Murphy, Timothy

United States, (1951-2018)

Hoggerel

  1. How many pigs
  2. can dance on a pin?
  3. the banker oinks
  4. with a swinish grin.
  5.  
  6. Our boars are lean;
  7. our sows are silk,
  8. ready to milk
  9. and quick to wean.
  10.  
  11. Meal and corn
  12. sell for a song,
  13. and bellies
  14. jump over the moon.

 Timothy Murphy. The Deed of Gift. Ashland, OR: Story Line Press, Inc. (1998).

Handsome Dan

  1. Like a horny boar
  2. sniffing a sow,
  3. he was eager to lend
  4. on hardscrabble ground.
  5.  
  6. Now the hapless man
  7. who shook the hand
  8. of handsome Dan
  9. loses his family’s land.
  10.  
  11. Like a squealing sow
  12. on the slaughterhouse floor
  13. he forfeits his life
  14. to the banker’s knife.

 Timothy Murphy. The Deed of Gift. Ashland, OR: Story Line Press, Inc. (1998).

The Peg-leg Pig

  1. A farmer’s daughter keeps a hog
  2. who sports a wooden leg.
  3. “Tell me about that peg-leg pig,”
  4. travelling salesmen beg.
  5.  
  6. “He saved me from a rabid skunk.
  7. He stomped it with his peg.”
  8. Suspiciously a seed man squints:
  9. “How did he lose the leg?”
  10.  
  11. “He found me when a whiteout hit
  12. and led me through the snow.”
  13. “You called the vet to amputate?
  14. A case of frostbite?” “No.
  15.  
  16. “He pulled me from a flaming barn
  17. before the rafters fell.”
  18. “Enough to put me off my corn.
  19. U must have hurt like hell.”
  20.  
  21. ” Who said my peg-leg pig was lamed?
  22. He never got a scratch.”
  23. “That leg is missing all the same.
  24. Sister, what’s the catch?
  25.  
  26. “Was it chomped on by a bigger pig
  27. or torn off by a plough,
  28. squashed beneath a threshing rig
  29. or trampled by a cow?
  30.  
  31. “Was the porker born to walk on wood
  32. or crippled in his prime?”
  33. ” Mister; you eat a pig this good
  34. one leg at a time.”

 Timothy Murphy. The Deed of Gift. Ashland, OR: Story Line Press, Inc. (1998).

Shep’s Last Stand
 for Rich Bell

  1. A flyblown German shepherd
  2. lay in the buckshot-peppered
  3. finishing barn
  4. the day we bought the farm.
  5.  
  6. Brave dog,
  7. he fought to the last hog
  8. as the Norway rats
  9. swarmed over the slats.

 Timothy Murphy. The Deed of Gift. Ashland, OR: Story Line Press, Inc. (1998).

About the Poet:

Timothy Iver Murphy, United States, (1951-2018), was a prolific lyric poet and businessman. Murphy attended Yale University where he was Scholar of the House in Poetry and was mentored by Southern agrarian poet Robert Penn Warren. In 1972, he graduated with a BA degree and was designated Scholar of the House in Poetry.

Murphy returned to his home in Minnesota where he worked in insurance and estate planning, and became involved in several farming and manufacturing enterprises in North Dakota. His books include the poetry collections The Deed of Gift (1998), Very Far North (2002), Mortal Stakes • Faint Thunder (2011), and Hunter’s Log (2011), as well as a memoir, Set the Ploughshare Deep: A Prairie Memoir (2000). Though hunting and farming were essential subjects for his writing, myths and legends influenced his work as well. [DES-07/22]

 • Biographies here are short. Yet all the poets presented have fascinating lives. And they have created a bountiful trough of treasures beyond these works. Please root on about those you enjoy! I hope you find something informative, meaningful or that provokes your further contemplation.

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