'round midnight

catastrophic

and hopeful

as midnight

what you did

or didn't

what you might

~ arem

Workers? Are there still workers?

In Labor

So, you’re still working, but they let you off for Labor Day, like the 4th, like Memorial day, and you have a coupla beers and you char something on the Weber, maybe listen to a ballgame, your team still in the cellar. Your cousin Jimmy comes over with his face-lifted tit-lifted wife and the Gameboy twins.
He drives a new Infiniti. It's gray. Nobody talks about labor except that of delivering the twins and there's some talk of her working on her tan. Your dad was in the strike of '52. Also the big one in '56. All summer.
You pick some tomatoes and corn from the garden. Get salt and pepper. They talk about the food at Aquavit and Blu. Your grandpa rode the rails in '35 and '36, stole chickens. They have to go. Country Day School starts tomorrow. Your grandma was in labor in the back of a Ford in '38. There's a union man talking in the park just a block away. Nobody listening. A skateboard goes by. The plant will close in 3 weeks. You fall asleep in a plastic chair from China, juice of summer harvest on your chin, a few clouds gathering.

~ Ralph Murre

Your Barred Window

In This Prison

I would be a blade of grass
near the wall of the yard
moisture of tears would nourish me
and I would give you my green

or a sparrow on the ledge
of your barred window
you wouldn’t need to feed me much
a few grains of your thoughts
and I would chirp
tales of the outside world

or a blue notebook
in the corner of your cell
I would offer a white page each day
and I would hold what you say
‘til you’re ready
to tell everybody else

because I don’t think you’re the type
to do much writing on the wall

or I might be a hacksaw blade
baked into chocolate cake
or a giant yellow bulldozer
carelessly left in the cellblock
ignition key in place

or maybe I would be the day
they realize their mistake
and set you free

~ Ralph Murre

An old one, first published in Free Verse and subsequently in my book Crude Red Boat (Cross+Roads Press 2007).

Locked

Learning Fractions

The urge to unite – beyond the biological,
beyond the congress that continues the species –
can be explained: there’s shelter and comfort
and good cooking and conversation.
Division is difficult, though, never mind
the cold feet. The becoming one-half of
what was one, the undoing what was done.
Parceling out the goods and goodness
fifty/fifty, or drawing and quartering
the bookshelves’ perfect order. The music –
my Unchained Melody, Your Cheatin’ Heart –
no, that was mine, this yours.
An old copy of Que Sera, Sera.
Now close and lock the doors.

~ Ralph Murre

and now, a story

The Language

So this medium-sized black bear walks into a bar (Lyle’s Dugout, just behind the ballpark, on 17th) and the bartender asks, “What’ll you have?”, and the bear, Lucien, orders a shot of blackberry brandy and a Hamm’s beer chaser. They get to talking, the bear and Rod, the bartender. Small talk at first, sports mostly. It depresses Lucien, who is upset about teams named for animals, particularly The Bears. The Cubs. He hates Chicago anyway, especially since a cop once roused him when he was trying to hibernate in an underground parking garage down near the Art Institute. “You’ll never catch me in that town again,” says the bear, “at least not in autumn.”

Rod sympathizes, being a Packer fan, but warns under his breath that his boss was born and raised in the Big Windy, and will tolerate no talk against it, no matter your species. “He threw out a lion just the other day for a remark about Mayor Daley. Hmmm . . . I dunno which Mayor Daley.”

“Well, I’d better drink up and get out then,” says Lucien, but Rod explains that Lyle’s in the back room, doing his books, and couldn’t hear over the music anyway (a polka, In Heaven There is No Beer, by Frankie Yankovic). He returns to polishing a few glasses and the bear moodily nurses what remains of his draft. Eventually, he asks for another round and says, “Tell me Rod, your people came from where? Poland maybe, Germany, the Czech Republic?”

“Oh, ya. Danzig, or Gdansk, or whatever the latest bunch in power decides to call it.”

“And you can speak the language?”

