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