the poet, at seventy, observes

and the aged

   discuss at length

 their aging

   the raging pains

and nagging

   the sagging

and the gravity

   their long-lost

youth,  naïveté

   as though

there was forever

   to converse
they heed

   no call for terse

nor feel a need

   for brevity

~ ralph murre

small talk

Little Eagle Press

~ proudly presents ~

small talk

A fine, new book of the shorter poems of Bruce Dethlefsen,

past Poet Laureate of Wisconsin.   Here’s your chance to see what a terrific writer can say in ten lines or less, and to see why Little Eagle, always very selective, jumped at the chance to publish this jewel of a manuscript.  There’s a lot of wry humor in these 92 pages, as well as good doses of poignancy and pathos.  Add a liberal sprinkling of the drawings of Ralph Murre, and we feel you’ll agree that this is a winning text.

a sample:

1950

at night

my mother bathed me in a white tub

scrubbed me with white soap

rubbed me in a white towel

hugged and plugged me

into pajamas and the white sheets

an act so kind

so common

it barely even happened

small talk can be ordered directly from the author

Bruce Dethlefsen

422 Lawrence Street

Westfield, WI   53964

at $15. per copy, plus $3. for shipping & handling.

( For shipping fees on orders of multiple copies, please

email:  poetdethlefsen@gmail.com )

all it has to be

this river

is not long

nor swift

nor all that deep

but it flows true

from dream to dream

and it’s all it has to be

and it does all a river needs to do

~ ralph murre

Gone Blind -- Arvinson Log post # 600

Gone Blind  (2014)

                                                                                            

Justice! they cry

What’s it mean? sez I

ain’t it just another name for revenge?

She’s often portrayed

as a blind chick with a sword

as untoward as blind rage

or blind drunk on a binge

Oh, she looks good

sittin’ here on this page

but she lights fires, you know

and if we’re not burnt

we’ll be singed

To invite her

we’re gonna need courage

let us try

one more time

for courage

Justice! they cry

Save me from it, sez I

or I and my kind

will swing in the breeze

and a lonely trumpet play

and the harpies will

tug at our flesh

‘til sometime late in the day

if anyone knows

that we aren’t on our knees

begging the unknown in the sky

begging, please

Let us try

one more time

for courage, for courage

Let us try

one more time

for courage

For I and my kind

by choice have gone blind

and our names

are signed to the checks

and our names are in the fields

of oil and blood

and our spirits

are dragged through the mud

as Old Glory waves

and we salute the ones

who send children

We salute, and dig graves

for our children

Let us try

one more time

for courage

Justice! they cry

but does she ever forgive?

And if it’s an eye

for an eye

how will grandchildren live?

Just look at her there

Sweet Justice – how fair

though she seems only to care

for the sound of alarms

It takes courage, too

to not take up arms

it takes courage to say

Let her go, now

we’ll start new

let us try

one more time

for courage

~ Ralph Murre

at evening

western

could I be

a sundown man

enfold you

unfold you

the colored rays

of our shining

the western sky

at evening?

~ ralph murre

as Mardi Gras approaches

Delta Blues

There, on the edge of the shelf,

in the sad and beautiful frames of generations,

the black and white portraits of us,

the sepia of our flesh,

the glisten and the dance.

There, the mouth of Old Man River

speaks to the sea of a continent stolen,

but Mother Ocean says, “Africa –

I’m here for her children. Europa –

I’m here for her children.  And Asia’s,”

she says.  There,

where those two meet day in and out,

night after night, in throes

of love and fight and blows

of gods of wind, there

in a mixed-blood flood,

she takes away a few of those

she’s brought on her broad back,

but carries them now in her womb

from that Crescent City where the water

rises above the tombs.

“Shall we gather . . .”, sings the old man,

“On that beautiful shore . . .”, says the sea.

~ Ralph Murre

The Grandfathers

the grandfathers
their hands flinty with work
reaching down to take mine

smell of oil and liniment and wool
smoke rising
snow falling

their heavy shovels
and plaid coats
the names of old countries


~ Ralph Murre

If that sounds like an old one to any of you, well, it is.  Kinda.  In the spirit of revise, revise, revise, I boiled a fair to middlin' nineteen lines down to nine, and I think I like it even better. If I keep going this way, someday, I'll say nothing at all, and that may be best.   ~ RM

In That House

In That House

". . . any room was full       

of such choreography . . ."

~ Michael Ondaatje

each of the chambers

of his heart

held a dance

his inner ear

a symphony

the optic nerve

told of roses

and rose windows

remembering that day

in that far away

when her eyes whispered

maybe

and still

after

the quick step

of all these

yesterdays

a waltzing

and that fox

still trotting

the way she does

in that house

full of the choreography

of whispered

yes

~ Ralph Murre