“No. Hell no. A dozen words, maybe. My grampa and gramma, they came over and they could speak a coupla languages, but no English. And then my pa, he wanted nothing to do with the old ways. The war and all. Nope – of course, I can cuss and ask for a few kindsa food – but that’s about it.”

“Yes. And you’ve got kids?”

“Five; mostly grown. And two grandkids already. Here, I got pictures.”

“Any of the kids know the language at all?”

“Just my daughter, Katrin. She learned in college, and then went to the old country for a semester. Looked up some family. There’s a lotta books . . .”

“That’s just it,” Lucien sighs deeply, as bears will, “there are a lot of books. Yours is a written language, rich in literature. You can skip a couple of generations and your kids can just go back to it any time they want. Learn it in college. Get credit, even.

“A bear, on the other hand, has only an oral tradition with which to connect. In this part of the world, we too felt the pressure to fit in. A lot of us chose not to be jailed in game preserves. Eventually, we stopped telling the old stories in the old language, and now there’s almost no one left who can teach our children, and many want to learn, want to say ‘I Am a Bear!’, but haven’t the words. A sad thing, and like you and your father, I am partly to blame. For too long, I tried to deny my Ursine nature, my very Bearness.

“Ah, but I gotta go,” says Lucien, standing to leave after a long pause, “baamaa pii.”

“Ya, later,” answers Rod, wiping another glass, “do widzenia.”

~ Ralph Murre

Quixote at Sea

photo by S. Auberle

So, after too many years off the water, but still thinking of myself as a sailor while riding my faithful motorcycle, Rozinante, I find a boat with the name Dulcinea emblazoned on her shapely stern. She's for sale. I buy her cheap. Last few nickels; a fixer-upper. I fix her up. All as it should be.

Together At Last
(a tale of quixotic satisfaction)

The moments are all around us
Momentous moments monuments of moments
In the water on the water of the water
My Dulcinea and I through the thick of the thinning moments
Sailing white on dark days and shadowy in sun
Ahhh the beauty and richness of our poverty
The wealth of our watery soup
The flavor of it in my little tarnished spoon

~ Ralph Murre

Sour Grapes?

Contestant

And at times in my heart there is a music that plays for me.
~ J.P. Donleavy

Yes, you too? You’ve heard it? Sometime snare of drum, penny-whistle, nickel-plate, quarter-note? Hum a few bars of a new tune; bring in a viola d’amore to this baroque adagio – unbroken, unbeaten, to play a song for a new season. It may be as well not to enter a poetry contest, a dance contest, a salon d’art.

clean-shaven young man
harsh light of the arena
the expectant crowd

Is it treason to suggest that in his condition blind ambition is deafening the inner ear? Competition is not improving the species, but robbing it of its art? Is it wrong to think that if he listens, if he hears that music deep within he can begin, at last, to write the score, to pen a few notes on a clean page? Is it outrage to suppose that not everyone has heard this rhythm, not everyone goes dancing to the same beat? Wooden hearts clicking like castanets for clay feet?

climbing the stairs alone
an oddly-dressed man speaking
another language

~ Ralph Murre
Sure, it's just a case of sour grapes, isn't it? After all, three pieces of my short fiction just went without notice in a competition. Yet, I'm not sure . . . earlier this year, I served as a preliminary judge for a prestigious poetry contest, and realized that someone with something truly original to say - or with a truly original way of saying it - would have a very difficult time. However, I put such a piece forward and it wound up winning the contest. So, am I putting down the idea of arts contests? No, I simply don't think they do much to engender the creation of anything new, and I think that's largely because most of the entrants don't want to take risks. Someday, we'll get into the discussion of the NEED for anything new, the NEED to take risks.

To Your Health

Love strong and fierce and long as you can;

the heart is a muscle, and needs exercise.

~ arem

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.

Inside Passage

I’m not saying heart of darkness, exactly,
but there is an un-named river descending
from a midnight in each of us,
an unlit flooding where no one dares.
There is an hour the bell does not toll.

