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

ZERO

Imagine my surprise, when in a shameless act of self-googlization, I learned that I do not exist. Not in these United States. 0 people named Ralph Murre. Which I take to mean "zero". But it might be O, I suppose. As in "Oh, people named Ralph Murre, why are you here, googlizing, when you could be sitting on the terrace of some pleasant taverna overlooking the sea, writing the poems that would save the world?" Alas, no, all I can see is zero. A circle of nothing. It gives me pause . . .

on this hillside

where blossoms have drifted

we wait for fruit

~ Ralph Murre (?)

Question:

from a photo by eddee daniel

when a poet

attempts to be a painter, too

how can he afford

all those shades of blue?

~ arem

Hunger Games

so much to observe

so much to comment upon

must he also eat?

~ arem

The Thing About Steel

The freighter American Spirit was in port here for repairs lately, and seeing her proud name rusting away seemed to cry out for some sort of Independence Day comment, some little State of the Union report. I think the ill-kept stern of the ship provided a fine digital blackboard and a fine metaphor.     ~ R.M.

Insel und Halbinsel

a peninsula, it doesn't matter which one

a ferry boat at the end of it

the island of last chances out there somewhere

at the ticket office, a long queue

~ ralph murre

Confronting the Big Guys

A book I'm reading says the Buddha talks about four qualities of horses: the excellent horse, who moves upon merely seeing the shadow of the whip; the good horse that runs upon feeling the lightest touch of the whip; the poor horse, which doesn't go until it feels pain; and the very worst horse doesn't budge until the pain penetrates to the very marrow of its bones. What the hell kind of buddha would say such a thing? These may be qualities of horses as seen by the cart-driver, as though the only reason to be a horse is to serve man. What does the Buddha know about being a horse? Old Arem feels that among horses, the most revered is doubtless the mustang, the wild cayuse running free, while the hardest-working Dobbin is probably thought to be the biggest fool. An even bigger fool, though, might be a person who without question follows any man-god-myth, whether the Big G., the Big A., the Big B., or whomever.   ~ RM

Arem's Thought for the Day

Of course, the "coexist" bumper sticker is the property of someone else, some genius, somewhere. One of my very favorite things.  I hope my satirical addition to the icon is slightly offensive, but not outright illegal. If it's yours, your lawyers can contact me at the address listed elsewhere on this site. Perhaps we'll coexist in copyright court.   ~ RM

No Colossus

Just knocked out a little oil painting I thought you might like to see. Each year, The Hardy Gallery, situated in an old warehouse on the Anderson Dock, which projects out into Eagle Harbor at Ephraim, Wisconsin, sponsors a project wherein a couple hundred of us do work on 6" x 6" canvasses which are then assembled into a community mosaic, which is displayed for a while, then disassembled with the individual pieces going to buyers from near and far. The trick is that the buyer has no idea which piece he or she will receive.
For an inspiration for my piece, I was thinking about some of the classic sculptures located in harbors, and thought I'd paint something based on one of them. Which would be fitting for Ephraim? The Colossus of Rhodes? Nah, a bit grandiose. The Statue of Liberty? Hmmm . . . maybe. Then I hit upon it. The Little Mermaid? YES. She fits. 
By the way, don't get creeped-out by her flesh tones, she's bronze, OK?
It sure was fun to drag out my oils, which I hadn't seen for about five years.    ~ Ralph Murre

what she's having

who’s counting

six times in the course of a conversation

overheard at the sandwich shop

a woman exclaimed o my god

which is more often

than I’ve encountered that phrase

in my several courtships and marriages

so much is in the presentation

of sandwiches and things

~ Ralph Murre

Promises

   What shall I promise?

   Myself?

   Then what shall I promise

   Myself?

   I could promise

                                                    Not to promise

                                                    Myself.

   But I’ve broken

                         so

                         many

                         promises.

                         - Ralph Murre

While I'm fond of saying that I began writing in 1999, it's not quite true, since this one, recently unearthed, is from 1986. Lost forever, I hope, are a few pieces from the early sixties.  ~ R.M.

