a pastel by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Category Archives: Ethel Mortenson Davis
The Lake
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
In the cold winters
around the Great Lakes,
ice moves
in constant, fluid motion
making cracking sounds,
thundering sounds
as ice heaves against ice,
shelf against shelf,
sending echoes out,
across a cold, stiff night,
that sound like a war
being waged,
like someone shooting off cannons
in some distant place.
She is telling us
she is still here;
she is still alive!
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
Forest
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
It’s where the snow lies
inside the beating heart;
the forest,
who speaks in voices
across the wind,
waiting for the conductor
to begin
its movement springward:
Where teeth tear open
the flesh of a kill,
wolfing it down in mouthfuls
before another comes
to claim it as its own—
Where mankind
has nailed her hindquarters
to a board.
In her anguish
and suffering
the forest
still presents us
with gifts
indescribable.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
The Dance
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
At sunrise
she began to dance
so that humanness
would seep back
into the earth,
into the lowest
parts of the earth.
She danced for
the murdered
and missing,
the lost and forsaken.
Then,
she danced
all through the night
for the inhumanness
that filled her heart,
for the hatred and lack of love
that had captured her.
She danced and danced
until inhumanity
drained out of her,
out of the farthest parts
of the earth,
until the sun
came back to the world.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
Wings
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
There is a part
of me
that walks and talks and sees,
but then there is
another one
that has parts of wings:
Wings that take me
to the highest green cliff,
then drops me to the sea
to catch a ride on the back
of the dragonfly
as he crosses the land—
wings
that take me
to the farthest planet,
the red one,
then pulls me
back to the forest
where green moss
clings to the north side
of trees
in winter’s cascade
of blue shadows on snow and sparkling sun.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
Kinship
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
I’ve come again
to watch your woods,
snow up to my thighs,
winds flying
across the tops of trees—
like when I was little.
On windy days
I would run
into the woods
and listen to the wind
roaring across the tops
of trees,
but stillness would
be beneath.
I think of trees
as family,
kin,
those that are
always there,
steel cores,
centurions
that guard us
from all the clamor
at the top,
the quiet and stillness
beneath,
close family.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
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