~ Ralph Murre

Midnight in Paris

Woody Allen (at his best) asks if every Golden Age leaves the taste of brass. Where would you have rather been? And when?
My Here and my Now are gold enough for me, but see the show; you may not agree.

and give us this day

tomorrow and tomorrow

a moveable feast

Almost

As If

It’s almost as if this Grand Canyon
was opened by my Colorado
flowing through your Arizona,
as if busloads would come to see,
as if they’d fly in from Asia
with cameras.

It’s as if your Sierra watered
my Truckee, your Smokies
generated the power of my Tennessee,
as if my Kitty Hawk meant something
to your sky, your salmon
to my sea, my unparted sea.

It’s as if our waters, in their mingling,
defied laws of nature and physics,
as if we’d be running
through each other forever,
your Jupiter reflected in my dark surface,
my hands cupping a little drink of you.

~ Ralph Murre

At This Pub

the little gods

serving justice and injustice

from unmarked taps

~ arem

Sharp as Want

Never So Proud

I’ve never been so proud of Little Eagle Press as I am today in announcing the publication of Sharp as Want, a bright book which combines poetry by Jeanie Tomasko and photo artworks by Sharon Auberle.

When I began the press a few years ago, my goal was to publish books that married verbal and visual art, to treat both forms with equal respect, and certainly not to to have the art in a book to simply illustrate, but rather, to take the reader/viewer to a place of delicate balance that can only happen, I believe, in that space between two complimentary works. This goal has never been better achieved than it is in Sharp as Want, the work of two brilliant women at the top of their game. Take for example:

All Souls’ Day

what I mean is how
do you say bird in a northern tongue
how do you say keep (from) sleeping

how do you say want
as in all poems carry want

how do you say wings of the snow petrel
can show you how
to weep

how do you say
wings want weep

how do you carry want

to carry your memory
is not heavy, is nothing
like heaviness

heavy is the heron
after it swallowed the fish
as big as its back and it could not lift
but only move its weight inches above the water
to the shore across the marsh

not because I believe
you carried anything

what I mean is how
do you say that shore across
if you don’t know the way

~ Jeanie Tomasko

~ Sharon Auberle

Here is a book of love and loss, death and desire, and love regained. Here is the second book to receive Little Eagle’s R.M. Arvinson Award. Here is a book you should own. You can, you know, by sending a check for $18. ($15 + $3 for S&H) to Little Eagle Press, P.O. Box 684, Baileys Harbor, WI 54202, or, by chasing down either of the book’s contributors.

NOTE: Bruce Hodder has posted a review of Sharp as Want on his fine e-zine. "the beatnik". See it here: http://whollycommunion.blogspot.com/2011/05/review-sharp-as-want.html. Thanks, Bruce!

Sincerely,
~ Ralph Murre

Franz Liszt, b. 1811

The master, brilliant pianist Anthony Padilla, and a bunch of his about-to-be-brilliant students. Liszt, mostly, what with him turnin' 200 and all. Y' shoulda been there.

rainfall

and the rain is the sea

and that drop
clinging to a lock
of your golden hair
in this mist-laden glen
was the tear of a fisherman’s wife
and that one
on the leaf of the thimbleberry
will rejoin the ocean
where it floated a ship of slaves
and this one
on the arbor vitae
once washed the wounds of Christ
and carried canoes of Lewis and Clark
and this one
on my streaming brow
carried the fishes eaten with the loaves
by a hungry multitude

and the sea is the rain
and the Adriatic is lightly falling
on our roof as we love
the Pacific wetting the soil of our tomatoes

this rose
in a little vase of the Mediterranean
is for you

- Ralph Murre 2005

from my first book of poems, Crude Red Boat (Cross+Roads Press)

unusual fare

public sculpture in buenos aires, artist unknown to me

I Thirst, He Said,

and he knew the dimensions of thirst
are not measured except by drought,
are not fully understood but in places so dry,
vinegar is more likely than water.
(A sponge of vinegar, lifted as sour offering
to the King of the Jews, hung against the sky.)

The dimensions of suffering, he knew,
are not measured against the bodies of gods --
these lengths and spans are known by flesh,
known by woman and man.
(His mother there, who bore this life,
and saw it taken again.)

