Another Year

Running Things

Another year
Another chance to get it right
To do the things I shoulda done
Tear down that fence I built
Quit the party
Let running things run

Another wave rolls up the beach
Tumbles stones
Polishes what survives
Shorebirds -- hungry -- rush
Consume the dazzled on the sands
End the safe, crustacean lives

Another day
Another chance to see the light
To see the clouded, rising sun
Copper flame in pewter bowl
Embrace the certain, coming toll
Or be a running thing, and run

~ Ralph Murre

An old one, from my first book, Crude Red Boat (Cross + Roads Press)

Not to be Forgotten

photographer unknown

Attended, last evening, an event to honor my friend, poet laureate, and exemplary human, Bruce Dethlefsen.  Wrote this little piece for the gathering::

Forgotten

after Bruce Dethlefsen

on the conclusion of his term

as Wisconsin Poet Laureate

I forget each street by street

each road by road

your purple truck

cross-hatching

Cross Plains to Crivitz.

The joys and pains.

As if it’s out of mind, now

your Wisconsin

cow by cow

their black and white.

I forget each day of days

the Champagne flight

of word by word

that tomato

that celebrated spread of mayonnaise

all gone again.

Each morning, each memory

flying bird by bird.

There, totally forgotten

the life by life

turned poem by poem.

Your laureate, bardic ways.

italicized lines stolen from Bruce Dethlefsen,

and herein returned by           Ralph Murre

Friday the 14th

those who can sing

those who can pray

now is the time

~ Ellen Kort

The Times

Thinking of ordering a 2013 calendar, and I'm just wondering -- how did people know they were in the Middle Ages?  And how do we know we're not?  Of course, if the world ends on December 21st, or whenever it's supposed to end this time, that will clear that up, and these will certainly NOT have been the Middle Ages. I'm putting off most of my Christmas shopping, just in case.

It was easy enough, I suppose, to realize if you were in an Ice Age, and the Dark Ages? well, duh . . . nobody ever paid utility bills!  But precisely where you stood BC had to be a tricky calculation. And these people of the Middle Ages must have been far more advanced in their knowledge of the Big Picture than we give them credit for.  I have to double-check that this is a Monday.

None of this, of course, addresses post-modern architecture. The melting time-pieces of Dali.

~ RM

song of my(th)self

today

and each day

writing

the myth

of myself

believing

most

every word

~ ralph murre

Pattern

woodcut: m.c. escher

Blindside

The way we see pattern

       the way we assume

       it won't change

       The way we love today

The way M. C. Escher

       found in a pattern

       a fish becoming a duck

       The way we never saw it coming

       ~ Ralph Murre

Of Thee I Sing

Now understand me well - it is provided in the essence of

things, that from any fruition of success, no matter

what, shall come forth something to make a greater

struggle necessary.

. . . the road is before us!

~ Walt Whitman

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)

a little fiction

Stitches in Time

   ~ Ralph Murre

It, too, is called a thimble; this heavy galvanized fitting I splice into three-strand hawser on deck.  Outbound tug Maria.  My old man at the helm.

But the notion of “thimble” takes me back to that other sort, silvery there on the third finger of her arthritic hand.  Grandma Maria.  Seems it’s always been there, protecting that fingertip from the little stabs she knew were coming, leaving the rest of her bare to the unforeseen wounds that would come.  There was the thimble as she pushed and pulled needle and thread, stitch on stitch, as depression flour sacks became dresses, as a spare blanket became a suit.  Stitch on stitch, still, as my christening gown was shaped.  White on white, as a tiny row of sailing boats was embroidered upon it. Rising infant to be bestowed beneath crosses of cathedral’s spires on the high hill.  And her father before her, sewing stitch on stitch, white on white, patching sails blown out ‘round The Horn, stitch on everlasting stitch, triangle needle and leather palm, from Roaring Forties to Tropic Trades, and more than once, stitching a shroud: a benediction, a blessing. Fallen sailor to be bestowed beneath crosses of brigantine’s rig on the high sea.  Aroma of pine tar, beeswax, mutton tallow.  A very old man, long at anchor, calls out “Daughter, bring me rum.”  She looks up from her sewing and agrees, “A thimbleful, Father,” as an ocean of time slides by, sewn with a meridian of stitches.

The faithful Maria rises to meet the oncoming swell. Settles. Rises again. 

snapshot: starlings, maybe

A boy stands, looking out

through the barred window

of the cornfield

row on row

straight as blue silos

straight as red barns.

His father’s tractor

turns more dull furrows

to the flat horizon and

only that distant cloud

dares to show a curve.

And this swirl of starlings

-- exploding --

from the yellow grain.

- Ralph Murre

That's an oil painting (about 3 x 5 feet) I started years ago, then abandoned, unfinished, for a very long time. I recently dug it out and completed working on it, I hope. Somewhere in the interim, the poem came to me. And no, it is not autobiographical. Exactly.   ~ R.M.

Chiseled

You Gods in Granite

and, oh, you alabaster angels,

you marble Mercury,

I have carved you in my own image.

Can you not try to go lightly

in your shoes of ponderous

and imponderable weight,

can you not try to soar

on your wings of stone?

~ Ralph Murre

with all your science

            with all your science

                      tell me

            how much     

                      of the ocean

            is tears

                       tell me

                       the fish aren't crying

                                             all the time

                       ~ ralph murre

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)

Everyday and Labor Day, too

aloft, a worker

and on deck, and for wages

in the dark below

~ arem

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

Brief Article

found on the web, artist unknown

A Brief Article on Articles in Haiku

by Ralph Murre

(in response to a question raised by CX Dillhunt)

in the poem   the short-

est of the shortest short poems

is there room for the

Ides of August

end-of-summer sky

we call out names of those stars

close enough to hear

~ 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.

Preview

Here's an excerpt from something I'm working on:

. . . you have to know that in that time and place, they were Ma and Pa.  Most everybody's parents, unless they were thought to be putting on airs, were Ma and Pa.  Baths were taken on Saturday nights.  You went to church on Sunday mornings.  Yes you did.  Public schools were mostly walked to, had one classroom and two outhouses.  Catholic kids, though, were most likely to go to St. Michael's.  Several rooms.  Indoor plumbing.  Hail Mary, full of mackerel.  We all got along fine and settled minor differences with fistfights.

   In our little school, Miss Nedra Quartz held sway over the eight grades, or as many grades as had students in a given year.  She was it.  Teacher, nurse, theatrical director, janitorial overseer (we kids were the janitors), cop.  Palest woman I ever saw, when she wasn't red with rage, which was fairly often.
   And yes, we did walk to school.  Just a mile and a half for me, through snow and rain and dazzlements of all sorts, for a few years.  Then, Miss Quartz's brother bought a station wagon which became our schoolbus.  Comfy, but without dazzlement.  Unheard now, the curses of blackbirds, the scat-song blessings of bob-o-links.  Un-sniffed, the  wild roses in fencerows, as we traveled the graveled and dusty distance in a wood-sided Ford, assuming everybody in the whole world liked DDE, DDT, and Wonder Bread . . .     ~ Ralph Murre