Ethel’s poem, “Cold”, has been published by Poetry Breakfast this morning. Poetry Breakfast emails one poem a day to subscribers. It publishes some of the finest and most accomplished poets being published today. You can see Ethel’s poem at: https://poetrybreakfast.com/category/all-poems, the site’s web page. I hope you’ll find time to go to Poetry Breakfast this morning.
Category Archives: Poetry
Ethel’s Poem on Poetry Breakfast This Morning
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry, Uncategorized
Respite
poem by Ethel Mortenson Davis
We walked Michigan’s shore
against gale winds,
blue-green water
churning up white foam
and throwing large rocks
at our feet
until a stand of cedars
offered warmth and stillness
from the wind.
Leaf-litter
lined the forest floor, softness,
respite from our difficult world.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry
An Old Man’s Applause
by Thomas Davis
I was seven years old.
Mom insisted I was too sick to play an old man in a fake gray beard,
but I had worked hard to memorize my school play’s lines.
I was so sick I could hardly get out of bed.
I got up anyway, dressed in old man clothes
Mom had stitched out of Dad’s cast-off pants and shirts
and walked out of the house through darkened streets to Delta Elementary.
Back stage I half fainted when I saw
the auditorium packed with kids, parents, and grandparents.
Other kids and our teacher just accepted that I was there.
Feverish, I feverishly repeated lines over and over in my head
and fought my stomach’s queasiness.
Then the play about pioneering, wagon trains, and wilderness began.
When my turn came I walked teetering, the way I was supposed to, on stage.
My Mom had no idea where I was.
An old man, I sat on a stool covered with a painted cardboard stump,
voice quavering as if I was sixty years old and not just sick.
When I finished the audience broke into thundering applause.
I bowed quickly, went off-stage, down ancient wooden stairs,
and went outside where the Milky Way flowed light toward the horizon.
Filed under poems, Poetry, Thomas Davis
Power
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
The sailor
understands
the power of the wind,
adjusts his sails
to capture it.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry
Blue Above Us, Blue Below Us
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
We stepped off
the edge of the world today,
blue above us,
blue below us,
nothing but sky and water
around us
until
death’s door
surprised us.
Not yet.
Not yet.
This is still not
yet our time.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry
Wooly Bear Caterpillar
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
I’ve come to lie
my head again in your lap
this Wooly Bear morning:
Frost in the air,
the sky unbelievably blue,
the leaves red-orange.
I reach down and touch
The softness of the caterpillar’s
black and brown bands.
She quickly springs into a ball—
so strong, so resilient:
Strong enough to survive
90 below zero in arctic winters,
spinning a cocoon
and then in spring
turning into a Golden Isabella moth.
This strength is something
to take home with us
and rid our toxic relationships,
disregarding them like clothing
we let drop around our ankles
and step away from
with a new nakedness,
frankness,
ready to start building
new cocoons that turn us
into golden moths.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry
Review of The Weirding Storm, A Dragon Epic
The Peninsula Pulse, a publication with a 15,000 circulation, has just posted a review of my book, The Weirding Storm, A Dragon Epic. I am thrilled with Jack Jaeger’s review. The reviews the book has received so far have all been positive. I am so grateful to Bennison Books for publishing it. I was surprised too by the $9.50 price tag, so I am hopeful it’s affordable to an ever-growing audience.
The review is posted online at https://doorcountypulse.com/weirding-storm-dragon-epic-time.
The print copy includes the “Invocation to the Dragon Muse”, which follows epic convention and introduces the story. The online version does not, but I am grateful to all of those who have reviewed it so far on amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, and in other venues.
What has amazed me is that the reviewers seem to all be picking up on the relationship of the story to the current world. The novelist D.M. Denton and a college instructor from Tennessee, Dana Grams, both noted that relationship as does Jaeger. I thank all of them and am hoping for more reviews to appear. Tom
Filed under Poetry, Published Books, The Dragon Epic, Thomas Davis
An Angel of Sorts
To Ed DiMaio
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
I must tell you
that sometime
when all is lost,
when there is
no more hope in the world,
the great cosmos,
the lovely universe,
puts on our path
a free spirit,
an angel of sorts,
or a person of faith —
and says,
“Here is your protector,
the one who will lift your soul up,
the one who has come
this evening to be your guide
to position yourself again
in the universe.”
And now he says,
“How comely you are,
how lovely your skin,
how grand your soul.”
Now you have your answer,
the answer to Hopelessness:
Unexpected grace.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry
Hurricane Harvey, the Governor and President
by Thomas Davis
They sat, the Governor and President,
Before the bristling microphones, the flood
Of waters on the earth, and, as they bent
Catastrophe into the pounding blood
Of prayers full of self-congratulations,
Old people sunk in wheelchairs, their thighs
Beneath the murky waters as, forsaken,
A child clung to its mother–as she dies.
Inside the microphones, great power spoke
And broadcast masks of headlong recklessness
As children cried and scores of parents woke
And saw the water’s rising deadliness.
In wind and water Gaia spoke to those
Whose voices bragged about their glorious woes.
Filed under poems, Poetry, Thomas Davis
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