I thirst, he said,
and the divine became human
and the human became divine,
as the day darkened
in an eclipse of immortality;
morality lesson played out.

I thirst, he said,
and he knew the scope of feelings in me and you
are not gauged against the heavens,
but by desire for what is given, and spoken
in words not ethereal, but earthly, and real:
Hunger. Want. Thirst.
I need. I feel.

( Rain, too, falls from on high,
but must evaporate, someday,
to rise again, though we may wonder why.)

~ Ralph Murre

This piece was written last year, and was presented as one of "The Last Words", in company with six other poets and a chamber music ensemble playing the work of Haydn.

travel agent

at the microphone
there’s the professor
the professing of poetry
with a lack of poetry
in the professing

then, carapace she says
and says it again since
she loves repetition and
then, carapace she says
(there, I said it again)

and I am off
swimming with sea turtles
at sea in a warm Caribbean
and thanking the professor
for my little vacation

~ ralph murre

small-time

on this table

where the marked cards are dealt

we play the game

~ arem

cutting at the dark

In the Night

In this one, my father's big, dark workhorse and I are waiting for my father. I hold the bridle and try to keep the restless horse in place to be harnessed to his labors. There is someone else, or some other horse or dog that I do not know and never look at directly, so I don't know if that's important to the dream or not.

.

We are in the house; the horse, the other, and I, looking out the windows with increasing concern for my father, because he's very late now. We're on the second floor, not in one of the bedrooms, but in a big room at the back of the house, which overlooks the whole farm. I apologize for the delay to the horse, who I seem to know very well, but has no name. He whispers something to me in English, the horse does, but I can't make it out at first, because I didn't know he could talk, but then he puts his big nose and mouth right up to my ear, which I find comforting, and the horse says, "He's not coming, Ralph, but it's O.K. It's O.K., Ralph," he says, but I can see he's worried, too. The horse has to go out to pee and can't stand still any longer, so I finally let go of him.

.

It's time for supper already. Someone's getting supper, probably my Aunt Norma. I bring chairs to the table; a normal wooden chair for myself, a large green chair for the other, and a very heavy and very large canvas director's chair, which I cover with a coarse blanket, for the horse.

.

Something is rattling at the side of the house and the other and I see that it is my father, climbing a tall ladder to the window, which I push up, so he can get in. The ladder ends a little below this window, so I reach out to help. I say, "Dad, you're very late, it's time for supper, come in." Now he looks like an actor who looks very much like my father. He's just smiling at me when it hits me: "Oh," I say, "you can't come in, can you?" And my father or the actor says, "No," sees that I'm afraid and says, "Don't worry, it's very beautiful out here. Look." He is wearing no clothes and smiling broadly and the world out the window is, indeed, very beautiful.

.

The actor playing my father slowly backs down the ladder to join an actor playing my Uncle Clarence, though he doesn't look like him. He's also nude, but it all seems normal and good. They stroll off toward the horizon, the naked men, looking this way and that at the trees and those long sunbeams like in children's books, and the flowers. They seem very happy, these actors who are playing my father and uncle, and I don't worry for them.

.

I wonder where has the horse gotten to and who is the other and where is supper? And why didn't they get Bert Lahr to play Uncle Clarence, since they looked alike?

.

~ Ralph Murre

Please

Bitte, Por Favor, S'il Vous Plait

In the language of your country, do you have a word for that moment when you walk off a cliff and stand in mid-air? Is it the same word for that moment after you say, "I do," but you wanted to say, "Wait . . . WHAT was the question?" -- Do you have a word for the color of the fabric of that day someone first says, "don't," or, "you can't," or, "we shouldn't."? What is your term for that season, short or not, between love and hate (if it comes to that); for the season that follows desire? What's your word for the heart that survives? What do you call one that doesn't?

~ Ralph Murre

Go now (yes, right now) to Mike Koehler's blog >> http://onehandarmands.blogspot.com/2011/03/ralph-murre-and-me-trading-stanzas.html to see our own little "Braided Creek", with thanks to Harrison and Kooser.

