been published individually in a variety of print and on-line journals and anthologies.

At 92 pages and 81 poems, by my count, I'm happy that we were able to hold the price to $10. per copy (plus $3. S & H) from Little Eagle Press, P.O. Box 684, Baileys Harbor, WI, USA, 54202. Checks only, please. (Auk Ward Editions is the unruly minor child of Little Eagle, and has not shown the maturity to manage a checking account.)

Also Note: Lou Roach, writing for the excellent poetry journal, "Verse Wisconsin", has reviewed The Price of Gravity. You can see what she had to say at http://versewisconsin.org/Issue105/reviews105/murre.html