PS. As far as his indomitable spirit...I am pretty sure that -- as usual -- *I* am taking the news harder than Tim, himself.

My thanks to everyone again for your good wishes and prayers. Obviously the Mayo assessment is far grimmer than Fargo's, a death sentence. They will do well to keep me going for a year. My brother, a serious Ashtanaga yogin, says my attitude is the best resource I can bring to this, and this new sonnet, my best poem of 2018, perfectly conveys my feelings. Tim

Distance

I like men who have distance in their stare,
seeming sometimes far off as on a hill
scanning horizons where they’re taking care
of herds or fields or planning their next kill,

sailors who venture far from sight of land,
climbers who summit far from the nearest town,
leaving tree line below simply to stand
nearer God’s throne, the sunset on His crown

alpenglow. I have seen clouds of angel wings
lenticular or cumulus sweep peaks
in the high Rockies. For love of wind that rings
in rigging, I’m one who listens as he seeks,

who stands confronted by this cancer scare
like an old trekker greeting a grizzly bear.

Yes indeed. The soft eyed stare. My best wishes Tim rage, rage my friend I am sending you a signed first of Murray's.

Regards,

Jan

Keep that attitude, old trekker.

Bravo, Tim. Fine sonnet. Keep trekking and keep that distance in your stare. All best wishes,
Gregory

Tim, your sonnet Distance touches me deeply. Beautifully envisioned. I will save this one for the day...
x
x

Tim!
 

I haven't visited the 'sphere for far too long and so I just encountered this news. The sonnet is marvelous, Tim, and I hope you will keep being inspired, and inspiring us, for a livelong while.

Tim

I posted twice, and this won’t delete, so sending more love!

Charlotte

Dear, dear Tim,

I too have been a bit absent from Sphere in recent months, and I heard about this thread and your news from another Sphere member. I’m so sorry to hear about it all, but I’m also in awe of your indomitable spirit— which actually doesn’t surprise me. Keep up the joyous outlook, though I know that can be difficult. Feel free to slump sometimes! Just know that I and many others are thinking of you and care about you. Loved your sonnet!

And thank you Jennifer for everything you’re doing.

With love,
Charlotte

Here's to hope and affirmation even amid the worst circumstances:

1996 Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award
Winner: “The Track of the Storm” by Timothy Murphy
Final Judge: Anthony Hecht

The Track of a Storm

Bastille Day, 1995

We grieve for the twelve trees we lost last night,
pillars of our community, old friends
and confidants dismembered in our sight,
stripped of their crowns by the unruly winds.
There were no baskets to receive their heads,
no women knitting by the guillotines,
only two sleepers rousted from their beds
by fusillades of hailstones on the screens.
Her nest shattered, her battered hatchlings drowned,
a stunned and silent junko watches me
chainsawing limbs from corpses of the downed,
clearing the understory of debris
while supple saplings which survived the blast
lay claim to light and liberty at last.

Best wishes, Tim, whatever your wishes may be.

My thoughts are with you, Tim.

Thanks again to all for prayers and best wishes. Clive Watkins and David Anthony, thanks again for your warm hospitality on that book tour eighteen years ago. I am incredibly blessed to have Jenny Reeser as my literary executor (and Alan's.) She has more moxey than any young poet I've ever known.

NDSU Press and I will immediately turn to a Collected Poems, an enormous affair. Through-printed, rather than a poem per page, it will exceed 1000 pages, and I can't tell you how many poems I have executed with my little Thompson .410 pistol. It will contain fourteen individual collections and most of my Charles Beck woodcuts as internal covers of its books, so it will be a very handsome affair. I meet with my editor February 1.

I'm glad people liked Distance, probably the best poem of the new year.
Last Poems is now fifteen pages long, and it begins with this.

Prayer for the Farmers

Tonight I add a fourth chapter to prayer.
I pray first for the ministries of priests
who serve me at their sacramental feasts
and showed a way back from my black despair.

