Category Archives: Poetry

July 8, 2016 · 5:56 pm

Inside the Place where Joy and Hope is Made

A sonnet from Thomas Davis

Inside the barn the memories of war
As horses ate their hay and cows were fed:

Inside three men, one white, two black, the roar
Of cannon, sight and sound of men that bled
Their lives out as the living and the dead
Were showered with hot, splintering fusillades
Flung in the wave-tossed night from hell, the dread
Of battle dancing as the barricades
Of what you were in being human fades
Into the chaos burning through the night.

The Preacher frowned: “Destruction serenades
Our hearts against our spirit’s holy light,”
He said. The others nodded. Each had prayed
To find the place where joy and hope was made.

Note: This is the next in the series of sonnets written as heads of chapter for a novel I am trying to work on. I have published several of these sonnets with previous posts. The sequence presents insights into an escape of slaves to Washington Island in Wisconsin before the Civil War. There was a small community of blacks on the island just before passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

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June 12, 2016 · 9:21 am

A Force Inside the Dream of God

by Thomas Davis

Their stomachs ached, they felt ice cold, their eyes
Sank back into their sockets. Still, worn out,
They kept on moving, moving. When the skies
Were dark enough, they got up, brushed the flies,
Mosquitos off, shoved fear and gnawing doubt
Into their bellies’ emptiness, and ran, their route
Through hills and fields, past roads, an exercise
In dreams that live on while the body dies.

But as they moved, the Preacher was a force
Inside the dream of God, a man possessed.
He would not fade. His tongue, without remorse,
Whipped legs too tired to move to movement, stressed
Them all until a blessed miracle
Made life and dreams again seem possible.

Note: I have been posting two of these sonnets at a time. Since I am in the rewriting mode of the novel at the moment, going backward unfortunately, I am afraid I’ll run out of postings for the series before I get to a place where I can keep up the sequence. This is the fifth sonnet I’ve posted from the series. I am working on a novel with a sonnet at the beginning of each chapter. The sonnets themselves are a mixture of forms. This particular sonnet is a Spenserian sonnet.

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June 3, 2016 · 9:32 am

How Hard

by Ethel Mortenson Davis

 
We talked about children,
their schooling,
their boyfriends.
How they are becoming
serious about their relationships.

We talked about children
becoming people.
How hard it is.

We talked about
how hard creating
a new piece of art is.

How much energy
the making of art takes —
an extraordinary piece of art.

How hard that is:
Like the yellow orchid
in the forest this morning
among the blue waters.
How hard the earth struggled
to bring about that flower:

Like my ancestors
that were sailors,
sailing to other lands —
among the blue waters —

how hard.

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May 28, 2016 · 2:37 pm

Publication in The Lyric

I just posted two sonnets and then the latest issue of The Lyric arrived in the mail.  The Lyric is the oldest magazine dedicated to traditional verse forms in the North America. Its website can be found at https://thelyricmagazine.com. My Shakespearean sonnet, “A Lover’s Song,” which was written to Ethel several years ago, is in the new issue. I subscribe to the magazine and have had another sonnet published in it about a year ago.

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May 28, 2016 · 2:09 pm

The Miracle Inside a Storm from Hell Inside the Turning Wheels of Time

Sonnets by Thomas Davis

The Miracle Inside a Storm from Hell

Their misery growing as they splashed through streams
And felt huge clouds above the battered trees
That flung down branches as the sorceries
Of wind and hunger screamed and screamed, and screams
Into their fears, their hatred, useless dreams
The Preacher cultivated with an ease
That wasn’t true, not when the miseries
Of hell danced in the storm’s wild, fierce extremes.

And then, as if inside a miracle,
They reached a lonely church, the raging storm
So fierce they quailed inside its crucible,
And knew the light of God, their spirits warm,
The dreams the Preacher preached so lyrical
It made them feel, inside their hell, reborn.

Inside the Turning Wheels of Time

Inside the rhythm of the wagon’s wheels,
The Preacher, with his people crammed beside
Him underneath a false floorboard, untied
His consciousness from who he was, ordeals
He’d face for years now in the past, and reels
Of rainbow light exploded, amplified
A vision where he felt Ezekiel’s tide
Of prophecies burn like a fire that heals.

He saw his Promised Land, boats filled with fish,
A land of gardens lush as men could wish,

And in the garden of his vision, black
As midnight skies, a shining Adam spoke
A chant so sibilant with grace the almanac
Of hours turned like the wagon wheel’s spokes.

