EL

chicago window
el train slicing grey morning
someone's life inside

~ arem

Guess what! More of my work, indeed some of my life, is featured on Poetry Dispatch! Forgive the overt enthusiasm, which is not my usual way, but this is a big deal for me. Please have a look at http://poetrydispatch.wordpress.com/2011/11/13/ralph-murre-crude-red-boat-psalms-the-price-of-gravity/

Staggering

To that ancient white-tail buck we saw Saturday, south of Manitowoc, who is almost surely somewhere else today. You touched us deeply, Old Deer. (He's hiding in plain sight in my drawing, above.)

Great Stag, staggering
beneath weight of your years
told in antlers
weight of injury or infirmity
told in your gait
come down through that grass
this light
this November light

Cross the county road
yes, yes
cross and stumble a last time
to drink a last cool drink
of Lake Michigan
of this gold and silver light
Safe home
Old Father
good night

~Ralph Murre

LETTER

An Open Letter to My Grandchildren

Hi, Kids ~

I’m not sure what your parents may have told you about some things, so I am writing to set the record straight. I do not want you to grow up without knowing the whole truth. For instance, why does Grandpa always seem to want a nap? The simple fact is that I am still very tired from the hard work I had to do as a boy. You know we had no PlayStation or GameBoy. We would build stations to play, but then they invented the railroad and they took our stations for that. We would catch wild boys in the forest hoping to play games with them, like maybe checkers, but the checkerboard was still just a distant dream of scientists, so our game boys would grow up and sell insurance or real estate, and we’d have to start over.

Of course, as you know, we had no TV. The letters “T” and “V” had not yet been thought up, which was true of most of the alphabet. We just called them our ABC’s, because that’s all we had. You could call a cab, but that was about it. And cabs were too expensive, so we had to walk everywhere. No, we had no TV, but we did have radios. The trouble with those early radios, though, was that they were steam-powered. If I wanted to listen to hear the weather report, let’s say, to see how many feet of snow I would have to walk through to get to school, I needed to get up at 3:00 AM to gather wood to build a big fire in the boiler of the radio, so there would be enough steam pressure to get a report by five o’clock. At this time, the rest of the family would arise and they’d all sit around the radio to warm up, while I’d make their breakfast.

Then, before school, it was time for my paper route. I would deliver the morning newspapers to all the people of the town, shoveling the sidewalks of the elderly and looking in on the infirm, many of whom I would nurse back to health before seven by butchering a chicken and making a nice kettle of soup with dumplings, which I liked to serve with a little arugula salad on the side. When I had time, I would do a few loads of their laundry and tell entertaining stories while I packed nourishing lunches for their little children. My schoolmates and I would have a few simple chores before classes could begin, but nothing much. Re-shingle the roof if it looked like rain. Install indoor plumbing. Re-decorate the teachers’ lounge. Things like that. We’d study hard for twelve to sixteen hours and head for home, after sweeping up and mopping the floors and getting fuel for the next day’s heating.

Back at home, I’d usually eat a cold supper while doing four or five hours of homework and I’d be ready to crawl into bed right after stitching up a few quilts to keep my brothers warm.

So, now you know the way it was.

Your loving grandpa,

~ Ralph Murre

Another Season

From Water

If you've slid
over frost-glazed strand
and rowed that shade of blue
past mapled crimson
in the cove she was moored,
if she rose and fell with a sigh
because the season
had grown thin as promises,
then you know, don't you,
something of life
and a little about death.
If she's cast rainbows
in the spray
and moaned with the lust
of wind and sea,
then you know something of dreams.
If you've taken her from water
and hid her away for the long winter,
you know something of sorrow.

~ Ralph Murre

I Tried

I tried to read the work of a poet,
but found he was not ready for me.
I’ve put his book aside
to give him time to prepare.
Perhaps, when I next take him
from the shelf, he will have
swept up and made the beds.
He will have weeded the gardens.
There’ll be freshly cut flowers
and the aroma of baking bread.
Perhaps he’ll offer me a
comfortable chair before launching
into his long and lofty talk.

~ Ralph Murre

an old one, first published in Free Verse (#81) and then in Other Voices (Cross+Roads Press)

a thought upon moongazing

my heart is about

the size of my fist

they tell me

but it holds more

doesn't let go

~ arem

Very excited to say that one of my latest pieces, "Stitches in Time", now appears (17 Oct.'11) on Norbert Blei's Poetry Dispatch in some very fine company. If you are not a regular follower of this compendium of all things poetic, you are missing one of the real wonders available on the internet. Check it out and tell me if I'm wrong. http://poetrydispatch.wordpress.com

Darkroom

Darkroom

I am feeling around
in a darkened room
trying to find
something sound
in my writing, art, life.
Sometimes a light
flashbulb brief and bright
illuminates the scene
but blinds the sight.
Did I catch a glimpse
of something real?
and did you see it?
and what does it mean?
and can it be right?