Bound for Glory

Bound for Glory

this train of black boxcars

     raining

this rain on the too thin roof

this black boxcar blue

this graffiti blue

this hue of spray-can

this spray-can’t

     sign of times

this sign of signing

     this singing     this song

  along the rails     this wailing

of a failing America

(or is this how it works?)

this boxcar with my name on it

this train of our names

this signing

this signature

this bounced check

this stacked deck

this black cloud thunder

     under

this trestle as long as a life

this train

            this ride

                       this other side

~ Ralph Murre

hear it?

the deafening weight of disappointment

the inaudible lightness of hope

a faint sound of lifeboats rusting

and from somewhere

an orchestra, laughter, dancing

~ ralph murre

White Bike at the Cross + Roads

Mentor to the midwest and publisher of Cross + Roads Press, Norbert Blei, recently sponsored a little event in the competitive sport of poetry writing, through his excellent Poetry Dispatch . Spur-of-the-moment, drop what you're doing and write a poem.  You can have a look at the results in his two most recent posts, "The White Bicycle" and "The White Bicycle II".  Some very good work here, and I'm happy to say that while my little piece didn't make the podium, it landed squarely among the best of the not-quite-ready-for-prime-time poems.  Good enough.  Here it is:

her white bicycle

the way she rode it

as much on clouds

as on concrete

as much from as toward

on a pavement of dream

the way I saw or didn't see

the way it didn't seem

she any longer needed me

to run along beside

the way the ride then

circled back in setting sun

the thing about a cycle

is the way it'll repeat

her white bike may come back

may lean up

again against my shack

who knows when a cycle

or circle is complete?

~ Ralph Murre

Blue Traveler

Steady, As Water

spring ice-out

the long lingered goodbye-ing

dusky dockside bar

Through air the color of the pigeons swimming in it (sulfur, foundry, tannery, coalpile, salt) and light as much from furnaces as from fluorescence in this backwater corner of a blackwater harbor, drunk with old wine and new love, the second mate swings up on deck; sleeps there. Tomorrow, there’ll be a farther horizon and, perhaps, a soaring bird without a name.

port-of-call

two perfumed letters

one from his wife

Sparse beard, watch-cap affectation, misfit among misfits, trickless coyote, would-be lone wolf, would-be sea dog; living and hating his dream, loving and hating its crew.  A woman here and there.  The threat of security, the security of the unknown.  Another day on the inland sea.  Another season.  The laughing gulls circling.

winter lay-up

irregular gait of sailors

friendly front street pub

~ Ralph Murre

VIII.

VIII.
I may go back to blues, back to blue-black times
when rhymes and little pills didn’t cure the ills.
Joy-killer realities, banalities like paying utilities –
but it’s so hard to paint in the dark – back to a fridge
of don’t-know glowing meats, rancid eats, few beers,
pickled herring, pickled beets, picking up the beat
of trash-can slam, picking up jobs of poor-I-am and
picking up women in good-night dreams, bad-night bars,
rusted cars in South-Side parking-lot wake-ups, staggering
to fourth-floor walk-ups, singing blue of our break-ups,
if we’re singing at all.
~ Ralph Murre

This is Verse VIII (if you haven't guessed) from my longish 15-verse poem, Psalms, from the book of the same name, still sometimes available from Little Eagle Press. Each verse is accompanied by one of my pen & ink drawings.

Of Desire

Wanted

That thing you wanted
Or I wanted you to want
That thing I gave

Was a little like the flower
I picked from the neighbors’
To give my mother and

That thing I wanted
Or you wanted me to want
I want still

Steal it if you have to

~ Ralph Murre

This one also appears in the Museletter, from the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets

Another Time

Another Time, Maybe

Wasn’t there a time when it all seemed o.k.?
Mantel clocks faithfully wound, maternity wards
thriving, Montgomery Wards thriving,
a Ford in the garage? An occasional world war
or mob lynching, the atomic removal
of a couple of cities far away,
a case of Schlitz in the cellar?

Wasn’t there this background music,
a bearded man conducting a thousand strings
and Dinah Shore and a summer of cicadas
in a Hollywood Bowl of Cherries?
Wasn’t it just swell? And didn’t you get
that orange box of Wheaties with Eddie Matthews
when your dad got the job at the gas station
after striking for a couple of years at Kohler?

Didn’t you shine your little shoes and put on
your little suit and snap your bow-tie
on the white collar and look up
the skirt of the angel costume on the stepladder?
And how hard was it to swipe a pack of Luckies?
Wasn’t there a time when feeling-up the Schmidt
girl in her pointy little bra was pretty good?

