Scout's Honor

artwork: ralph murre

Scout’s Honor

by Ralph Murre

Merit badges for tying knots -

the bowline, the sheepshank, the clove hitch.

Merit badges for whittling the likenesses

of dead presidents and woodland animals, and

of course, for assistance given to the feeble

in their never-ending quest to cross the road.

Maybe they should keep handing them out.

The badge for showing up every day

right down to the day they tell you

not to show up tomorrow.

A merit badge for the day

your infant son needs major surgery.

Another for that day he’s grown

and buys his first motorcycle.

Badges for each of your daughter’s tattoos

and piercings. Diamond insets

if you can’t really mention what’s been pierced.

A merit badge, or, at least, a colorful neckerchief

as your party loses another one.

( But it could be taken back if you move to Canada.)

Bronze medals for burying parents.

Silver for friends.

You’d rather die than win the gold.

A merit badge and letter of commendation

the day you actually give up your abuse

of anything, or anyone.

And a little badge of semi-precious material

for every day that you get out of bed

and wear a brave costume.

One for that confident smile on your face

as your knees tremble beneath the table.

            ~ previously published in Crude Red Boat

               (Cross + Roads Press)

Another Time, Maybe

artwork: ralph murre

Another Time, Maybe

by Ralph Murre

Wasn’t there a time when it all seemed o.k.?

Mantel clocks faithfully wound, maternity wards

thriving, Montgomery Wards thriving,

a Ford in the garage? An occasional world war

or mob lynching, the atomic removal

of a couple of cities far away,

a case of Schlitz in the cellar?

Wasn’t there this background music,

a bearded man conducting a thousand strings

and Dinah Shore and a summer of cicadas

in a Hollywood Bowl of Cherries?

Wasn’t it just swell? And didn’t you get

that orange box of Wheaties with Eddie Matthews

when your dad got the job at the gas station

after striking for a couple of years at Kohler?

Didn’t you shine your little shoes and put on

your little suit and snap your bow-tie

on the white collar and look up

the skirt of the angel costume on the stepladder?

And how hard was it to swipe a pack of Luckies?

Wasn’t there a time when feeling-up the Schmidt

girl in her pointy little bra was pretty good?

And wasn’t it great to go to art school

and draw nude models and swipe packs

of Gauloises at the Knickerbocker? And

wasn’t it great when your brother

let you come along to a park and build

a fort with his buddies and then

that old guy drove up and was real nice

and wanted to see your . . .

touch your . . . Oh, that’s right,

you can’t remember that, can you?

And wasn’t it fun the time you and Billy

put sand in the fuel tank of that bulldozer

and busted the windows out of that cabin?

And wasn’t it cool when you didn’t get drafted

and got to mess around with chicks

who burnt their pointy little bras?

And wasn’t it nice when Ike, in his gray suit,

and Mamie, in her navy blue dress

with the little white dots looked up from golf

and told us everything would be o.k.?

Wasn’t that nice?

And weren’t her gloves just so white?

~ first published in the Peninsula Pulse

The Sky is Full of Bluebirds

artwork: ralph murre

The Sky is Full of Bluebirds

but not everyone can see them

so they think it’s just a blue sky,

and at night, when it’s all crows  –

well, you know.

And early and late

come the cardinals and tanagers,

but don’t try to explain that

to just anyone.

There are gray birds, too.

~ Ralph Murre

first published in Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar

en Febrero

en Febrero

by Ralph Murre

What can St. Valentine have known about it,

having never met you ?

His notion of love incomplete,

his idea of dinner just a salad,

a small glass of Chablis.

What has a saint to say of love,

that he can remain saintly ?

I’ve known the meat,

the rich sauce,

the Burgundy dark of you,

the fruit, the sweet, the dessert of you.

I’ve snifted your brandy,

been warmed by your fire,

seen you in the light of green candles.

You diminish my chances of sainthood

and I shall dwell in the house of our love

forever and ever.

Goodness and mercy.

Amen.

~ previously published in Wind Where Music Was

   (Little Eagle Press)

In Labor

photoart: ralph murre

In Labor

by Ralph Murre

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.

~ first appeared on the Arem Arvinson Log

Travel Writing

artwork: ralph murre

Travel Writing

by Ralph Murre

Let’s not think of the car with no brakes at all.

Or the Studebaker the color of the dawning

of a very bad day, followed across Utah

by the blue cloud of its oil habit.

Let’s not think of its demise

in the cold of Colorado winter.

Let’s not think of the crashes in the old red Saab.

And not about the silvery Saab’s breakdowns

in Missouri or any of those in Wisconsin.

Not about pick-up trucks in ditches.

The Fourth-of-July Dakota incident.

Let’s not think of the green-and-white Ford

in a California junkyard, parts of its engine

missing.

A motorcycle lying in the gravel of Ontario.

My Rozinante loaded on a truck

in the Michigan morning.  Without ceremony.

We could also not think of the Illinois Tri-State

transmission trouble.  The fast lane.

And, by all means, let’s try not to think of hitting

anything

at seventy-five in the froggy-green Saturn

under the Hunter’s Moon of the big western sky.

Let’s not think of the mustard-colored Datsun.

Or vehicles built in England.

Let’s not think of Florida.

Or Boston.

Oh, Jesus, let’s not think of driving in Boston.

~ first published in Verse Wisconsin

Note:  As I posted this poem a few days ago, it felt appropriate to treat the City of Baked Beans and Banned Books with a bit of levity.  Today, in the wake of the tragic explosions there, I can only attempt to express my sympathy for the victims, for the city, and for an increasingly terrorized world.        ~ R.M.   4/15/13

Second Thoughts, a call and response

cover art: kenneth koskela

On Second Thought

by Ralph Murre

You know that conversation where they ask

who you want to be with on an island,

and you say Gandhi or Walt Whitman

or Slim Whitman or Penelope Cruz

or, maybe, a guy with a big    boat?

