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There's nothing more gratifying for a writer, I suppose, than to be read -- and to have a person or two in some way moved by the reading. A couple of years ago, I penned "In Dark December" which has been published here and there in print and on line, and which I've read at several events. Well -- people seem to like it and it's been spreading on the internet and by emails and now I get references to the piece from far and wide. Thanks to friend Kris Thacher for the above photo, showing the poem posted on the Poetry Pole on Candelaria Road in Albuquerque, New Mexico; a far piece from my digs in Northeast Wisconsin. Sometimes, I think, a piece of writing can be bigger than its author, and that's certainly how I feel about this poem. Grateful to have had my pen on paper -- my hook in the water -- when this one came swimming by. Grateful, too, for the friends, new and old, who have helped keep this alive. ~ RM
In Dark
December
by
Ralph Murre
Whatever
you believe,
whatever
you do not,
there
are sacred rites
you
must perform
in
dark December.
Do
this for me:
Pull
together
the
kitchen table,
the
folding table,
and
that odd half-oval
usually
covered
with
bills and broken pencils
and
red ink.
Pull
together family and friends,
cool
cats and stray dogs alike.
Turn
off everything
except
colored lights,
the
roaster,
the
toaster, the stove.
Cook. Bake.
Eat.
Yes,
even the fruitcake.
Eat,
crowded around
those
assembled tables
with
mismatched chairs.
Reach
so far
in
your sharing
that
you hold the sun
in
one hand,
the
stars in the other,
and
no one between is hungry.
Now
walk together,
talk
together,
be
together
on
these darkest nights.
Give
and forgive.
Light
candles and ring bells.
Sing
the old songs.
Tell
the old stories
one
more time,
leaving
nothing out,
leaving
no one out
in
the long night,
leaving
nothing wrong
that
you can make right.
~
first published in Peninsula Pulse