I pray next for the sick, for I am one,
an aging man with badly injured shoulder
who hopped so nimbly once boulder to boulder,
though thank God I can still shoulder a gun.

Third, for my worthy friends who knew not God,
I hope they’ve passed the Gates. Arriving thence
may they behold Christ’s radiant countenance.
Ogling the angels may they all be awed.

Fourth, I shall pray that every farmer thrives,
beginning with the five audacious Millers,
masterful farmers all and skillful tillers
of land the Lord leases them for their lives.

As usual I route these prayers through Mary.
This death sentence I have received from cancer
to which doctors and shamans have no answer
is a small, final cross that I must carry.

Each of us has a rough-shod race to run.
Care for us, Lord, and let Thy will be done. 

For me our meeting in Grasmere in 2002 was stimulating and highly memorable and had for my writing life unforeseen and uplifting consequences. So it was good to meet you again the following year in West Chester - and as a result to meet so many other fascinating people, such as Catherine Tufariello, Gregory Dowling, Pete Fairchild, Deborah Warren, Joe Harrison and above all Anthony Hecht - none of which would have been possible without your encouragement and support. You know I am not religious, Tim, but you are in my thoughts.

Clive

Tim, I'd like to join my thanks to Clive's.

When I posted my first sonnet (the second poem I ever wrote) on TDE with quivering heart, you came on first and praised it, saying (I'll never forget your words) that I'd been "waiting in the weeds". I assume to this day that this is a duck hunting metaphor?

The encouragement you gave that day to a raw beginner made a world of difference, and helped bring me to a path that, by following it faithfully, changed my life forever.

Thank you, Tim. And may it be a great adventure.

Cally/Chrissy

They ask themselves: "What will Jenny think when I go all tribal on her in my poetry?"

Five stars from Jennifer "Tired Blood" Reeser :o

JTBR

For a minute there I thought he said "more money". I didn't think that was true.:)

Two new Norse dreams came, so that's what Jenny is referring to by "all tribal on her." We have a plan. The femur is a crisis, a twig ready to snap. The week following next, an orthopedic oncologist will insert a metal rod through the marrow, knee to hip, perhaps even do a hip replacement.

Radiation, which requires five day bursts, will start soon in Fargo.

Chemo: Mayo wants me to participate in an experimental trial combining chemotherapy and immunotherapy. This will require a trip every two weeks for two months. Then they will pet scan me and see if it's working. I'm going to do it. My great personal physician is delighted that I shall participate in the trial.

Cancer in three places, very malignant; friends, the situation couldn't be more dire. But as my brilliant young oncologist said, "We can't cure this, but we can control it." He must be brilliant to make it from Mumbai to Rochester, Minnesota.

The new book, Last Poems, begun on my birthday January 10, is 27 pages. I meet with my editor Thursday to plan the New and Collected, probably a four volume monster, 1400 pages. We will through print it like the Big Boys though, not a poem a page, and that will bring it down to about 1000 pages, I guess. 14 of my Charles Beck woodcuts on the covers, internal and external of the four volumes, it will be a boxed beauty.

Thank you again for your best wishes and prayers. yr Lariat, Tim

Many thanks for the update, Tim. You're at the top of my prayer list (and the last 2 people who were there got a lot better -- just sayin').

Hi Tim,
Is Feeney still alive?
Best,
David

So so sorry to hear this!! Tim, you will never know the impact for good you’ve had on so many, and I’m thrilled that you’re able to put together such a momentous and important, not to mention voluminous, collection of your marvelous work. May God heal and bless you at this most critical time. May the new treatment bring more time than anyone could imagine.

Prayers,
Siham

All my best to Tim as he goes through this. Perfect health is great! Should really really help. Prayers are forthcoming.

"Extraordinary" is the only way to describe this man's productivity, over the past year, in terms of volume, content, and quality, all. "From God's lips to Timothy's ears," as I said.

So I hope everyone here will continue to "watch this space," as the slogan goes, while he progresses, and while I continue to carry the torch for him.

