Against the Wall

Endorsement

However fine are their qualities

and however fine ours may be,

if we empower as leaders

those bought and sold,

we, too, are bought and told

that this is the golden-

hued freedom we dumb

bastards fought for

and all the bleeding was for naught

and the dying fools.

We are buying that it’s cool

to sell the nation to the corporation,

build more jails, close more schools.

We can all just stay tuned

to the one station that broadcasts

the coronation, see the placement,

on that paid-for head,

of our crown of jewels.

~ Ralph Murre

Observations on Earth Day

Starlings in America

The watchman stood alone on his blue hill

and watched, then, as he does now.

Saw them coming.

A few Vikings, some kook in a coracle.

He saw three ships come sailing in

from Spain.

They traded trinkets for coconuts and corn,

traded pox for potatoes.

A syphilitic wife will change your life.

The sun rises and the sun sets.

Their God was nailed to a tree

where they could keep an eye on him.

They brought original sin, brought a savior

and took silver, brought guns and took gold.

Brought alcohol, took tobacco.

They brought ponies and plunder,

were crazy for beaver

and a quick way to China.

In time, they brought steel and steam.

A steel knife will change your life, too.

The sun rises and the sun sets.

They brought bulldozers and drag-line buckets.

Tore the Earth.  Tore the Good Earth.

Put it on Mr. Peabody’s coal train.

  

Brought languages,

took languages away.

Brought starlings.

Brought Studebakers and Scotch Tape.

Duct tape and red tape.

They brought refrigerator magnets,

scotch and soda, the cotton gin, wrinkle –

free polyester.  Bourbon and Bud Lite and

a bomb that bloomed in the desert.

They taught children to hide under desks.

Atomic strife will change your life.

The sun rises and sets.

Edsels come and Edsels go.

The watchman stands alone on his blue hill.

Do not be hopeful,

he calls out at last,

but do not be without hope.

They brought Schubert.

~ Ralph Murre

A Funny Thing . . .

A funny thing happened on the way to the podium.  As the result of a process totally mysterious to me, I have been named poet laureate of Door County, Wisconsin.  While I was sure that this was some gross miscalculation or simply a hoax, apparently the county board didn't get the joke, and I was installed yesterday at the board meeting.  Another funny thing:  Flu.  I haven't been sick for years, but the night before my big moment, I was struck, hard, by some nastiness.  I could not attend.  Luckily for me, the out-going and outgoing laureate, Estella Lauter, said a few very kind words on my behalf and read the poem I had written for the occasion, an imperative piece which is as much a note to myself as to the assembled board.
In awe of the three who have held this post before me; Frances May, Barbara Larsen, and Estella Lauter, I humbly submit:

To the Duly Elected,

the newly elected, and those selected

to serve many times before –

I ask you to speak for the farmer as he tills,

for the builder as he builds.

Speak for the bagger of groceries

and speak, please, for the trees.

Speak loudly to save quiet places.

Speak, too, for the ferryman,

the fisherman, the schools of fishes.

Remember the one who taught you to read.

Remember the ones who wash dishes.

Be strong for the weak, the unhealthy.

Speak up for those in need.

Speak up for the artist and the scene she paints.

Speak, please, for the creek.

Be wary of saints and the wealthy.

Speak out against greed.

Speak for the nurses and nursery-men.

Represent those who scrub floors.

Represent those who pull weeds.

Speak for the firefighter, the all-nighter cop,

speak for the crop in the field.

Listen to the one who voted against you.

Listen to the wind in the night.

Listen to your heart when it says to stand fast,

listen close when it tells you to yield.

~ Ralph Murre

Je suis, aussi

artwork: ralph murre

je suis ecrivain

je suis iconoclaste

je suis artiste

je suis chaque homme

je suis, aussi, charlie

~ 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

Islands

Islands

No man, you tell me, but everyman, I tell you,

and woman and boat, every Wisconsin farmhouse

and apartment in the Bronx; an island.

That blue circle of horizon, the dangerous passage,

those days the ferry cannot cross from my shores

to the quiet cove of yours.  The sea between.

~ Ralph Murre

That's the little tug Neverwas in my sketch above, departing Rock Island, Wisconsin, in the early afternoon of long ago, and getting a friendly wave from an unidentified guest at the Thordarson Boathouse, where Sharon Auberle and I were recently privileged to read to a sizable and receptive audience from our book Wind Where Music Was.  Headliner on the program was ferryman Richard Purinton, who was introducing his Thordarson and Rock Island, an absolute "must read" for anyone interested in the history of the region and the biography of the man.  I predict that this wonderfully researched volume will be the standard text on the topic for a long time to come.     ~ RM  

Alignment

One Day at Stonehenge

pretty much like another

the August sun

and over there

a couple

making promises

beyond a prayer

and praying

for something fortuitous

in this once

in their lifetime

alignment of stones

and stars

and over there

the gods

and all

the rest

~ Ralph Murre

Destiny

Sweets

There’s a guy on the radio

singing about Sweet Destiny

as though she’s bringing

something more palatable

than the just desserts I see.

     Could be.

          Could be.

Soon enough, I guess

we’ll be at Destiny’s table.

Don’t rush me

toward that sweet reward.

~ Ralph Murre

Pleasant

At his memorial

how pleasant we all are

dressed nice

a glass of wine

the blue of the sky

these shimmering women

this sultry day

almost as if

these fine shirted men

this striped awning

just as if

on a holiday

as if he'll be in

the Adirondacks

for the summer

Europe,  maybe

Bon Voyage!

how pleasant

~ Ralph Murre

It may be too much, all this going on for the passing of one friend.  I'd promise to stop soon, but I may not keep that promise.    ~ RM

Fractured

“frig da freakin’ frackers”

I heard said

as townfolk gathered

at their poisoned well

“we’ll make some bucks

on natchral gas

but owe it

to dem crackers

what’s got

drinkin’ water to sell”

~ ol’ uncle ralph

Another Year

Running Things

Another year
Another chance to get it right
To do the things I shoulda done
Tear down that fence I built
Quit the party
Let running things run

Another wave rolls up the beach
Tumbles stones
Polishes what survives
Shorebirds -- hungry -- rush
Consume the dazzled on the sands
End the safe, crustacean lives

Another day
Another chance to see the light
To see the clouded, rising sun
Copper flame in pewter bowl
Embrace the certain, coming toll
Or be a running thing, and run

~ Ralph Murre

An old one, from my first book, Crude Red Boat (Cross + Roads Press)

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)

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

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

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.

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.

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