the view from here

these mornings of oatmeal and email
daunted in holy grail quests
for hit-counter highs on obscure sites
rites of passage recorded
benign to sordid faithfully writ
peep hole peeped from
wrists unslit
dim-lit rooms
yield to bright of climbing sun
things unstarted
things undone remain
but spring will come
spring will come
(refrain)

- ralph murre

Appreciation

without thorns

and tastier than a rose

this red cabbage

- arem

Again, With the Bird?

Ralph Murre

I'm continuing to explore the theme that I first showed you on my post of January 13th. This time, I carved in ice. The piece, which is shown horizontally here, is actually a vertical sculpture, about five feet tall.

~ RM

Loco Motion

get out onto the platform

you never know

there could be one more train

going your way

and you paid for your ticket

long ago

there could be

one more engine steaming

down the gleaming track

smoke curling

from its blackened stack

one more chance

for loco motion

one notion still waiting

to dawn in your silvered head

once more the quickened beating

of your golden heart

once more, a start

~ ralph murre

Bluebirds

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

I had the chance, last Friday night, to spend the evening with some of my favorite people, listening to one of my favorite bands (Big Mouth) playing some of my favorite music WHILE glazing the little pot you see above. All this was going on at the Hands On Studio as a whole bunch of other people were doing roughly the same thing. It all sounds a little too cozy and crafty to me, but I'll admit that I loved it. Never tried something quite like that before, but was fairly well pleased with the result, which is a design I came up with to accompany this little poem.

NEWS FLASH! The review I wrote of Sharon Auberle's Saturday Nights at the Crystal Ball now appears within a larger and wonderful article by Norbert Blei on the website "Poetry Dispatch".

http://poetrydispatch.wordpress.com

And by the way, if you're not already a follower of this exemplary site, WHY NOT ???

hornetzzzzzz

we grey-bearded men

telling our used-to-be stories

hornets in winter

~ arem

Inquire Within

Inquire Within

I'll sell some land

I'll sell some books

I'll sell fishing hooks and second-hand lures

I'll sell some tourists narrated tours

I'll sell some cherries

I'll sell the orchard

I'll sell some tortured antiquities

and try to sell the shining seas

I'll sell baseball diamonds

I'll sell football fields

I'll sell museums that sell the past

I'll sell the future whitefish yields

I'll sell plastic siding

and hide the profits

I'll sell fake stones and aluminum soffits

I'll sell some photos that show what it was

I'll sell the laborer and what he does

I'll sell the oak

I'll sell the birch

I'll sell the school

and the Lutheran church

I'll sell the lake and sell the bay

I'll sell the sizzle and move away

- Ralph Murre

appeared first in "Knock" magazine