My newest book, Story Poems From a Western Colorado Boyhood, is out. I have been writing these stories for decades. Some are funny, others serious, some mythical in the sense that, though they really happened, they still touch the spirit of the mountains and high deserts of the West. The wonderful cover photo was taken by our son, Kevin Michael (Alazanto) Davis. We miss him.
Filed under poems, Poetry, Thomas Davis
By Ethel Mortenson Davis from her new book, The Woman and the Whale
The day was a day of celebration.
A small Right Whale stood vertical,
head out of the water,
straight up in the air,
his dorsal fins reaching like arms
toward the sky.
A woman diver
from a South Pacific Island
said the whale tried to tuck her
under his dorsal fin
when she interacted with him.
At first, she struggled to get away—
until she saw the shark
circling her, trying to get at her.
The whale kept his body between
the diver and the shark.
Then the whale grew agitated,
slapped his tail at the shark,
before finally running it off.
Today, the whale came back with his family,
many heads sticking straight up in the air.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry, Published Books
by Thomas Davis
I’ve been looking around for DEIs,
But I haven’t found any yet.
I thought at first, they were like gremlins,
Little people-like creatures that mostly looked ugly.
I know they are black, brown, yellow, and woman,
But every black, brown, yellow, and woman I know
Wouldn’t answer to, “Come here, DEI,”
Any more than I would,
And anyway, even a gremlin
Wouldn’t crash a plane and helicopter
With seventy-six people on board,
Would they?
I thought about asking our congressman,
Or maybe our President,
To draw me a picture of a DEI
So I’d recognize one when I saw one,
But then I thought to myself,
What if they are a DEI hire in disguise?
Can’t anybody paint themselves up
as a white Christian man?
What then?
Filed under poems, Poetry, Thomas Davis, Uncategorized
By Thomas Davis
Bucha was known as Ukraine’s Switzerland. Now it is synonymous with unimaginable horror.
Charles McPhedran, Mother Jones Magazine
I keep imagining Yevtushenko on a Moscow stage in 1961,
young, eyes bright, arms flailing, his pacing energy
exploding into a wild, deep voice
as he declaims about Babi Yar and Stalin’s evil
as Jewish bodies decayed in an unmarked ravine in Ukraine.
I keep seeing the Russian crowd,
glittering sophistication,
stunned at first and then roaring
as poetry stirs in the Russian soul
and reminds them that Stalin, the Tsars,
the years when peasants struggled for survival,
the siege of the Nazis at Stalingrad
were the past, never to be repeated.
Inside that image, I keep sensing
the old Russian bear stirring,
shapeshifting, growling old resentments
into bombs that explode into apartment buildings
and schools and maternity wards
where new-born babies and their mothers
lie screaming as walls shudder and fall.
And I keep wondering if it is Russians
rising out of their history into rage—
or if the Russians are humankind
attacking, attacking, attacking
all life on earth out of history and insatiable greed.
“Blood is flowing,
spreading across the floors,” Yevtushenko wrote.
“And I, myself,
am one massive, soundless scream
above the thousand thousand buried here.”
Filed under poems, Poetry, Thomas Davis
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
We are in need of the Archangel to come down
and tell us we have lost paradise,
to come down and tell us we have lost the wonderment
of the child as he looks into the face of the black and white warbler,
or the wonderment of multi-colored lichen
on the facade of giant boulders.
We are in need of an Archangel to tell us we have lost heaven,
and there will be no Messiah to save us from ourselves.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry
by Ethel Mortenson Davis from her book, I Sleep Between the Moons of New Mexico
A prince stepped
out on our land
this morning
from some far away place.
He wore a spectacular black headdress
and was dressed
all in blue
with geometric checkers
across his shoulders.
I slipped an extra banquet
out to him
so he would stay
a bit longer.
But he wiggled his white eyebrows,
a fine prince of a fellow,
then hurried off
to catch a wind.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry
When Ethel Mortenson Davis and I created this site while we lived in New Mexico, we did so partially to make sure that we had a creative place to not only showcase some of the poetry and art we have both produced throughout our lifetimes but to also honor our son, Kevin Michael Davis. Kevin had died in Poughkeepsie New York where he was a web designer for Vassar College after a short struggled against aggressive cancer. While we put this blog together, we were both still in the throes of grieving and trying to deal with Kevin’s loss.
Now, Bennison Books, a publisher in Great Britain, has come out with a new anthology, Leaving, an anthology of poetry about dying, grief, and the mystery of absence. The anthology features poems by both Ethel and I as well as some of the finest poets writing anywhere, Cynthia Jobin, John Looker, and A. Carder. As the forward to this magnificent volume says,
Both the grueling reality of dying and its indefinable mystery are revealed in this diverse collection. Grief is tranformative; we are profoundly changed by it. It is also prismatic, imposing new insights, a wider breadth of vision.
The new anthology is available at https://www.amazon.com/Leaving-anthology-poetry-mystery-absence/dp/1999740831/ref=sr_1_1?crid=S3YX5MBBHIVN&keywords=Leaving+Bennison+Books&qid=1699623562&s=books&sprefix=leaving+bennison+books%2Cstripbooks%2C104&sr=1-1
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry, Thomas Davis
For Troy Davis
I hope you are in a place where there is justice, where there is love unconditionally, the end, where young men no longer are lynched by ropes, or the machinations of killers, where there is light and not the suffocating, ethered mud, a place where you will rise above humanness. I hope you are in a place called Justice, a place that will never be named Georgia.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry
For World Poetry Day, from my novel, Prophecy of the Wolf, close to being released
Thomas Davis
The woman wrapped the child against the cold And walked into the forest where the glow Of moonlight pooled a deeply shadowed gold Beneath the trees on softly shining snow. She gathered wood, the baby on her back, And built a fire, its warmth a dancing light Upon a great flat rock protruding black Into the lake’s infinity of white. Then, in the dark, sat, death-still, beside The flames, the baby in her arms, the smear Of stars above their heads a radiant tide Of silence singing to the ebbing year. At last, her voice a permutation slipped Into the night, she started chanting words Born deep in spirit as the blackened crypt Of waters stirred beneath lake ice, and birds, As black as mourning shrouds, began to fly, The forest stirring like the waters, wind A whisper as the baby voiced a tiny cry And shadowy trees began to sway and bend. The woman got up on her feet, her voice As silver as the moon, and sang as deer Began to bound onto the ice: “Rejoice,” The woman sang, and as she sang the fear Felt during hours of pain-filled, labored birth Dissolved into the biting wind and light That danced with deer upon the lake, the earth And living integrated with the night.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
On World Poetry Day
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Maple sugar moon, golden-eyed like maple sap boiling over wood fires. Finally, you tell us of the coming spring— sweetness that brings satisfaction, one more year to get things right.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry
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