Jennifer

Onward, Timothy. That's one hell of a mountain you have to climb. Keep on.

No David, Feeney exited five years ago, 2000 birds, twelve years, two months after the arrival of Lone Willow's Cuchulain, aka Chucky. Hunter's Logs II and III, coming this spring, are largely about the young dog.

I am humbled to be the recipient of so many prayers and good wishes from people I have worked with over seventeen years.

Tim's surgery is tomorrow. Please continue to remember him. There has been very, very good news, on the publishing front for us.

I hope to have more forthcoming about that, when I get a few more details, since I know many will be interested here.

Jennifer

Thank you for reminding me Jen, and to Cathy for the original post. In a previous life I would have scoffed at the idea of prayer for anything and anyone no matter how much I wished them well.

That was then. Tim, whatever help I can give I will give. In my own family there was a similar situation and there was a lot of prayer from the community which I am fortunate to be a member of. I accepted the power they gave to me and to a person I love more than anything. She's still here, and healthy.

Prayers for Tim. I have continued faith in his unstoppablility.
Thanks for the note, Catherine.

Some good news. :) Bill Carpenter went to see Tim at the Mayo, and reports that Tim says the operation was a complete success. He's managing his post-op pains successfully. Tim says he walked a quarter of a mile yesterday in order to get out a day early (he should be home by 1 pm today).

That is good news.

John

Good news! I’m glad to hear it.

He could not sleep last night, wrote a poem at one a.m. -- better than most of us could write at the very top of our game -- then sent it to me two hours ago.

Ever the veteran.

I've asked Tim if I can post his post-op poem on the Sphere. Will edit back once he replies.

Edited in: Got the OK from Tim to post.

I Tracked the Marshes

I've never feared I might not live till Spring
which seems so far away in February,
winter this year so long that it is scary.
Lord, how I long to see the geese take wing
from corn stubble where snow drifts disappear,
to witness the first greening of the grass.
This year for me it might not come to pass.
Thankful I have a Higher Power to steer
my future I live one day at a time,
write this diary, read my daily psalm
in Sullivan translation. How they calm
a man who has so long aspired to climb
over this prairie where I sank my roots
and tracked the marshes with my muddy boots.




(Tim Murphy, February 9, 2018)

Excellent sonnet. Thanks for posting it, Cathy, and I am glad to hear that Tim made it safely through the surgery.

Susan

It's a very good poem, Tim. Maybe the best of yours I've seen. (Too much else to say out loud.)

Good to hear the surgery went well. And great to read this fine sonnet. Auguri, Tim!

And Tim, your Wintry Gratitude poems up at Commonweal are quite wonderful, too.

https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/p...-gratitude-ode

I was brought here by Maryann posting the Commonweal poems on Facebook. Shocked and saddened to learn of the grim situation, but like everyone, heartened by your buoyancy and deeply moved by the recent poems. Was it 2002 or 2003 when I started posting here?--terrified of you all, especially Alan, wanting nothing more than the encouragement of your good opinion, which was enthusiastically (often too enthusiastically) bestowed. You were & are the Sphere for me. The hands of the bards and makers, clasped within and outside of time, are always pulling each other up; all we can try to do is take the next hand, and tug. Love, admiration, gratitude.

Chris

Indeed, Chris; I couldn't agree more.
I so remember the Editor from Hell, as Tim called him, and my delight whenever one of my offerings found his favour.
Tim's always been a kind critic, but a perceptive one.

Thanks for posting the Wintry Gratitude link, Maryann, and thanks all of you again for your best wishes. I'm on a walker, but the recuperation from the surgery is way ahead of schedule. On Monday I begin a month of radiation, and I follow that with two months of clinical trial at Mayo, combined immuno- and chemotherapy. The odds against me are pretty terrible, but I have terrific doctors and they're throwing everything they have into this fight.

If I can hunt this fall, I shall have a very strong right leg!