Category Archives: Poetry

September 27, 2015 · 8:11 am

The Art of Craig Blietz

by Ethel Mortenson Davis

1

His art is of cows, goats, and pigs,
but mainly dairy cows, Holsteins,

great portraits of black and white Holsteins
posing with dignity and grace,
one with a large, bulging vein
running the length of the under belly
to its udder,

portraits rich in painterly quality,
showing a wondrous love for these animals.

2

A downed cow,
too sick to get on its feet,
is dragged with chains
to the slaughtering yard.

A man kicks her in the head
on her way past him,
dignity and grace
still in her eyes.

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September 8, 2015 · 8:38 am

Incident on Washington Island

After the Civil War
a Miltonian Sonnet with a Double Coda

by Thomas Davis

As Ambrose Betts gulped down the whiskey shot
That Gullickson had given him, his face
Was flushed, the muscles in his neck a knot
So tight he winced, his outrage out of place
Inside the cabin’s half lit single room.

“A Winnebago brave! I tell you Gullickson,”
He said. “As large as life inside the gloom
Of Miner’s kitchen, Bullock looking drawn,
As if he’d seen a ghost, as black as coal.
I’ve never seen the like before!” he yelled.
“An Indian, white man, black man like a shoal
Of pebbles on a beach. The Indian held
His hand up, said, I swear, to Bullock, “You,”
He said. “The first white man I ever knew.”

“Old Bullock, black as night,
Smiled with those teeth of his
So dazzlingly bright white
My head began to fizz.

“And Miner looked like God
About to haul back, smack
The Indian into sod.
A white man that is black!”

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August 19, 2015 · 4:15 pm

Wrinkled Skin

by Ethel Mortenson Davis

This morning
the trunks of cedar trees
felt skin-like,
looking like wrinkled
elephant skin —

elephants cornered
throughout Africa,
poached, killed
for money.

One man spent most
Of his life protecting them.

When he died recently,
the elephants walked
in single-file to his house
where he lay in state,
circling his house and
staying for some time.

Animals and birds know
when people want to
protect them,
show grace and gratitude.

They wait for us to save them,

the animals,
the cedars,
the wrinkled skin.

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August 7, 2015 · 11:14 am

“By God, They’re Protecting Salamanders Rather Than Human Beings!”

comment heard in a restaurant in Sturgeon Bay Wisconsin
by Thomas Davis
An Italian Sonnet
 
When Darwin saw gradation in a finch
That flits about Galapagous[1], he saw
One species modified in beak and claw
By choices made adapting to the flinch
Of circumstances born out of the wrench
Of geologic time, the pitch and yaw
Of land and ocean, weather systems raw
With winds that shape the land that rainstorms drench.
 
But in his old age earthworms sang the song
That sirened through the studies that he did[2],
The deaf and blind regurgitator dug
Into plain ground turned soil, the endless round
Of earth built by the living plows that slid
Fecundity out of the realm of slugs.

[1] Darwin traveled to the Galapagos Islands on a ship named Beagle where he developed the theory of evolution out of his observations of the gradations between a number of species, including a finch.
[2] Earthworms was Darwin’s last book, published on 10 October 1881, just six months before he died.
 

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July 26, 2015 · 7:22 am

Liberation

by Ethel Mortenson Davis

An old man leaves
a federal prison,
free at last.
He has spent
most of his life
behind bars
for a crime
he did not commit.

The air is as sweet
as any he has known.
He steps into freedom.

This morning
a white butterfly,
with black accents
I could not identify,
was caught in a spider’s web.

I pulled him from
his bondage.
He was still alive
and eager to fly.

He flew into the forest
rich with oxygen,
a freedom he had thought
would never again be his.

And there in the sundrenched trees
he became giddy
on pulsing, cooling waves of air.

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July 19, 2015 · 8:45 am

A Prophet Arrives on Washington Island

A French Sonnet

by Thomas Davis

The old black man, eyes bright as noonday sun,
Splashed from the wooden boat onto the shore.
He lifted up his voice, the waves Death’s Door
Whipped white behind him, praised the blessed Son
Of God and New Jerusalem and spun
Around, his arms held high, a troubadour
Of his escape from slavery and war
To wilderness, the role of sacristan
To fisherman and men and women freed
From whips and masters and slaver’s creed
Of dominance designed to pinch the soul
And void the human spirit’s vital flame.

“Praise God!” the prophet said, the roll
Of waves against his feet. “Praise God’s sweet name!”

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July 11, 2015 · 9:52 am

Sisters as Flowers

by Ethel Mortenson Davis

I think of one as a rose,
feminine yet voluptuous,
a powerful scent,
delicate like no other,
the first flower you go to
in the garden —

the oldest as a lily,
singular and strong,
standing apart from all the rest,
an example to all her sisters —

and then the white daisy,
clean and fresh
and wholly authentic—
one to have in your corner.

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July 3, 2015 · 12:47 pm

About Men and Geese

A French Sonnet

by Thomas Davis

The child Konrad Lorenz was read a book.
Nils Holgersson hopped on a goose’s back
And flew into a flock of geese whose lack
Of sympathy for greedy boys, that look
Into their selves and quickly see how rooks
And geese and other creatures cannot hack
The glory of a monomaniac,
Was clearly honking, stupid gobbledegook.

Hooked by a story, vexed by lack of wings,
Konrad Lorenz began to think of things
He saw in ducks that waddled in his yard —
Until he seemed to see with goose’s eyes,
A man not just a man, but mage and bard
That flapped mind’s wings into a goose’s skies.

Note: Konrad Lorenze was a Novel Prize winning ethologist who became famous for studying the evolution of behavior in geese.

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June 10, 2015 · 4:03 pm

Fawn

by Ethel Mortenson Davis

The rain yields
to the drying wind,
trilliums ceasing,
forget-me-nots thriving,

the dogs loving
the walk in the morning rain.
The afternoon sun
puts the old dog to sleep.

Tomorrow
the flickering light
will lock
the fawn in hiding
in the meadow grasses
in the deep forest.

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June 2, 2015 · 9:31 am

The Composer

by Thomas Davis

An Italian, or Petrarchan, Sonnet

He searched a year to find the cedar tree,
Determined that he’d find a lofty lord
That towered dark and gleaming like a sword
Thrust upward with a shaggy filigree
Of branches singing winds into a sea
Of sky where hawks and eagles soared
And wings stitched sky to land, a linking poured
Into the heartbeat of his fantasy.

He dreamed the tree into the song he sang,
Then fingered ancient rosewood cello strings
Into the filigree of cedar wind
That bowed as cries of distant eagles rang
Into the sky and wove tree, song, and wings
Into a music that will never end.

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