the poet, at seventy, observes

and the aged

   discuss at length

 their aging

   the raging pains

and nagging

   the sagging

and the gravity

   their long-lost

youth,  naïveté

   as though

there was forever

   to converse
they heed

   no call for terse

nor feel a need

   for brevity

~ ralph murre

Destiny

Sweets

There’s a guy on the radio

singing about Sweet Destiny

as though she’s bringing

something more palatable

than the just desserts I see.

     Could be.

          Could be.

Soon enough, I guess

we’ll be at Destiny’s table.

Don’t rush me

toward that sweet reward.

~ Ralph Murre

Valuables

detail: louis sullivan bank - sidney, ohio

the banker asks

what use is a butterfly

having forgotten his childhood

the poet asks

what use is a bank

having forgotten his old age

~ arem

in this kind of light

and always

on a bench

on the dock

on this kind of day

in this kind of light

a few old men

buttoned in

their dark coats

and dispositions

listening

to each others'

long stories

their hearing aids

turned off

~ ralph murre

Born Toulouse?

art of  henri de toulouse-lautrec

the thing about sad songs --

-- they make me so happy

~ Emmylou Harris

What is it, I wonder, that makes us love the blues, the sad country ballad,  the somebody done somebody wrong song, the dark forces of pulling apart?  Sure, I'm talking about song-writers, poets, and artists -- we're the worst, I suppose, but is anybody rushing out to buy totally happy music?  To buy novels or see movies without any conflict or struggle?

A lot of people, though, seem to be able to see the flick, get their safe dose of tragicomedy, and go home.  Is it only those of us striving to be creative who turn our lives, and those of people around us, into little operas?  I know people who appear to be continually happy, and it seems to me they must be running on some alternative fuel to the stuff I burn.  I fear, sometimes, that the urge to tell a good story gets all mixed up with living a life that makes a good story.  The problems really seem to arise when the tales of our existence are winding down and we try to get to a "happily ever after" line.  I keep writing, but some days I feel I'm getting farther from that ending .

   ~ Ralph Murre  

In Late Autumn

still a surprise

in spite of mounting evidence

to find that immortality

isn't likely

~ arem

Let Us Admit

Let us admit

some of us can see dragons from here,
though we don't believe in dragons.

And some of us can just about
make out the conversations

of the several gods, though we don't
believe in them, their little indignations.

~ Ralph Murre

(this is an excerpt from a larger piece I'm working on)

Just Now

just now

as the planet still spins

with its endearing little wobble

and you

with that smile

and an air of possibility

just now

I think I'd like to live

to be very old

~ Ralph Murre

previously published in my collection, The Price of Gravity (Auk Ward Editions)

water's edge

long in its cradle

a weathered boat on the hard

a weathered sailor-man

on a green-painted bench

red sun in the west

~ arem

Fishermen and Poets

Against the Wall 

Like the beaded-pine wainscot

of his backwoods tavern, up north,

Clarence has darkened over the years,

hearing the lies of fishermen and poets;

the truths of hunters, fresh from the kill.

He’s been scarred by bar fights and carelessness, but

cleaned up and preserved by Irene,

who sees past his rough edges.

What’ll happen, he worries,

when the shot-and-a-beer woodsmen are gone,

when the kids want him to replace his old jukebox,

want him to replace the music of his life ?

Like his old paneling,

he may be replaced, too - by some modern miracle  -

shining and impervious.

Until then, he watches and listens;

soaking it up, gaining color - and

telling his stories under a flickering beer sign:

a bear in a canoe, going with the flow.

~ Ralph Murre

In looking at some old poems, I came across this one, written in 2004, and which appeared in my first collection, Crude Red Boat (Cross + Roads Press). There are a few from that era that I still like.

Will and Testament

Will and Testament

They’ll need to know this much – the two strong sons –
to know what, beside their flesh and progeny, I leave.
The jack pines I planted, I’ll tell them,
over a half-century old, those that survived
the first summer. It was dry.
But they’re sold with the ground
that holds your grandparents’ ash, I’ll tell them.
There are the boats I built, I’ll tell them,
the green-painted boats. But those are sold too,
I’ll tell them, with the sunlight on the bay.
And the houses, I’ll say, drawn and built
by these hands. And yours, I’ll proudly add.
Sold now, but think of the times we had.
The roof-beams and hell we raised.
And the poems, I’ll say, here are the poems.
Couldn’t sell those, I’ll tell them truthfully,
or give them away. Here – I’ve books of them, Boys.
Thin books, it’s true, with few words,
but they’re like new. Here are the poems.

