of pigs

Picking Straw

All of these years blown away
like calendar pages in a black and white
movie I saw once when I was little,
kind of hokey, I mean –
the years and blowing around like that –
and me in the wind all the time
and my fragile shelter leaning to leeward
and me leaning with it like a strawhouse pig
with The Tabernacle Choir of Wolves huffing
at the door, an empty fridge,
and thinking, sticks, I could have built with sticks,
been a nine to five pig with a long commute,
gone to a straw house for a 2 wk. smmr. rntl.,
been a regular boar, dreaming of brick.

- Ralph Murre

for a spin

"little wheel spin and spin"

Buffy Sainte Marie told us,

"and the big wheel turns around . . ."

and the wheels still turn

and the world goes 'round

and a little gets lost

for everything found

and the clouds still spin

through the sky, through the sky

and I thought I saw you

floating by

and the dark horse goes up

as the white one comes down

and the music plays on

as the children go 'round

and the song seems to be

you and I, you and I

smile at me as you go

spinning by

- Ralph Murre

like willow

blue willow weeping

in the wind of a low bank

the beckoning limbs

- arem

sky blue

the unbearable blue of cloudless skies
reflected in your dark glasses
but, today, the clouds

the spacewalk with no tether
free, at last, of safe gravity
but, today, the earth

the dream of flight, so close at hand
a pair of cranes leaves home
but, today, they return

- ralph murre

Passage from India!

Many of you younger readers won't remember this, but there was a time, shortly after the Beatles* left the side of Baba Ram Dass**, when he was visited by Bebe Rebozo***, who was in something of a quandary.

"Baba", said Bebe, "I have lost my way. I am clearly not a Beatle, but if I were, what advice would you have for me?"

"Bebe", said Baba, " I will tell you what I would tell you if you were not just you, but a Beatle, too: Bebe, you must simply BE Bebe!"

"But Baba," babbled Bebe, "I have forgotten how to just BE Bebe, and what's more, I don't know if I even want to be Bebe, Baba."

"To be Bebe, or not to be Bebe;" rebutted Baba,"that is the . . . (to be continued)

* Popular English Rock and Roll Quartet

** Garden Grown Guru

*** Friend and confidant of Richard Nixon

Decisions, August 9th

just past the fork

a moment's indecision

too late to go back?

- arem

Brothers

Suppose for a minute we are brothers, you and I. Suppose our mother has been attacked by a terrible disease. In the course of fighting the illness, our mother has become addicted to the drug which was prescribed to cure her. Now imagine that one of us feels that the medicine is doing her more harm than the disease and is struggling to get her off of the drug, while the other is convinced that she will surely die if she stops taking her medication, and fights to keep her taking it. Can we say that one of us loves his mother more?

- RM