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
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
The old men are dreaming bad dreams. The rain will not fall on our land. Even the deep water stays away. I yearn for the earth to give us her blessing, her sanction, so we can harvest the oats and rye again, so I can run to the far field to wrap my arms around the face of my horse and dream good dreams.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
In my dream it was nighttime. I was in a muddy field overlooking a large city with bright lights. The field was enclosed with barbed wire, and there was a herd of cattle within the enclosure. The cattle were not really cattle, but were members of my family. They were up to their bellies in mud, unable to move. Hundreds of poisonous frogs were climbing onto the cattle, killing them with their bites. This was a foretelling, a story of betrayal and pain, a story of survival and transcendence, an ancient story. Come over here and sit down by this tree, and I will tell you this story. It is a story of my life and yours.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
At birth, the farmer separated the calf from its mother. He wiped away the amniotic fluid with a gunny sack before putting him in a separate pen. Black children born to enslaved parents were taken from their weeping mothers and moved hundreds of miles away. Native children were snatched from anxious parents and moved to some miserable life. A Central American baby Is ripped from its mother’s arms. Both baby and mother’s spirits are broken. The farmer’s wife protested, “keep the calf with its mother. Do you need every ounce of milk?” “This is the way we do things,” replied the farmer.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
The new calves are growing stiff from the wetness of birth, and old men come running across the fields asking, who killed our apple-blossom time? I say to them, surely dead leaves can’t grow in your pockets now.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
This last, fading light is enough to carry us across the field, across the world, enough to lift us from ourselves, our mitered lives in this small changeling of a disappearing evening.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
When we are desperate and can’t recognize the world, we climb into words, grasp letters, covet paragraphs to find smallness. When we are desperate we go to this small garden to gather ourselves in the act of cleaning away dying plants — to repeat our worth — in places we recognize, like the wounded fox that crawls into the small culvert.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry
a pastel by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Filed under Art, Art by Ethel Mortenson Davis, Ethel Mortenson Davis
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
A baby wren came to sit in the burning bush to show me she has grown into a strong bird. With graceful gratitude she came to show me light in my dark world — just as a matched pair of horses pulled John Lewis across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, so he can be a light in our black world just one more time.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry
a pastel by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Filed under Art, Art by Ethel Mortenson Davis, Ethel Mortenson Davis
fourwindowspress 