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

Look Again

sometimes

look behind you

but

get over it

~arem

aw, shucks

Well, strange as it may seem, and for reasons beyond my grasp, I've been selected poet of the month at the excellent website Your Daily Poem, and I want to offer my sincere thanks to Jayne Jaudon Ferrer who so ably puts things together over there. I hope you'll have a look at http://yourdailypoem.com/ , where you'll have to click on a tab called, obviously, "Poet of the Month", in the upper left-hand corner of the home page. I answer a few questions which have probably been keeping you awake for some time.

My good fortune aside, you'll want to become familiar with the site, anyway. A poem-a-day. All kinds. What could be better?

~ Ralph Murre

Horsefeathers

Whose is the madness, then --
the simple fool?
The follower into the dark,
or the leader?
The begger?
The banker?
Believer or atheist,
reader or writer,
pauper or pope?
The half-empty pessimist,
or the one filled with hope?

~ Ralph Murre

My drawing, above, was originally done for Mike Koehler's excellent book of poetry, Red Boots.

Room with Red Walls

The Way the Light Shines

The way the light shines
through Vermeer

on a Dutch afternoon
a girl with a pitcher

of something cool
and sweet I’ll bet

The way the boys
in the low sloop

laden with the smell of salt
look through Winslow Homer

The way the stars see
through Van Gogh in the night

The way you’d come
right through

me painting you
in your room with red walls

The way water-lilies
make love to Monet

~ Ralph Murre

first published in Verse Wisconsin, and subsequently in my latest book, The Price of Gravity

Flamingos del Norte

The Sky is Full of Bluebirds

but not everyone can see them
so they think it's just a blue sky,
and at night, when it's all crows --
well, you know.
And early and late
come the cardinals and flamingos,
but don't try to explain that
to just anyone.
There are gray birds, too.

~ Ralph Murre

first published in the calendar of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets

Filmore, Wisconsin

Back at St. Martin's Church,
ours was not a god of subtleties.
Our god, whose name was Gott im Himmel,
demanded memorization of long passages
of the Heidelberg Catechism.
He demanded a congregation
in woolen suits over woolen underwear,
an aroma of chores just accomplished
in barns full of Holsteins.
He demanded music from an organ
earnestly but poorly played
by the arthritic fingers of a very old woman.
Hymns no one knew.
Endless sermons from a very old man.
Our god did not care much for joyful noises.
And though he'd share tiny cubes of bread
and sips of wine,
he seemed to prefer potato pancakes,
pork sausages and apple sauce.
Real cream in his coffee.
In his heaven, we knew there was lager beer.
In Hell, there were thin people.

~ Ralph Murre

Minority

He's very big

I heard said of a poet

whose name

I should have known

but I am small

and slip my poems

under your door.

~ RM

papered walls

in this room

no furnishings

without memory

~ arem

Time Lines

Photo-painting by S. Auberle

...

o holy of holies

I see you

o grandchild

of my grandchild

I see you clearly

child of my child

product of my

reproduction

life from my life

o grandfather

do you see me?

o grandmother

I am working

in your garden

~ Ralph Murre

Passage

from the carousel

different children waving

with every turn

~ arem

after solstice

sure winter's here

and it's a little chilly

but don't worry about me

~ RM

Canyon of Misunderstanding

Among the Lizard Mounds of his innocent age, shaded by maple, acorned by oak, he had trembled and been the boy who had to look beneath skirts, had to see what was hidden, to glimpse the forbidden. Now, under the barren sky near the other side of the broad canyon of his life, he has become the man who buys tobacco which he does not smoke, but sprinkles it with ceremony he does not understand, on sacred ground and the graves of old friends, hoping for forgiveness of sins he didn't know he committed.