~ Ralph Murre

of a certain age

Can we still write love poems
when the triumphs of our G.I. tracts
are more heralded
than the hunger of our hearts?
Neruda could not have written The Captain's Verses
under the gaze of nurses, but at the end of life
he said to Mathilde,
"It was beautiful to live
when you lived!
. . . I sleep
enormous, in your small hands."
and maybe that's where
the real love poem began.

~ Ralph Murre

Now We Are Sixty-Six

the constant rattling
grows slightly more distant
in the middle of a long night

or past the middle sometime
and that distance
is what you stay up for

why you nap
in the middle of the day
or past the middle somewhat

and traveling
you are part of the noise
but you can't find a motel

that's just for napping
in the middle of your trip
or past the middle somewhere

you begin
to grow old
or at least I'm afraid

past the middle some age
and your ears won't hear
but the rattle is clear

~ ralph murre

Big Deals

Big Deals

one . . . two, I suppose
thirteen . . . sixteen . . . eighteen
twenty-one . . . sixty five
and, I imagine, one hundred
one hundred and anything

~ RM

Age, That Sneaky Bastard

Is there anything that can bring you up short quite like seeing an old acquaintance or an old love after the passage of a number of years? Recently, on a drive that crossed Milwaukee's Kinnickinnic River Bridge, on South First Street, I glanced down river and was surprised to see just such an old acquaintance -- The ex U.S.E.P.A. "Roger R. Simons", ex U.S.C.G. "Maple" -- as I live and breathe, partially hidden around a bend, painted as I'd never seen her, ill-kempt, if kempt at all, but unmistakeably HER. (I know how odd it is to think of anything named "Roger" as her, but that's not today's discussion.)

When I sailed the Simons in 1976, just after receiving my sea card, she was already old, having been retired from Coast Guard service and having been pressed into use by the U.S Environmental Protection Agency, for which we worked, indirectly, doing a series of research projects on Lake Michigan. We brought the little ship up to a sparkling, if dated, appearance when the company for which I worked lost their government contract due to some fluke in the language of bid-letting. I left her with great reluctance.

I saw the ship a few times after that, once when she was being refit in Sturgeon Bay, and later, up in Superior, where she was a display at the Barker's Island maritime museum for some time. Then she disappeared from that port and I assumed she'd been ignominiously treated, probably by men with cutting torches. Imagine my shock then, to see her still afloat, but bearing no name, no recent paint, her many ports covered with plywood, and generally ratty, but still with what I have always considered to be a sort of peasant-girl's beauty.

I was taken aback to see how she'd aged, until I looked in a mirror.

~ Ralph Murre
Yours truly, with deck-hand Dave Hagen, if I remember correctly; in a photo probably snapped by the mate, Larry Van Deusen. 1976.

Off the Bus

photo by Laura Murre

Though I was not born in the backseat of a Greyhound Bus, nor even in the back of the Model "A" Ford panel truck which served as the family transport in those days, I do enjoy a bit of ramblin' from time to time. Just back now from a most pleasant journey which included some holiday visiting with family and friends, some glum weather, some food and drink, some solitary wandering on a frozen lake. Memorable conversation. Unforgettable smiles.

And the joy of the road. Oh, not the faceless fourlane that made up a lot of the trip, due to the need to get along across the state and a bit of the next, but the little, broken-backed winders that I love to jog off to when I can. The roads that lead slowly past the tumbledown farms, all their possessions out in the air, like books with their covers torn off. Stories right out in plain sight. The two '66 Chev pick-ups, one with its hood open, cannibalizing the other, which lies on its side in defeat. Both near-overgrown with burdock and nettle. The ancient manure spreader, its chain apron broken in mid-field, still half-loaded and with ten year old brush growing in it. Dead tractors and the rusted implements they once pulled, their uses now all but forgotten. The tidy and simple house next door without electrical wiring, its neat outbuildings, the Amish buggy in the yard.

And the collections. A row of Massey-Harris tractors. A lot full of Pontiac Firebirds. Steam threshing engines. Sheds covered with antlers and hubcaps. And, if you're very, very lucky, there may still be a little cafe with walls of grease and calendars, tended by two old women, one permanently hunched over the grill, the other, plump and cheerful in spite of being the last of her kind, serving good pie and weak coffee and allowing that it feels like snow's a-comin'. Order the mincemeat, strike up a talk - this could be your last chance. Ask about the abandoned one-room schoolhouse down the road, the abandoned cheese factory across the street. The abandoned dreams she once dreamed. Tip her well and consider yourself fortunate.

You will be richer upon your return.

- Ralph Murre