a pastel by Ethel Mortenson Davis
An Artist that Uses the Color Blue
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
The first pictures of the earth from space showed a blue and white jewel shining out of the blackness. It was like seeing patches of blue in the sky after a difficult storm, blue patches that gave us hope, or seeing rare blue flowers on an ancient forest floor, or the sparse blue iris — a surprise in the dry desert. Blue is the color of promise, the color of hope.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry
October Sumac
a pastel by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Filed under Art, Art by Ethel Mortenson Davis, Ethel Mortenson Davis
Christmas Day: Sledding on the Mountain
by Thomas Davis
We drove Grand Mesa’s unpaved, snow-packed roads Around its hairpin curves until the banks Of drifts were high enough to stop the plows. Grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins slammed Car doors and shouted so their voices echoed off The slopes and cliffs that soared into the sky. Then “food enough to feed an army,” sleds, Toboggans came from car trunks as the day’s Festivity spilled out into the winter cold. My Dad and Uncle dug into the snow To make a fire with driftwood, branches found Down in the canyon as we’d driven by The stream that gurgled songs beneath the ice. Then, looking down the road toward a bank That lurched uphill before a hairpin curve, The oldest of my cousins laughed and jumped Onto her sled, her head downhill, and slid Like lightning flashed into a coal-black sky: The slope so steep she flew, the hill of white A half mile down as solid as a wall, The road beneath her hard and slick as ice. Her mother, Aunt Viola, laughed to see Her fly toward the snowbank wall as I Could hardly breathe to see the tragedy Unfolding as the sunlight glared into my eyes. My eyes began to hurt. She had to crash Or slam into the wall of snow so hard She wouldn’t be my cousin anymore. But, as she hurtled down toward her doom, She dragged her legs behind the racing sled And turned the blades before she hit the hill, And everybody who had come to watch Began to yell when she rolled off the sled, Popped to her feet and shot her arm into the air. When, after other cousins dared the hill, I hesitated, swallowing to see The downhill slope, my younger brother jumped Ahead of me and joined into the fun. I stood above my sled and felt my heart Quail, staring down toward the distant bank That still seemed solid as a concrete wall. I froze and couldn’t move until my Dad, Behind me, got me on my sled and pushed Me off as cold and snow and light became A blur of flying, flying down the road. I flared my legs behind the hurtling sled And tried to slow down as I turned the blades, The running sound beneath my stomach, snow A cloud of ice as I rolled off the sled And came up, sunk in snow up to my hips, And shouted with my arm up in the air.
Filed under poems, Poetry, Thomas Davis
Christmas
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
We dropped her off after the Christmas program. Snow was on the ground. The night was cold. We waited, with our car running, for her to get inside. But, instead of going in the front door, she scurried up a wooden ladder that was placed outside to an upstairs bedroom. Faster than a blink of an eye she went, faster than we ran up our own stairs at home.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry
Major Anthology Released by Four Windows Press
Publisher: Four Windows Press, 231 N Hudson Ave., Sturgeon Bay, WI 54235
Distributor: Ingram
Number of pages: 370
Price: 20.95 Retail
Available: Through bookstores and online venues worldwide, including https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0999007777?pf_rd_r=QNSVAP9MMMBZFHENZZEP&pf_rd_p=9d9090dd-8b99-4ac3-b4a9-90a1db2ef53b or https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/no-more-can-fit-into-the-evening-thomas-davis/1138335652?ean=9780999007778
Web site: www.fourwindowspress1.com
Four Windows Press has released a major anthology of English-speaking poets, No More Can Fit Into the Evening, A Diversity of Voices. The volume contains a healthy sampling of work from 39 poets from the United States, Great Britain, Canada, New Zealand, and the Netherlands.
In the “Introduction” to the volume, the Editors, Thomas Davis and Standing Feather, both poets, say that “an early decision was made to invite poets either they knew about” from their years participating in multiple poetic communities “to submit ‘the ten best poems they had ever written.’” From the hundreds of poems submitted over 250 poems were included in the final publication.
Among the notable poets in the volume include Terence Winch, winner of the American Book and other awards; John Looker, an important British poet; Kimberly Blaeser, an Anishinabe poet with an international reputation who is a former State of Wisconsin Poet Laureate; Michael Kriesel, former President of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, and James Janko, winner of the AWP Novel of the Year and other awards.
According to Davis and Feather, what they are hoping “as they bring this project to press is that readers might find themselves on a mesa top where grandmother junipers spread their branches out beneath a full moon, remembering poems that stuck in their spirit after this volume has been read. We are hoping they might have that experience in Door County, Wisconsin where Lake Michigan is tossing wild, white capped waves at the dark dolomite escarpment that runs through Door Peninsula, or maybe in the timeless moment when they are communing with Taliesin, the ancient Celtic bard, in a time before time as he chants beauty and the world’s beauty into the deep starlight of a Celtic night.”
Warning in a Dream
by Thomas Davis
I woke with his face still in my head,
a handsome young man who looked something like
the oil drilling roustabout
who had lived next to my parent’s house when I was a kid
rough around the edges with startling blue eyes.
When he spoke, though, his voice
was like the classical music
on vinyl records I bought as a teenager
when I wasn’t listening to Simon and Garfunkel
or a country and western star my parents really liked.
“He won’t be like most people expect,”
he’d said in the dream.
“He’ll come out of a tower as opulent,
and filled with human hubris, as the Tower of Babel,
shining even when no sun is in the sky,
and when he speaks, great throngs will gather
even though pestilence is raging,
and their shouting and adulation will stir winds
spreading disease
and fan it into the most remote parts of the land.
“He won’t drive around in a beat up, old pickup
like many of his followers,
but will sail in a huge, black limousine fancier than
most people’s houses,
and he’ll use grievance and insult to stir masses
that march to Sunday church
where they worship a humble man, who championed
the poor and downtrodden
and said fat cats had as much chance
getting into heaven
as a rich man had of getting a camel
through a needle’s eye.
“And as pestilence spreads and poverty grows
out of pestilence,
dissension and intolerance will enter into people’s spirits,
and chaos will churn into an earth
beset by destructive storms, floods, droughts,
and great forests burning, spawning tornadoes of flames,
disasters creating wailing and despair
even as the ocean rises
and voices speaking prophetic warnings
can barely be heard above endless tumult.
“O, he won’t be dressed in red or have horns
or a pointed tail.
He’ll wear expensive suits and act like a common man
with a whirlwind voice singing resentment and anger
and the exquisite joys and promise of human greed.”
As I woke up the man, looking nothing like an angel, smiled,
and I felt disoriented,
wondering if I was waking up, or was trapped, somehow,
in a continuing dream’s fog.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
The Racing Clouds of Winter
a pastel by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Filed under Art, Ethel Mortenson Davis
Heart of the Evening
a pastel by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Filed under Art, Art by Ethel Mortenson Davis, Ethel Mortenson Davis
All of Us
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
we cannot go
to another planet,
to another earth
in another solar system.
We are too late for that,
too far away.
Instead, we must
sit down, you and I,
and look into each other’s eyes,
our arms embracing,
before we can save
any of us.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Photography, poems, Poetry
