by Ethel Mortenson Davis
On our walk today
a large flock of Canadian geese
rose up into the air.
Then a single call came
from somewhere deep in the woods,
a haunting sound made
by an injured or sick bird,
calling for help.
Migrating geese leave
their injured and sick behind.
Winter overtakes them
and ends their suffering.
It is like the Kurdish people
we left behind today,
or the Central Americans—
they reached for our hands,
crying out through their pain and suffering,
and we turned our backs on them,
left them for their enemies and winter
to finish them off.
The book launch with Deb Wayman at Faire Isle Bookstore for In the Unsettled Homeland of Dreams was spectacular. The novel is about a community of slaves escaping from the boot heel of Missouri near Mingo Swamp to West Harbor on Washington Island off the Door Peninsula in Wisconsin before the Civil War. Faire Isle is a small store, so it was so crowded that my daughter Mary and son in law Rick stood outside to listen to the reading I gave. The engagement of the audience, many of whom had families that had lived on the island for generations, was exciting. There were people who had already read the novel at the launch and they, like the reviewers so far, were highly complimentary, and even excited about the novel. The launch was a wonderful experience. I pretty sold out of all the books I had originally ordered and will have to order more today.
