Farewell to Moristotle & Co.

By Ralph Earle

Morris, congratulations on your many years of maintaining a healthy web community and providing a vibrant ecosystem for writers to share their best thoughts and imaginings with the public and with one another. You are wise to let go of it while it is still going strong, before you and it succumb to drudgery. I have greatly enjoyed the outlet you provided for many of my poems over the years, and the positive feedback I received from the community.

Copyright © 2023 by Ralph Earle

Love is the Only Entrance (a poem)

At Central Carolina Community College
Creative Writing Program, October 2015
[Ashley Memory: Exploring
the Joys of Creative Writing]

By Ralph Earle

[First published in The Way the Rain Works (Sable Books, 2015) and originally published here on May 15, 2018 by permission of the author.]

We descend into the rocky womb-like cave

where Zeus’s mother kept him secret from

devouring gods until his time arrived.

Our guide gives us candles. Later

we discover Eleusis, of the mysteries,

Masonboro Inlet (a poem)

Photo of author in his book
The Way the Rain Works, Sable Books

By Ralph Earle

[First published in The Way the Rain Works (Sable Books, 2015) and originally published here on May 8, 2018 by permission of the author.]

The jetty starts in a barely perceptible

uplifting of sand and extends

stone by stone into a jagged hem

of breakers that undulate in the distance.

Cheap Sacred Wine (a poem)

By Ralph Earle

[First published in The Way the Rain Works (Sable Books, 2015) and originally published here on May 1, 2018 by permission of the author.]

Pale green, pear-shaped
half-gallon wine bottle
layered with different-
colored seeds—millet,

For Ralph Earle on his 70th Birthday

In Remembrance of Half His Life Ago

By Moristotle

Ralph’s friend Judith Valerie occasioned my writing the poem below. I was on her distribution list when she notified no doubt scores of individuals who love Ralph to please contribute something to the collection she planned to read to him today. Her including me meant a lot, and I thank her for it.


April 4, 1986 – was that Ralph Earle’s first day
as a tech editor at IBM in Cary, North Carolina?
I’d like to think so, like to believe it was,
love it more if it really was the day I met
this extraordinary human being,
my colleague for several years in Cary.

Six Years Ago Today: Where the spirit lives

Bilingual dream work

By Ralph Earle

[Originally published on August 28, 2014.]






How we struggle to frame our dreams
in language not entirely familiar, dreams
of finding the way by car to the gathering,
or rolling secretly off a train
headed to the wrong town.

Independence Day in Bolinas (a poem)

By Ralph Earle

Precarious bungalows
cluster
on the headlands.

A big blonde girl
on a cell phone
on a skateboard

Looking Out the Window (a poem)

By Ralph Earle





The fading sky becomes a lake.
Slowly, sleep approaches.

Descending to the shore
I lean into the brittle smell of a pine

This Is No Sunset (a poem)

By Ralph Earle

This is a cloud avenue
so vast we lose ourselves
as under the vault
of a cathedral
in a crowd of haloed saints.

Running through the Dark (a poem)

By Ralph Earle










To pursue the shimmering molten twilight
without a thought for the dark flowing in,
my feet follow watercourse thoroughfares
through the moonlit vines and branches.
I do not judge the brightest spots as true,
trusting instead the crackle
of dry leaves underfoot. I cross the creek.
I climb the ridge, leaning steadily
into love, my scant path leading me on.

Copyright © 2020 by Ralph Earle

Joan Marie Knows Them All (a poem)

By Ralph Earle









I know a few: robins, starlings —
for the rest, the tenacious
deep deep peer-up peer-up peer-up
swelling shifting layer over layer,
teaberry teaberry teaberry teep
on the branch ch- ch- ch- ch- ch-
with the sky just barely not dark.

Computer Help with Ralph

By Ralph Earle

When I retired in 2017, I intended to devote more time to writing poetry, but also wanted to translate my three decades of computer experience into providing help for others. Talking with friends, I realized that unlike our children and grandchildren, many of our generation have little connection with the why’s and wherefore’s of how computers deliver email, social media, and videos. If anything goes wrong, we are as unlikely to fix it as we are to repair our increasingly computerized automobiles.

Chamomile (a poem)

Indy Week, March 27, 2002
[photo by Alex Maness]

By Ralph Earle

[First published in The Way the Rain Works (Sable Books, 2015) and republished here by permission of the author.]










Such elegant dry flowers, yellow-brown
and so delicate three years ago, when
I last tasted their good health. I hate
to let them go. I could tangle my mind

The Loneliest Liberal: Bon mots

By James Knudsen

Late May is that time of year when graduation fever is in the air. Caps, gowns, pomp, circuitous routes to a bachelor’s degree are all on the minds of parents and students alike. Having been a student until well into my mid-thirties, I can understand at least one side of this. More recently, I have become acquainted with the matter of financing education. Teaching at a community college, I have, on more than one occasion, had a student explain that their recent spate of absences was due to being homeless. And each semester I encourage students who are looking for a cause to take up the issue of textbook prices, because, make no mistake, it’s a racket. On the national level, the subject of college expensiveness has become a talking point for some. And on the very local level, for the fourth year, a Bon Mot Morris Knudsen Memorial Scholarship has been awarded.

Sweater Weather (a poem)

By Ralph Earle

[First published in The Way the Rain Works (Sable Books, 2015) and republished here by permission of the author.]




She had a flair for choosing
clothes that made me look good but
that winter after she moved out

Love is the Only Entrance (a poem)

At Central Carolina Community College
Creative Writing Program, October 2015
[Ashley Memory: Exploring the Joys of Creative Writing]

By Ralph Earle

[First published in The Way the Rain Works (Sable Books, 2015) and republished here by permission of the author.]










We descend into the rocky womb-like cave
where Zeus’s mother kept him secret from
devouring gods until his time arrived.
Our guide gives us candles. Later
we discover Eleusis, of the mysteries,

Masonboro Inlet (a poem)

Photo of author in his book
The Way the Rain Works, Sable Books

By Ralph Earle

[First published in The Way the Rain Works (Sable Books, 2015) and republished here by permission of the author.]











The jetty starts in a barely perceptible
uplifting of sand and extends
stone by stone into a jagged hem
of breakers that undulate in the distance.

Cheap Sacred Wine (a poem)

By Ralph Earle

[First published in The Way the Rain Works (Sable Books, 2015) and republished here by permission of the author.]


Pale green, pear-shaped
half-gallon wine bottle
layered with different-
colored seeds—millet,

Every Field of Paradise (a poem)

By Ralph Earle

[Previously published in StorySouth, Summer 2015, and in The Way the Rain Works (Sable Books, 2015). Republished here by permission of the author.]





In the moment between day’s
end and settling into sleep,
things that have broken
vanish in a glowing sphere

Give it up for Ralph Earle!

Four poems recently published

By Moristotle

Our friend and colleague Ralph Earle was recently honored to have three poems published in the online journal of poetry & art, Triggerfish Quarterly Review, Issue 19: 

• “Where Is She Going?,” 
• “The Small Kitchen Appliances Aisle” (my personal favorite), and 
• “What Becomes of the Strawberries,” of which reviewer Carla Schwartz wrote, it “is wonderfully mysterious and at the same time conveys a sense of longing and desire for love.”