Sangre de Cristo

a pastel by Ethel Mortenson Davis

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The Prophecy of the Wolf Published!

My new novel, The Prophecy of the Wolf, has been released by All Things That Matter Press! It’s available now at Otherworlds Books and More and Novel Bay in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin and Yardstick Books in Algoma, Wisconsin. Readers can also order it from almost any online venue.

I spent three years working on a historical novel that is set in the mid to late 1600s on the Door Peninsula and Washington Island as famous French priests and fur traders started to seriously impact the traditional lives of Native Americans. The Neshnabek, or Potawatomi Tribe, are at the heart of the story as Ogima tells about how he, as a young man, became embroiled in the affairs of Quapaw, a powerful waubeno that has had a vision given to him by a storyteller wolf. Quapaw, because of his shaman visions, starts to try to keep the Neshnabek from falling prey to the fur trade, the beguilement of French trade, and power of Christian conversion. The novel explores the largest themes possible as event follows event, eventually reaching a crescendo that has become a distant legend even in our time. In the process the lifestyle and beauty of Neshnabek civilization and culture becomes a beautiful backdrop to the action.

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In the Aftermath

For World Poetry Day, from my novel, Prophecy of the Wolf, close to being released

Thomas Davis

The woman wrapped the child against the cold
And walked into the forest where the glow
Of moonlight pooled a deeply shadowed gold
Beneath the trees on softly shining snow.

She gathered wood, the baby on her back,
And built a fire, its warmth a dancing light
Upon a great flat rock protruding black
Into the lake’s infinity of white.

Then, in the dark, sat, death-still, beside
The flames, the baby in her arms, the smear
Of stars above their heads a radiant tide
Of silence singing to the ebbing year.

At last, her voice a permutation slipped
Into the night, she started chanting words
Born deep in spirit as the blackened crypt
Of waters stirred beneath lake ice, and birds,

As black as mourning shrouds, began to fly,
The forest stirring like the waters, wind
A whisper as the baby voiced a tiny cry
And shadowy trees began to sway and bend.

The woman got up on her feet, her voice
As silver as the moon, and sang as deer
Began to bound onto the ice:  “Rejoice,”
The woman sang, and as she sang the fear

Felt during hours of pain-filled, labored birth
Dissolved into the biting wind and light
That danced with deer upon the lake, the earth
And living integrated with the night.

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Maple Sugar Moon

On World Poetry Day

by Ethel Mortenson Davis

Maple sugar moon,
golden-eyed
like maple sap
boiling over wood fires.

Finally,
you tell us
of the coming spring—
sweetness that brings
satisfaction,

one more year
to get things right.

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Village II

a pastel by Ethel Mortenson Davis

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Forever

by Ethel Mortenson Davis

Forever is not a word
In our universe,
nothing in it
stays the same.
One day our earth
will become pieces
in the cosmic pond.

We are not forever.
Your movement
in the early morning
through the quiet rooms
will one day drift away.

Forever is not a word
in our universe.
One day we too
will have to part.

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Dividing

a pastel by Ethel Mortenson Davis

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The Hunter

by Ethel Mortenson Davis

I look for places
where deer could hide
in dense thickets
or in wetlands with tall reeds--
too hard for hunters to enter.

I remember you telling me
that you would see deer
lying down in the swamps,
water up to their faces,
hiding from approaching hunters.

You, who went out each day
during hunting season
to hunt deer,
then came back at night
to tell us
you saw nothing that day—

walking your land
but never raising the gun
to your chest.

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Escape

a pastel by Ethel Mortenson Davis

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Anytime

by Ethel Mortenson Davis

Sometimes I want to go to you
but remember that I have
put you in a special room
far from here,
a room, nonetheless,
with an open door,
so that I can enter
anytime.

So, I can see
your smile when you
were running with Shiva,
the golden lab,
through autumn leaves
in a special forest
long ago.
So, I can walk through that door
anytime.

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