Well, nuts to that –

I want to be with the person

who first put a snooze-button on an alarm clock.

I want to be with the person

who first put an eraser on a pencil; that little,

curved, undo arrow on my computer screen.

I want to meet the guy who invented reverse.

Wouldn’t it be pretty good to meet the person

who figured out what to do

when you’d put too much salt in the soup?

I want to be with the person who found the antidote

for some kind of snakebite,

and I want that person to like me very much.

I want to be able to change my mind

if this person plays banjo or prefers Lite beer.

I won’t get all Henry VIII about it,

but I want to be able to change my mind.

On ‘On Second Thought’
by Amy Murre Klemm

Yes, my uncle –

These are all well and good –
and you’ve got me wondering why
it is always one,
What are the chances of just one?

But if it must be, if that’s the game,
and if like you say we can’t choose
the guy with the boat or the
one with a good shortwave radio or the
genius with a matter transporter or the
mama who can change you right quick
to one of the mer-people,

then it is time to ponder.

Your second set may well be better, for
Would Gandhi be too political, even way out there?
Would Walt be forever after your favors?
Would Slim yodel endlessly for help?
Are we sure of Penelope without her makeup?
Of Penelope at all for real?

Instead you want the innovator,
the second chances and thoughts,

And just so,
I believe I want the escape artist,
not the magician, but the pleasure artist,
the master of stupid and lovely acceptance.
The ancestor of all those who say, Ah,
Well, fuck it –
He who first said, Nah, I ain’t shook.

The master horticulturalist,
the builder of stills,
one who can stay alive but not too much engaged,
and teaches it well.
Falling ass-backward into fresh water and
simple little foods as elsewhere
he might have into money,
reminding you that you’re fine.

I want the guy who first decided on
staying up all night drinking and
sleeping past noon,
who will ask me, with real lidded eyes,
What else do you have to do today?

The inventor-of-the-hammock type,
the discoverer of naps in the shade.
A builder of great fires. A dancer. A drummaker.

The bather in springs,
the gazer at horizons.
Quite possibly a tamer of small friendly animals.

Not one to panic when our hair gets growing
out of control, when our noses burn a little red.
The one who says, with a tip of the head, and
not long after you’ve washed up on the shore,
Well –
here we are.
So what do we do
while we wait?
and smiles,
and passes you a bottle,
or a little rollie, or both.

I wouldn’t even balk at the banjo.
Might even help him carve a rocking chair
for the porch on the little shack we’d build,
not too quickly or too well.

~ these two pieces first published as a pair,

  a call and response, in The Cliffs “soundings”

In Dark December

artwork: ralph murre

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       

Part of the Deal

Part of the Deal

by Ralph Murre

was that you owed a good death.

Whether you were a good guy

or not, you had to die right.

If I came out from behind

something and pointed my finger

and said bang! before you did

and cried gotcha, you might

say no y’didn’t or gotcha

first y’dirty Nazi,

but in the end, we all had to die

with awful groaning and kicking

and many spasms and rolling

back of eyeballs and ultimately,

as anybody who’s ever seen

a dead guy knows, the tongue

must protrude, skewed

from a corner of the bluish lips.

And then, you had to stay

really still and painfully contorted

‘til you got bored and came back

to fight again or play red rover.

But it was not part of the deal

in the bang-you’re-dead wars

of South Sixth Street

that you got your balls shot off

or came back to play

wheelchair red rover.

Nobody on our street said

bang-you’re-screwed-up-for-life

the way it happened when some

of us fought on other streets.

No amputees on Sixth.

No psych ward on Ohio Avenue.

~ first published in The Cliffs “Soundings”

The Price of Gravity

artwork: ralph murre

The Price of Gravity

by Ralph Murre

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.

~ first published in Iconoclast

Was There a Poem?

artwork: ralph murre

Was There a Poem ?

by Ralph Murre

In her dark hands that milked cows and made lace,

hands that fixed tractors and wiped tears?

A poem in the dark hands

that built houses and kept them, that worked the earth

and folded to a heaven she was sure of ?

Hands that hammered out justice and

handed out calloused caresses;

those hands that labored at the piano,

but changed flat tires with ease?

Was there a song in her dark eyes

that laughed easy, but cried hard;

eyes that saw good wherever it hid?

Eyes that struggled in darkness

to read the verses and read them again

until she saw light in the words?

A song in the dark eyes that bid me welcome,

the colorless eyes that I bid good-bye?

Was there a portrait in her dark face?

- first published in Crude Red Boat (Cross + Roads Press)

PRAYERS OF OLD MEN

photo: john brzezinski

Prayers of Old Men
by Ralph Murre

I’ll bet you think the old men
are praying to be young men
with young lovers, but
they kneel now beside your bed
and pray for the things young men
haven’t heard of yet –
the high plateaus of you
and the rivers rushing
to the deep sea of you.
Old men pray for height and depth
and the quivering leaf of your ear
touched by a tongue,
for that quiet cove of you
where they may lie sheltered
for one more evening.
They pray for the light
of sunrise in your eyes
and they pray to believe
in whoever they pray to,
for they want to believe in everything,
because believing in nothing didn’t work.
And they pray for the touch of you on me.
They’re all praying for you and for me,
the high ground of you towering
above me, and the river,
they’re praying now for the river of you,
and they’re praying for me
to go adrift in the river
. . .to the sea of you,
. . .to the sea of you,
praying I’ll be lost at sea in you
and they’re secretly praying
that this storm will drown me
in the depths of you,
because they are old men
and they know I am a sailor,
and they know that drowning
is the only way for sailors
to get home.

~ first published in Iconoclast