by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Because we walked to the edge of the water, a loon surprised us with two young clinging on her back— geometric black and white spots on top of a still, early morning mirror.
Category Archives: Poetry
Mirror
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Bullet Train
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
There is a bullet train speeding through our town, our country, with the letters CRISIS written on it. We cannot put our arm out to catch it, or wrap our legs around it to hold on to it. With lightning fastness, it is melting the ice at the poles, changing the seas forever. It is ripping apart the land around it with drought, flood and wildfire, diminishing wildlife and songbirds. Like a giant spring, loaded and set to snap at our face, it will take out the whole eye of the world.
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Heaven
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Wolf moon with yellow-green eyes, slipping between trees, slipping from heaven. Timber wolf with yellow-green eyes, slipping between trees, slipping between exploding bullets- heaven slipping between our fingers.
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In Memory of Juno
Poem and pastel by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Dog The way you buried your nose in my hand made me unable to forget you that cold morning at daybreak. Skin and bones you were. Perhaps a boot to your neck, or starvation sent you fleeing to my gate, asking for help. So I let you in.
Filed under Art, Art by Ethel Mortenson Davis, Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry
About Being Lost
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
As a different species, you were there in the beginning, leading the toddler clinging to the long hairs on the ruff of your neck out of the vast corn field and into the arms of frantic parents. Then, in midlife, you led us out of the western wilderness back to the road— how glad we were to find a way out. Now, in old age, you are disappearing from our lives— a little each day, as a new wilderness looms on our horizon. Who will lead us back to the road now?
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What Hope Is
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
I’ll tell you what hope is. It’s not going to the grocery store and getting yelled at for bringing your screaming son along and then next week doing it again. It is breaking through the thick cloak that surrounds him and finding a small increment of communication, reaching down into the cylinder of autism and pulling out shafts of light.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