And wasn’t it great to go to art school
and draw nude models and swipe packs
of Gauloises at the Knickerbocker? And
wasn’t it great when your brother
let you come along to a park and build
a fort with his buddies and then
that old guy drove up and was real nice
and wanted to see your . . .
touch your . . . Oh, that’s right,
you can’t remember that, can you?

And wasn’t it fun the time you and Billy
put sand in the fuel tank of that bulldozer
and busted the windows out of that cabin?
And wasn’t it cool when you didn’t get drafted
and got to mess around with chicks
who burnt their pointy little bras?

And wasn’t it nice when Ike, in his gray suit,
and Mamie, in her navy blue dress
with the little white dots looked up from golf
and told us everything would be o.k.?
Wasn’t that nice?
And weren’t her gloves just so white?

- Ralph Murre

note: The picture was found on-line and digitally altered. The poem is from my Crude Red Boat (Cross + Roads Press)

Writer!

My congratulations to everyone concerned at "The Writer" magazine, which, with the April issue, celebrates its 125th anniversary! What lasts a century and a quarter?

The fact that a piece of my work is included in this publication is a matter of some pride, and I am sincerely grateful to Marilyn L. Taylor for including my poem, "April", in her Poet to Poet column, where I am in the good company of Annie Parcels, Bruce Dethlefsen, and a few others you may have heard of, i.e., A.E.Stallings, Elizabeth Bishop, and Emily Dickinson. The column this time takes a look at narrative poetry.

My contribution:

April

In boots near new from blue-
walled Harborside Resale shelf,
through mud snow crocus snow mud,
April walks down the crow-caw morning,
the dog-sniff morning, gathering
graveyard plastic flowers displaced
by storm and faded by sun
as she’s done this time each year,
and puts every one around granite grey
with his dying and carved with the life
of her long-ago Eddie who married another,
who married another, then left
early in a Chevrolet roar
at a hundred and more in fourth gear
it is said, of his leaving,
as old men grieve and drink to the dead.

~ Ralph Murre

Going Taupeless

Spring is officially here. Isn't it time you painted something? And by "paint", I don't mean beige, taupe, or ecru. A bolder shade of gray. Paint comes in colors, too. Real colors. Isn't your neighbor vacationing this week? Wouldn't this be the time to start? His house or yours.

~ arem

'88

From that granite you might have used
to mark my gravesite, carve instead a
short column too small to support your
carefully balanced weights of worry,
carve an orb to bowl over the top-heavy
tenpins of your fear, or just chip away
at that stone in your search for truth,
‘til only gravel remains. Scatter it along
the path you walk each day, and that
little pain in your heel can be in memory
of me. It is as much truth as I know.

~ Ralph Murre

Dream On

And Yet

I have walked the broken surface
of your roads
and heard commerce rattling by
I have seen the raven
dodging Dodges and Kenworths
and Cadillacs for his meal

. . And I have dreamed

I have cried the sour tears
of your skies
and tasted the acid in the rain
I have seen the gleaming trout
gulping amid baggies and Bayliners
and bargeloads of hybrid bounty

. . And I have dreamed

I have listened to Sunday sermons
from pulpits
and heard your gods denied
I have seen the holy men
begging for crumbs from the table
and going unfed and crazy

. . And I have dreamed

I have known the laughter
of children
and seen them by the yellow busload
going to their lessons
and rehearsals and recruiters
and heard the laughing stop

. . And yet I dream


~ Ralph Murre

In the spirit of Good Used Poems, here's an old one, previously published in Soundings, in Clark Street Review, and in Crude Red Boat (Cross+Roads Press)

Going Down With the Ship

What unreliable vehicles are poems. Even the great ones rarely take you where you want to go. Poet and reader alike can only sit idly by, hoping for the best. I suppose the reader can jump ship though, at the first sign of trouble, while the writer, like the good captain, must ride her down. ~ RM

March Fourth

Remind me -- what classic text was it, that in part read,

". . . and we'll march forth, trailing arbutus behind us . . ." ?

~ RM

Just Moonlight

The moonlight behind the tall branches
The poets all say is more
Than the moonlight behind the tall branches.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .~ Fernando Pessoa

It is just moonlight, there
as a god is just a god
a hummingbird just that
with its ruby throat
tall branches not really
reaching for the sky
just the moonlight, there

. . . . . .~ Ralph Murre

My thanks to poet Barbara Larsen, who passed along the Pessoa quote.