Another Memorial

Off Blackhawk Road

Blackhawk, old warrior

outnumbered by European starlings,

is that you, or your namesake,

perched high on that cottonwood branch?

Do you see me here on the land?

I think you’d still know it –

this path on this island of sand.

A creek still flows.

The deer still drink the cool of it.

But Blackhawk, hear the mourning dove mourn;

don’t fly back to that little lake.

In a hundred summers, the trees may return

that the damned fool clear-cut for a view.

Let his sons, for a hundred winters,

have nothing to burn.  Hell,

let his daughters freeze with them, too.

Or is that unkind, Blackhawk?

Too hawkish a thought for my mourning dove mind?

There’s a warning of chick-a-dee-dee.

Now, a racket of crows

and the waxwings wax alarming.

Can’t I relax?  After all,

a creek still flows

and the deer still drink the cool of it.

~ Ralph Murre

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

To the Wolves

Good advice from your Wisconsin DNR

To the Wolves

It’s always been a problem, this name; usually taken as a verb –
to Ralph, synonymous with “to hurl”. Not good to be named
for an act of regurgitation no matter how liberal your outlook.

But I’ve learned that Ralph also means “wolf counsel”,
according to the people who keep track of silver-lining meanings
in cloud-black names given to innocent children,

and “wolf counsel” is something I might have worked with
if I’d known – I might have taken a few wolves aside, for instance,
might have mentioned their ill-deserved reputation for eating people,

might have said, look – it’s against my counseling ethic to TELL
you to eat people, you understand,
but why have the name if you can’t play the game?

And then I might have named a few people they could start on,
which, of course, wouldn’t have been very professional of me,
but there are so many people and so few wolves

and some of the people eat Little Red Riding Hoods for breakfast,
and brown ones, and black ones, while wolves make do with mice.
And if I had known that Ralph means wolf counsel

I might have said, hey – the sheep’s clothing just isn’t you,
because I would have taken this counseling business very seriously
and I would have advised on fashion, as well as diet.

And I might have counseled against the use of the word “pack”,
because it has bad connotations, and I might have warned them
not to always be “at the door”, because that’s so cliché.

Sometimes, I think, they might want to be “at the window”.
And I might have mentioned that we can spot them from quite a distance,
even when they’re disguised as grandmothers.

And I would have done all of my wolf counseling pro bono,
because I like the sound of that, even if it doesn’t pay well,
and because I think they’d be impressed by my use of Latin,

even if my name is Ralph.

- Ralph Murre

from my book Crude Red Boat (Cross+Roads Press 2007)

Three Two One

Three Great Lakes, two mighty nations, and one aging and slightly quixotic gentleman astride his good motorcycle, Rozinante; that pretty much sets the stage and introduces the cast for the little play I gave for the last six days (two without rain!) and 1650 miles. Windmills encountered? Yeah, plenty of them now, but you want to think twice before charging at them. Have you seen the size of these things, up close? Still, I'm Netherlandish enough to love 'em. And while some are now being built offshore, I think they look and ARE rather benign compared with the other offshore energy misadventures going on. Made two very small and unavoidable purchases at BP stations on the trip; what can you do when your tank is low and the next gas available is fifty or more miles away? That's how it is in the North Country.

photographs of loons

show he's not the only one

in the rain today

~ Ralph Murre

I'm very proud to say that my poem "All Right" now appears in Mobius, the Journal of Social Change. Check it out (yes, that IS an order) at http://mobiusmagazine.com/

Ever Widening Gulf

A quick and (rightfully) dirty poem:

Ever Widening Gulf

In that gulf
where I tugboat-towed
so long ago
from the refineries
to the refined
in their finery
from the pineries
of the impoverished
grease for the palms
of the over-rich
forever
over-reaching their rights

My days
on that gulf
of life and delights
foreshadowed
times and crimes
that would not go
unpunished
my own lust for oil
part of the spoilage
part of the death
and the blight

Yet I vote
each time
to install
in the capitol
someone else
who will not
set it right