~ Ralph Murre

WIND

Like this morning, crazy with wind

Or just the other day, the bad roads
Even that time, and maybe it was long ago
When we all danced in circles

Take last night, what you said
Take the fire in the ring of rock
Take sun and rain, finally
Pulling frost from earth. A garden

Like falling in and out and in, again
Since the beginning and until
We are very, very old and
Maybe falling in and out, even then

The seasons, I mean, the leaves
The greening and the turning to gold
The rush of it like the sea pulling
The ice and streams of high mountains

Think of that water in the Pacific
Or the rain in Spain if you prefer
Or the little cloud that you are, driven

Like this morning, crazy with wind

~ Ralph Murre

first published in Verse Wisconsin and susequently in my book The Price of Gravity (Auk Ward Editions 2010)

after noon

good afternoon:

a woman in a chair

smiling her smile

~ arem

just ducky

minus orange feet

it arrives at my table

a l 'orange

~ arem

-

I must admit that I found the original photo of the duck on-line, and the photographer was not credited. I then did a bunch of processes to arrive at the digital duck seen above. Not certain of the ethics in this sort of theft . . . but, if it's your duck, thanks! ~RM

'round midnight

catastrophic

and hopeful

as midnight

what you did

or didn't

what you might

~ arem

Workers? Are there still workers?

In Labor

So, you’re still working, but they let you off for Labor Day, like the 4th, like Memorial day, and you have a coupla beers and you char something on the Weber, maybe listen to a ballgame, your team still in the cellar. Your cousin Jimmy comes over with his face-lifted tit-lifted wife and the Gameboy twins.
He drives a new Infiniti. It's gray. Nobody talks about labor except that of delivering the twins and there's some talk of her working on her tan. Your dad was in the strike of '52. Also the big one in '56. All summer.
You pick some tomatoes and corn from the garden. Get salt and pepper. They talk about the food at Aquavit and Blu. Your grandpa rode the rails in '35 and '36, stole chickens. They have to go. Country Day School starts tomorrow. Your grandma was in labor in the back of a Ford in '38. There's a union man talking in the park just a block away. Nobody listening. A skateboard goes by. The plant will close in 3 weeks. You fall asleep in a plastic chair from China, juice of summer harvest on your chin, a few clouds gathering.

~ Ralph Murre

Your Barred Window

In This Prison

I would be a blade of grass
near the wall of the yard
moisture of tears would nourish me
and I would give you my green

or a sparrow on the ledge
of your barred window
you wouldn’t need to feed me much
a few grains of your thoughts
and I would chirp
tales of the outside world

or a blue notebook
in the corner of your cell
I would offer a white page each day
and I would hold what you say
‘til you’re ready
to tell everybody else

because I don’t think you’re the type
to do much writing on the wall

or I might be a hacksaw blade
baked into chocolate cake
or a giant yellow bulldozer
carelessly left in the cellblock
ignition key in place

or maybe I would be the day
they realize their mistake
and set you free

~ Ralph Murre

An old one, first published in Free Verse and subsequently in my book Crude Red Boat (Cross+Roads Press 2007).

Locked

Learning Fractions

The urge to unite – beyond the biological,
beyond the congress that continues the species –
can be explained: there’s shelter and comfort
and good cooking and conversation.
Division is difficult, though, never mind
the cold feet. The becoming one-half of
what was one, the undoing what was done.
Parceling out the goods and goodness
fifty/fifty, or drawing and quartering
the bookshelves’ perfect order. The music –
my Unchained Melody, Your Cheatin’ Heart –
no, that was mine, this yours.
An old copy of Que Sera, Sera.
Now close and lock the doors.

~ Ralph Murre

and now, a story

The Language

So this medium-sized black bear walks into a bar (Lyle’s Dugout, just behind the ballpark, on 17th) and the bartender asks, “What’ll you have?”, and the bear, Lucien, orders a shot of blackberry brandy and a Hamm’s beer chaser. They get to talking, the bear and Rod, the bartender. Small talk at first, sports mostly. It depresses Lucien, who is upset about teams named for animals, particularly The Bears. The Cubs. He hates Chicago anyway, especially since a cop once roused him when he was trying to hibernate in an underground parking garage down near the Art Institute. “You’ll never catch me in that town again,” says the bear, “at least not in autumn.”

Rod sympathizes, being a Packer fan, but warns under his breath that his boss was born and raised in the Big Windy, and will tolerate no talk against it, no matter your species. “He threw out a lion just the other day for a remark about Mayor Daley. Hmmm . . . I dunno which Mayor Daley.”

“Well, I’d better drink up and get out then,” says Lucien, but Rod explains that Lyle’s in the back room, doing his books, and couldn’t hear over the music anyway (a polka, In Heaven There is No Beer, by Frankie Yankovic). He returns to polishing a few glasses and the bear moodily nurses what remains of his draft. Eventually, he asks for another round and says, “Tell me Rod, your people came from where? Poland maybe, Germany, the Czech Republic?”

“Oh, ya. Danzig, or Gdansk, or whatever the latest bunch in power decides to call it.”

“And you can speak the language?”

“No. Hell no. A dozen words, maybe. My grampa and gramma, they came over and they could speak a coupla languages, but no English. And then my pa, he wanted nothing to do with the old ways. The war and all. Nope – of course, I can cuss and ask for a few kindsa food – but that’s about it.”