Note:  These two sonnets continue the series that constitute the beginnings of chapters in a book on a black community that existed on Washington Island before the coming of the Civil War.  These sonnets are part of the sequence that deals with the escape of people from the community from the plantations where they were enslaved.   The sonnets are written using a mixture of sonnet forms.  “The Miracle Inside a Storm from Hell” is a Spenserian sonnet.  “Inside the Turning Wheels of Time” is a French sonnet.

 

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May 4, 2016 · 5:30 pm

Door

by Ethel Mortenson Davis

There,
in the bright morning,
hepatica,
whose leaves stay alive
under the dead layer
all winter,
send up flowers
before all others.
 
It is here where
the pale pink and lavender
are the door opening
to where my god lives:
 
Her angels are the birds
opening their wings.

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May 3, 2016 · 3:52 pm

Publications

Ethel and I continue to have success at getting poems published.  We both had poems in this year’s Wisconsin Poets Calendar:  http://www.wfop.org/poets-calendar-1/2016-poets-calendar.  We got our copies when we went to the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets fall convention in Madison, Wisconsin this weekend.  Door County Living Magazine released an article Gary Jones, a fine poet in his own right who had a poem in the last release of the Blue Heron Review that also included a poem by Ethel, wrote at https://doorcountypulse.com/spirits-born-light-poet-tom-davis.  At the end of the article the magazine published a Miltonian sonnet I wrote called “Cherry Orchard.”

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April 22, 2016 · 11:58 am

Two Sonnets: Washington Island’s Black Community

by Thomas Davis

Like Moses in the Wilderness

Like Moses fleeing from the Pharaoh’s wrath
Before the miracle of waters parting,
The Preacher blazed a trail on freedom’s path
As fear possessed their endless fleeing.
 
What was that man or woman really seeing
That passed them while they tried to run and hide?
What accident of fate would send them running
When slavers found them tired and terrified?
 
The Preacher prayed away grim miles and tried
To make their spirits testify that dreams
Are greater than the fear that crucified
Their faith that they could get across the streams
 
And past the towns that blocked their way and threatened
To let the slavers pounce and leave them bludgeoned.
 
The Bridge that was a Wall

The bridge, inside the night, was like a wall,
Small, wooden, unassuming, houses dark
Beside a path that seemed to be a call
To all who needed passage to embark
Upon a journey to the river’s other side.
They hid in brush, mouths dry, dread strong enough
To make them sick, and, silently, wide-eyed,
Saw spectres armed with whips and iron cuffs
Stand shining where they’d have to cross the bridge
Without disturbing dogs or waking up
The people in the houses as the ridge
Beyond the river beckoned past the interrupt
That stood between their anxious dreams and where
Their breaths would feel God’s freedom in the air.

Note:
These two sonnets continue the long series that tells the fictional story of the people of a black community that actually lived on Washington Island in the 1850s before unexpectedly disappearing. Two sonnets from this series were posted earlier.

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April 13, 2016 · 5:00 pm

Flight

by Ethel Mortenson Davis

In memory of  Donald Sharp and Rumi

Was it the spring stream,
flowing out of the escarpment
tumbling, bubbling over fallen birch trees?

Or was it the large, sloppy snowflakes
falling in the spring morning’s forest,
as trees held their breath,
held their breathing
for the sun to overtake the cold,

that made my wings open and close,

readying me to take flight?

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April 6, 2016 · 5:45 pm

Tom’s new sonnet in The Road Not Taken

The new issue of The Road Not Taken, a Journal of Formal Poetry has just published one of my sonnets, “Spreading Wings.” You canhttp://journalformalpoetry.com, then click on the Spring 2016 issue and scroll down. Since both of our daughters, Sonja and Mary, were present at the poetry reading at the Reader’s Loft Bookstore in Green Bay (http://www.houseofthetomato.com/march), I read this Italian sonnet there. The sonnet is about them when they were young. I wrote it during an extremely terrifying time in Ethel’s and my life when Kevin, our 27 year old son, was in the process of dying from cancer. Writing sonnets (I wrote 44 in all) was the only way I could bear what Ethel, I, and, of course, Kevin most of all, were going through. What concerned me day after day was our family and remembering incidents that made up the substance of our lives as a family. This sonnet tells of a time that I remember with great love in my spirit.
Raising children is not always easy, but I like to think that at least part of what Ethel and I have achieved in life is the way our two daughters have reflected into our granddaughters and grandsons. They both are beyond outstanding parents, always willing to sacrifice so that their children can meet whatever promise they have in life. I am also convince that they are great teachers because of the spirit they have inculcated from the time they were toddlers, dancing through life with a verve that gives no quarter to a universe that is not always kind.
I hope those of you who go to read the sonnet will enjoy it.

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