a children’s poem by Thomas Davis
A dragon ate away the night!
Clouds, white from fear, fled through the sky.
A morning trumpet stormed to flight
As reeds lay silent, hushed and shy.
The sun burned red into sky-blue.
Great ships sailed white from burning sun.
A lonely goose with honking flew
Up from hushed pickets, slim and glum.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
He was the head
of Oncology,
a great mountain of a man
who wore a beautiful suit.
He greeted the young man
who was dying and his parents.
When the young man’s friends
went above the doctor’s head
to try to get him admitted
to another hospital,
for they loved the young man,
the doctor never came back
to check on the dying man,
but sent his assistant—
would not acknowledge the parents
when they saw him in the hallways.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
a love poem for Ethel Mortenson Davis by Thomas Davis
In the stone fields
The roots of the pinyon
Interweave with stone.
In the barest silence
Song is worn like a cloak
Of the brightest colors.
May my lips be as a brook
Bubbling forth songs
In praise of my love.
May my heart be as a pinyon,
Drawing forth music
From the barest stones
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
“You must come.”
“No, not yet.”
“You have no choice.”
“But I must right something
in my life.
Wait till morning.”
“You have no more mornings
in your quiver.”
“Oh.”
“Now, let go
of the rim
of the Great Canyon.”
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
a passage from The Dragon Epic by Thomas Davis
Ssruanne swooped suddenly toward the ground.
Ruarther closed his eyes and forced the cry
Of terror in his throat to swallow bile.
And then the golden dragon let him fall
A foot into the snow, his eyes still filled
With dragons smashing cottages as fire
From arrows burned their bellies and their sides.
The image of the ancient dragon who had flown
Beside the golden dragon from the field,
Descending on the coal black dragon who
Had almost killed Ruarther in the moonlight,
Seemed false, impossible to understand.
Unharmed, he got up on his feet and saw
The stone wall circling the village, warmth
Inside of him as memories of life
He’d often treated badly, even though
The villagers, his kin, had honored him,
Came rushing in a flood of wondrous joy.
He ran toward the wall, climbed up, and stopped.
Below, his face a frozen mask, was Cragdon.
His blackened skin had peeled to show his skull.
He’d died an agonizing death by fire.
Ruarther sat, stunned, on the wall as dragons,
Attacking dragons with ferocity
And overwhelming streams of deadly flame,
Reordered everything he’d thought through life.
The golden dragon that he’d feared so much
Roared down on Ruanne’s cottage, claws extended.
The monster black that Cragdon and Ruarther
Had fought screeched as it rose to meet her claws.
What madness had possessed his life and made
Him choose a rationality so wrong
It had no anchor in reality?
He saw the bow that Cragdon once had held
And tried to force himself to leave the wall.
Above him spirit creatures, freed from chaos,
Streamed through the air toward the awful carnage
As dragons joined the humans fighting dragons.
The villagers, confused, had stopped their efforts
To launch their flaming arrows at hard scales
Since they could not discern which dragons fought
Beside them or against them in the battle.
The dragons wheeled and roared and filled the air
With colored scales, wings, flames, and aerobatics.
There were so many that it seemed as if
There was no room for empty winter skies.
Behind the spirit beasts a weirding storm
Swirled from the center of a cloud that fell
In blackness down toward the snowy earth.
Ruarther heard the dire wolves howling rage
Before the storm and saw a wall of chaos
Inhaling light, normality, and reason.
The bridge between the netherworld and life
Raged worse than any dragon’s roar or flame or claws.
Ruarther did not flinch to see the storm.
He’d lived through frightening storms too many times.
He glanced again at Cragdon’s grimaced face,
Then stood upon the wall again, his face toward
The storm about to swallow up the world.
Why had a man as brave as Cragdon died?
Ruarther, tortured by his history
Of grievous faults, would not run from the storm,
But face it’s fury with a fury of his own.
Before the wall of swirling, ugly clouds,
The rainbow human dragon wheeled around,
A shining dragonfly against the deadly
Immensity the world could not escape.
Ruarther wondered at the grace he’d sought
So long to murder in his spirit-heart.
To listen to this passage, click on Before the End of the World
Note: This is the forty fifth passage of a long narrative poem, which has grown into The Dragon Epic. Originally inspired by John Keats’ long narrative poem, Lamia, it tells a story set in ancient times when dragons and humans were at peace. Click on the numbers below to reach other sections, or go to the Categories box to the right under The Dragon Epic. Click on Dragonflies, Dragons and Her Mother’s Death to go to the beginning and read forward. Go to Confrontation to read the passage before this one. Click on Retreat to read the next passage in the epic.
Filed under Poetry, The Dragon Epic, Thomas Davis
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
When the rarest
rain shower
finally comes to the desert
in early spring,
it softens the rocky soils,
soil that feels
like the ears of horses,
velvet and warm,
ears you want to kiss
or hold,
or the soft lips
of the work horse
who used to search
my deep pockets—
winter pockets–
for the carrot
or apple.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
a children’s poem by Thomas Davis
Way down in Caf∞a∞ghan∞a∞stan,
Down by the restless, wave-tossed seas,
I met my true love walking home
Through sands, past forest trees.
The flowers, lemon-blossomed yellow
Spread out beneath the sun
And blossomed spring-time on the earth
And put cold winter on the run.
The pearl gray oysters fell to flocks
Of kiwi birds with prying beaks,
And long-eared owls laughed at the moon
And fished from moonless creeks.
Way down in Caf∞a∞ghan∞a∞stan,
Down by the restless, wave-tossed seas,
I met my true love walking home
Through sands, past forest trees.
My love wore golden earrings bright
And a gown of misty, sea-morn blue.
My love turned day into the night
And said to give this poem to you.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
by Thomas Davis
When the flute of my songs speak,
The rushes on the riverside move,
And the gray nets of time
Spread out in the seas of life
To catch the tiny fish, man.
O love, can you not hear?
The whisper of the rivers is no more
Than the flute of my songs.
The unthawing ice breaking in winter
With thunderous booms of music
Is only a single, insignificant note.
When I praise your beauty
The mountains listen with valley ears,
And the deserts repeat my praise
In the patterns of their shifting sands.
O love, can you not listen?
Can you not hear the flute of my songs?
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
The Sierra mountains
are home to the Kogi,
descendents of the Tairona,
an indigenous tribe of Columbia.
In 1514 a Spanish Conquistador
stood on the shores of what now
is Columbia and said to the Tairona,
“I will kill everyone of you
and bring every bad thing upon you.”
Some Tairona fled
to the high Sierra mountains,
and there they have lived
for five-hundred years.
“We descendents of the Tairona
have a message
for Younger Brother.
“You, Younger Brother,
who never listens,
are cutting up the Great Mother,
cutting out her kidneys and intestines
by digging for minerals and oil
and cutting the forests down.
“You are bringing the world
to an end–it will go black.
We have been to the tops
of the Sierra’s and have seen
the glaciers disappearing.
All the rivers from these
are drying up,
and soon the people will die.
“The Tairona have taken care
of the earth, but you,
Younger Brother, are killing
the Great Mother,
even selling the clouds.”
copyright, 
White Ermine Upon Her Shoulders, 2011.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Yesterday
I caught a glimpse
of my reflection
in a window,
an old, white-haired person
I did not recognize.
But the person
inside,
an ageless bell,
leapt like the hare
we saw this morning on our walk
far above our heads
and sent its
resonance of rapture
out across
the snow-covered mountains
as the wind
began to shape it.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
fourwindowspress 