.

someone mowing grass

over his grandfather's coffin

listens to a ballgame

~ Ralph Murre

Travel Report

Old New Mex

And you is goin to Old New Mex
to hunt for you dyin Columbia?
Vaya con Dios.
~ Norbert Blei

I saw The Virgin
pictured as conquistadora
in the Sun God’s
land of enchantment,
and along the tracks
north of Albuquerque,
where pink adobe homes
are surrounded
by razor wire,
I saw the land
of disenchantment.
I saw the color
of the blood of Christ
and the blood of the conquered
and the sage
beneath purple mountains
coexist,
like Santa Fe chic
and pueblo poor.
I saw America
in the unfiltered light
of a high desert.
I saw my dying Columbia
still alive.

~ Ralph Murre

.

New Links: Had the pleasure, while traveling, of meeting the photographer David Lyons. Follow the new link listed at the right to view his amazing work. Also, and this is WAY overdue, please check out Steve Kastner's "Door County Style" webmag, one of the primo sites for DC news and scuttlebutt, which just did a very gracious plug and review of the Arem Arvinson Log. ~ RM

All-Office Party

Well, we've pulled out all the stops to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Arem Arvinson Log today, the 20th of November, 2010. The party here at the home office is one for the record books and I hear that things in our overseas bureaus are totally out of hand.

Hope you'll take a few minutes to browse around the archives, scan down the list of labels on the right, see if there's something of interest. I hope too, that I am not unreasonably proud of this body of work.

Incidentally, I want to reiterate just how much I appreciate the comments that many of you have left, from time to time. I understand what a hassle it is to leave a comment at all, but as soon as I try to peel away a layer of hassle, I am inundated with machine-generated spam comments, offering everything from poetry publishing to Viagra to, well . . .Spam.

Thanks for looking in. I'll continue to try to publish a few items worthy of your attention.

~ Ralph Murre

fiction, mostly

Weak Link

No stronger the chain,
they would say,
as they cast their glances
his way, the chances
that he would not be weakest
never even considered
as he frittered away
what they called their honor,
these colonels and better
from the 1800’s ‘til today.
Every silence, every wheel
turning against him
at the family table,
he enlisted in the fray.
Every cell of his cells
resisted his decision,
as the single-bar lieutenant’s
division went to war.
His Echo Company landed
amid sporadic blasts
on the first hot day
and by December
every ember of his pride
had darkened,
every platoon sergeant
and squad leader
hoped to frag him,
but he moved them,
against orders,
to a village
at the unseen gravel border,
where an air-strike
had been called on an emir.
There are children,
There are children,
he kept calling to the airmen,
There are children.
We’re going in.

It was friendly fire
that claimed him,
from a patriot PFC,
but the bombing was averted,
and the emir, if he was there,
and the children,
one more day,
went free.

~ Ralph Murre

As the heading of this post says: fiction, mostly. It's Veteran's Day. I've never been to war, having served less than half-heartedly in the National Guard back at a time (1965-1971) when our unit had about the same clout as a Brownie troop. Still, this poem came to me. If anyone feels that I am WAY OFF in representing what might have happened in that sort of situation (allowing for a bit of poetic license) I'll be glad to see your comments.

TRUE

A Few True Things

North, of course,
and blue,
which can’t be argued.
(Though I’ve never trusted black
and white, the supposed
absence of color,
or presence of all.)
Thirty-two degrees seems a truth
if you’re a fan of Fahrenheit,
zero, if you’re not.
There’s even a truth serum,
and true love has been reported,
but not a lot.
The ivory-billed woodpecker
is said to exist.
No great auks left, I guess;
not many little old ladies
driving to church.
Pontiac's gone.
Politicians aren’t
on this list.

~ Ralph Murre

To the Wolves

Good advice from your Wisconsin DNR

To the Wolves

It’s always been a problem, this name; usually taken as a verb –
to Ralph, synonymous with “to hurl”. Not good to be named
for an act of regurgitation no matter how liberal your outlook.

But I’ve learned that Ralph also means “wolf counsel”,
according to the people who keep track of silver-lining meanings
in cloud-black names given to innocent children,

and “wolf counsel” is something I might have worked with
if I’d known – I might have taken a few wolves aside, for instance,
might have mentioned their ill-deserved reputation for eating people,

might have said, look – it’s against my counseling ethic to TELL
you to eat people, you understand,
but why have the name if you can’t play the game?