“Yes. And you’ve got kids?”

“Five; mostly grown. And two grandkids already. Here, I got pictures.”

“Any of the kids know the language at all?”

“Just my daughter, Katrin. She learned in college, and then went to the old country for a semester. Looked up some family. There’s a lotta books . . .”

“That’s just it,” Lucien sighs deeply, as bears will, “there are a lot of books. Yours is a written language, rich in literature. You can skip a couple of generations and your kids can just go back to it any time they want. Learn it in college. Get credit, even.

“A bear, on the other hand, has only an oral tradition with which to connect. In this part of the world, we too felt the pressure to fit in. A lot of us chose not to be jailed in game preserves. Eventually, we stopped telling the old stories in the old language, and now there’s almost no one left who can teach our children, and many want to learn, want to say ‘I Am a Bear!’, but haven’t the words. A sad thing, and like you and your father, I am partly to blame. For too long, I tried to deny my Ursine nature, my very Bearness.

“Ah, but I gotta go,” says Lucien, standing to leave after a long pause, “baamaa pii.”

“Ya, later,” answers Rod, wiping another glass, “do widzenia.”

~ Ralph Murre

Quixote at Sea

photo by S. Auberle

So, after too many years off the water, but still thinking of myself as a sailor while riding my faithful motorcycle, Rozinante, I find a boat with the name Dulcinea emblazoned on her shapely stern. She's for sale. I buy her cheap. Last few nickels; a fixer-upper. I fix her up. All as it should be.

Together At Last
(a tale of quixotic satisfaction)

The moments are all around us
Momentous moments monuments of moments
In the water on the water of the water
My Dulcinea and I through the thick of the thinning moments
Sailing white on dark days and shadowy in sun
Ahhh the beauty and richness of our poverty
The wealth of our watery soup
The flavor of it in my little tarnished spoon

~ Ralph Murre

Sour Grapes?

Contestant

And at times in my heart there is a music that plays for me.
~ J.P. Donleavy

Yes, you too? You’ve heard it? Sometime snare of drum, penny-whistle, nickel-plate, quarter-note? Hum a few bars of a new tune; bring in a viola d’amore to this baroque adagio – unbroken, unbeaten, to play a song for a new season. It may be as well not to enter a poetry contest, a dance contest, a salon d’art.

clean-shaven young man
harsh light of the arena
the expectant crowd

Is it treason to suggest that in his condition blind ambition is deafening the inner ear? Competition is not improving the species, but robbing it of its art? Is it wrong to think that if he listens, if he hears that music deep within he can begin, at last, to write the score, to pen a few notes on a clean page? Is it outrage to suppose that not everyone has heard this rhythm, not everyone goes dancing to the same beat? Wooden hearts clicking like castanets for clay feet?

climbing the stairs alone
an oddly-dressed man speaking
another language

~ Ralph Murre
Sure, it's just a case of sour grapes, isn't it? After all, three pieces of my short fiction just went without notice in a competition. Yet, I'm not sure . . . earlier this year, I served as a preliminary judge for a prestigious poetry contest, and realized that someone with something truly original to say - or with a truly original way of saying it - would have a very difficult time. However, I put such a piece forward and it wound up winning the contest. So, am I putting down the idea of arts contests? No, I simply don't think they do much to engender the creation of anything new, and I think that's largely because most of the entrants don't want to take risks. Someday, we'll get into the discussion of the NEED for anything new, the NEED to take risks.

To Your Health

Love strong and fierce and long as you can;

the heart is a muscle, and needs exercise.

~ arem

Weighty Issue

The Price of Gravity

How much of this life do we own?
Payments are always coming due.
We are the ones who signed the papers,
but there’s something more,
there’s something that can’t be helped.
You and I look different
than we did in morning light.
Now we wade in lead boots
and gather no speed
away from this dead center,
or toward something brighter.
Which is to say away from here,
where the embers have dwindled.
Which is to say we can fly only
with the creatures of dreams,
if we can fly at all.
The dreams will become family,
the dreams will become clan,
scattered like dust among stars
in the cages of our ribs,
in the cages of our cries,
in our breath in the night.
Sometimes the dreams may be of falling
and cold earth rushing to us,
but, travelers now,
they’ll call us travelers,
amid the dust
and the stars
where we’ve known the dark eclipse,
and we’ve flown with
those creatures of dreams
between galaxies.
We won’t be in lead boots
once we’ve started to dream.
We’ll no longer make payments
on things that hold us down.

This is not the end of this poem --
something pulls at us forever.

~ Ralph Murre

This piece was first published in Iconoclast, and subsequently became the title poem for my latest book. (Auk Ward Editions 2010, littleeaglepress@gmail.com )

Reminder: as with all the graphics on the site, you can see the drawing in full-size by clicking on the image.

Inside Passage

I’m not saying heart of darkness, exactly,
but there is an un-named river descending
from a midnight in each of us,
an unlit flooding where no one dares.
There is an hour the bell does not toll.

~ Ralph Murre