~ Ralph Murre

A Song for Our Times

I really don't care - BABY IT'S HOT OUTSIDE
we'll turn up the air - BABY IT'S HOT OUTSIDE
the climate has been - BEEN HOPING THE TEMPS WOULD DROP
so very nice - I'LL HOLD YOUR HANDS, I'LL PUT THEM ON ICE
Al Gore has started to worry - I'M PRAYING FOR A SNOW FLURRY
Ralph Nader is pacing the floor - LISTEN TO HILLARY ROAR
I'm gonna learn to like curry - THANK GOODNESS THAT YOU'RE NOT FURRY
well maybe just one gas tank more - CRAWL IN THE FRIDGE AND I'LL POUR

we won't go out there - BABY IT'S HOT OUTSIDE
we won't need underwear - BABY IT'S HOT OUTSIDE
I wish I knew how - THE SIDEWALK IS MELTING NOW
to break this spell - I'LL DRAW A BATH, YOU'RE STARTING TO SMELL
I oughta say no, no, no sir - WE WON'T EVEN NEED TO KEEP THE TOASTER
at least I won't drive fifty-five - WHAT'S THE POINT IN STAYING ALIVE
I really don't care - BABY DON'T BURN UP
OOOH, BUT IT'S HOT OUTSIDE

BABY IT'S HOT OUTSIDE!

-Ralph Murre

Planet Earth (Detail)

With every day's bad news, it's so easy to feel that the world is going to hell in a handbasket, and maybe it is, but I find some bit of peace by looking closer. Looking beneath the strata populated by humans. I look at the natural world, and I can not find evil. There are, of course, cataclysmic events throughout nature -- earthquakes and tsunamis, droughts and floods and hurricanes and wildfires and all the rest -- but there doesn't seem to be greed, and there is certainly no religion. As humans, some of us take pride in proclaiming that we are a species set apart, above all others. I won't argue with that belief, though I do not share it. It is true that we have powers to create good and bad on a scale that we haven't observed in other species.

But get yourself out of the man-made for just a bit; look at the square meter of earth beneath your feet, and understand that it is older and perhaps wiser, than the human race. Can I assign wisdom to dirt? Knowledge to rocks? Does the bit of dandelion fluff carried on the summer breeze know as much about a satisfying life as I do? Yes, yes.

Look up to the stars and look down to the dirt you sweep from your doorstep and know that they are the same and that you and your human brethren are the same, also. Believe whatever you do about who or what created all this, but don't build churches to convince others of your beliefs. Don't tell others they're wrong. You don't know. And if you don't know, why start a war? If you don't KNOW ( and I suspect that you've never been to heaven or hell ) why enslave yourself to an institution commanded by people who also don't know? Who are committed to destroying races of people who also don't know? I am not a nature writer, but I am an observer of the natural world, and if there is one lesson I've learned from my observations, it is that there is no religion in nature and it is religion that sets humans apart and causes the greatest sufferings. I am becoming a great believer in gods and spirits of all types, but I don't believe that they go to church.

Look to the dirt.

- Ralph Murre

The Sacred and the Sold-Out

A friend has gently chastised me for citing the sites of the sights photographed for this blog, or even hinting at the locales. She says that if I love these places, I will tell no one. This will sound pretty extreme to some, but she is right on the money. If you have lived in a beautiful place only to see it overrun -- even if the overrunners are wonderful people -- you will understand her concern. A few clues have been removed from the blog.

This business of vanishing wilderness and vanishing countryside is a fence that I've tried to straddle for a long time, with limited success. As a rural architect, my living has been earned by designing all the sorts of buildings which are gobbling up acreage and shorelines and encouraging people to visit once-wonderful places so that they can return to the city with a Chinese-made trinket and a pocket full of real estate brochures. I can rationalize, to myself and my ecologically aware friends, that if I hadn't done it, someone else would; and they might have been architectural boors.

I haven't done any commercial projects in a while, but have concentrated on home design, which seemed, somehow, less damaging. Still, the homes are marching over hill and dale, through the woods and up the beach. Everybody needs a piece of the pie, and then their appetites for pie increase, and they need bigger pieces, and more of them, and it occurs to them that they could make a tidy profit selling pie. (is anybody getting hungry here?)

Wouldn't it be just dandy if I could wrap this entry up with some clever solution -- some way to quench the thirst of the advantaged -- without wrecking the economy, either the nation's or my own? That would be nice, but I'll need to think about it. Meanwhile, I'll do my best to keep the secrets of the sacred places of solitude.