And then I might have named a few people they could start on,
which, of course, wouldn’t have been very professional of me,
but there are so many people and so few wolves

and some of the people eat Little Red Riding Hoods for breakfast,
and brown ones, and black ones, while wolves make do with mice.
And if I had known that Ralph means wolf counsel

I might have said, hey – the sheep’s clothing just isn’t you,
because I would have taken this counseling business very seriously
and I would have advised on fashion, as well as diet.

And I might have counseled against the use of the word “pack”,
because it has bad connotations, and I might have warned them
not to always be “at the door”, because that’s so cliché.

Sometimes, I think, they might want to be “at the window”.
And I might have mentioned that we can spot them from quite a distance,
even when they’re disguised as grandmothers.

And I would have done all of my wolf counseling pro bono,
because I like the sound of that, even if it doesn’t pay well,
and because I think they’d be impressed by my use of Latin,

even if my name is Ralph.

- Ralph Murre

from my book Crude Red Boat (Cross+Roads Press 2007)

Rain at Lundgren's Bridge

a surprise today

some forgotten master's hand

points my camera

~ arem

Bowl

much-manipulated image from a painting by peter klinefelter

Oh, Brother, (can I call you that, though we never met?) our mothers danced to this drum, they fed us from this bowl, this Anishinabe bowl, this bowl of Colombia, this bowl of Lapland, Africa, China, Massachusetts.

Oh, Brother, join me. We will beat a rhythm on our empty bowl that will match the beating of the Great Drum, we will overturn our bowl and see the back of the Great Turtle upon which we still dance.

Oh, Brother, can you hear the heart of the ocean, can you see our mothers swimming there? Are they returning to fill our bowl once more?

~ Ralph Murre

Everyman

Detail of bronze sculpture by George Danhires

Islands

No man, you tell me, but everyman, I tell you,
and woman and boat, every Nebraska farmhouse
and apartment in the Bronx; an island.

That blue circle of horizon, the dangerous passage,
those days the ferry cannot cross from my shores
to the quiet cove of yours. The sea between.

~ Ralph Murre

On an Island

the eyes see

just what they look for

even here

~ arem

The Beast

Like a lion tamer
poking his foolish head
into the jaws
of the beast in the spotlight,
I have pushed myself
into the unwise corners
of life, never certain
if the great cat may be
hungry, may be angry,
or simply curious
about my flavor,
the furious cracking
of my whip.

~ Ralph Murre

Image is from a photo found online, photographer not known, my heavy-handed digital manipulation. ~ RM

pilgrimage

come now

applaud with me

the ordinary magic

of sea and sky

and sand forever

and never changing

let us make a pilgrimage

of great faith

let us ring bells

and keep promises

~ ralph murre

Another Sad Truth

File this under the heading, "What Am I Doing With My Life?", a favorite topic of some who have known me well. I just squished together my three volumes of poetry and found that they will consume almost exactly 1/2 inch of your shelf space in their entirety, and that includes their glossy paper covers, their handsome fly leaves, and their various end papers. This is the sum total of most of what I've given a damn about in the last 10 years?!?!?! Yes, I know; one good poem makes it all worthwhile, etc. . . Well, let me say right here that the jury is still out debating the truth of that one, and they're sure as hell having a lively argument trying to decide if I've written that one good poem!

~ R.M.

Want to see for yourself? Ordering info available at littleeaglepress@gmail.com

Sad Truth

pigeons and poets

annoying but still happy

with just a few crumbs

~ arem

Turn, Turn, Turn

Like the kid I heard about
from Barton, Wisconsin,
who'd been sleeping
but found himself o.k.
standing in the next street
after the tornado
took his home and his bed,
I've been surprised.
The turning heart
like the turning wind,
drops things
unexpectedly.

~ Ralph Murre

Remember; you can click any of the pic's on this site to see greater detail.

Cool

a cool wave at sea

lifting and letting men down

like nothing's happened

~ arem