a love poem to Ethel by Thomas Davis
I love the woman whom I love,
And in the morning’s world of blue
I wake to bellow hearty songs
That say so simply, “I love you.”
Love is the light of human black.
The tone that brings man up to gray,
And though the world is lost and doomed,
I say it makes today a day.
So, blacken out the joyous sun
And ink away the solemn moon.
I love woman whom I love.
She’ll lighten up a tar-black room.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
I remember you
the last time,
when everything
I did grated on
you
and spilled
out of your eyes
onto the ground.
Even the black dog,
the one you carried
in your arms
out of that place,
tried to catch your
eyes,
but you turned
away.
I tried not to look at
the disappointment
that spilled
out over her eyes
onto the ground.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
William Bingen’s, our grandson’s, first poem
Going through fields
with soft soil beneath my feet
I stand with the wind
softly flowing through my hair.
I follow the straight path
made by the farmers plow.
It takes me to a hill
where I gaze off into the fields of wheat.
I hear the sound of silence,
the sound of nature.
Filed under Poetry
a passage from The Dragon Epic by Thomas Davis
1
The dire wolves, eyes as glittering as suns,
Began to gather in the hills and forests,
Great packs that knew of dragon, human wars
And salivated at destruction where
They would relieve the earth of carrion.
Upon the crest of hills they started howling,
Their songs a haunting madness shivering
Their ravening into the day’s cold skies.
As Wei kept laboring to stay in flight
The voices of the wolves caused her to rise
Above the tallest treetops, dragons flanked
Around her as they rose up from the ground
And filled the skies with colored scales and wings
That thundered as they flew toward the village
Where dragons battled humans to the death.
How could a little girl be who she was?
Wei thought. The scales of light she wore outside
The human dragon that she was perturbed her,
Although she also held onto her sense
Of self inside the weirding of her life.
Beside her Mmirrimann kept humming songs
That seemed much older than the winter skies.
They seemed to reach into a time before
Time found its measuring, its arrow’s flow.
Below the two of them Ssruuanne swooped down
And grabbed a human in her massive claws
And lifted him into the winter skies.
His frightened yelp was faint inside the beat
Of steady dragon wings that sent the horde
Toward the village Wei had left while young.
A pack of dire wolves burst out from the woods,
Their movement slow compared to dragon flight,
But filled with bristling energies that sang
Of violent spirits empty of remorse.
Beside her Mmirrimann sniffed his disgust.
2
Toward the mountains, distant from the flight
Of dragons, huge, a wall of mist began
To anvil up into the day’s bright sky,
Inside the mist miasma whirled and sparked
As if it held a winter lightning storm.
Shades gloamed in dusk as chaos sang and gates
And boundaries began to shift and fray.
Inside the storm, inside her daughter’s spirit,
Wei’s mother, father waved their witching arms
And blotted out the shine of winter sun.
3
Ruanne could feel the storm. The great black dragon,
His claws extended, hurtled at the shelter
She calmly nestled into; strong, gray slate exploded,
His body’s strength so large it took away
Delusions of her safety, hammering
The cottage roof a half a dozen yards
Away from where she’d hid. She sent a bolt
Of energy out of her frightened spirit
Toward the massive dragon with his one good eye.
She felt another spurt of energy
Mesh with the bolt she’d sent, the two bolts strong
Enough to knock the dragon off the roof.
The dragon roared, crescendoing his voice
Into the muttered roars that punctuated
The battles flaming just above the rooftops.
She did not think, but notched a burning arrow,
Then sent it at a violet dragon’s scales.
4
Knocked to the ground, Sshruunak could feel the horde
Of dragons in the air, their eyes and necks
Strained at the melee in the war’s first skirmish.
He wondered at the feelings forcing him
To understand that all his plans were dashed,
And, like the night he’d lost his eye, his life
Was spinning to a grim reality
He’d not seen in the shining of his dreams.
He pounded wings into the sky and searched
For dragons flying to the humans’ rescue.
A single light burned in the front of scores
Of dragons humming ancient warrior songs.
The rainbow of the light was much too bright
To countenance. Behind its fire the skies
Above the mountains roiled with spirit beasts
And chaos borne upon the winds he’d made
To start the glory of his dragon human war.
He saw his followers were scorched by flames.
The burning underneath his scales seared pain
Into his mind’s slow, sluggish desperation.
What should he do? he thought. What could he do?
He could not, would not lose the war he’d made.
5
A shock made Wei forget to keep her wings
In motion as she navigated currents
Above, below her shining dragon body.
Ruanne’s thoughts rang in Wei and made the world
Seem brighter than the possibilities that trembled
As dragons filled the skies with who they were.
The great black dragon fell and then was up
And raging at his puny human foes.
His followers were shaken by the fires
That gouged into their scales and weakened them.
Wei sent her dragon human powers deep
Into the stream of power emanating
From where Ruanne sat dazed upon a roof
As roaring captured all the world in pain.
Behind her in the wild miasma’s storm
The universe seemed like a madhouse thrown
Into a time where time did not exist.
Sshruunak’s attacking dragons felt the song
That Mmirrimann, Ssruaanne, the others sang.
Wei flew beside her dragon kin and felt
Her mother’s spelling at the boundary
Where all eternity and history
Spun on the cusp of change so powerful
No being would be like they were before.
To listen to this passage, click on The Dire Wolves
Note: This is the forty third 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 The Deadly Dragon Hordeto read the passage before this one. To read the next passage of the epic, click on Confrontation.
Filed under Poetry, The Dragon Epic, Thomas Davis
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
The deaf-mute
stands in darkness
unable to communicate
himself to us.
Wait.
He touches me…
and in the blackness
his touch
pierces
to the very bones within me,
deeper than the deep kidneys,
quenching
my unquenchable
thirst,
bringing dewdrops
to my raging
fire.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
Blue on yellow, yellow on green.
The white cloth-patched sky belongs
With the thin gauze look
Of a dragonfly’s wings.
A poem is…. a conversation
Just heard by you and me,
A laugh, a smile, a deep black sky,
And the ever changing sea.
a children’s poem by Thomas Davis
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
When scientists discovered
the wings of a cricket
preserved in stone
from the Jurassic period,
they played its wings
and heard
an ancient love song
never heard
in our world before,
a new song.
This morning,
while driving home:
A colt had been flung
to the side of the road,
killed in the night
by a passing car,
its little body
nearly missed
because it was
so small—
small enough
to still be brought
to its mother’s belly,
its mother gone,
too.
a love song
unfinished.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
a passage from The Dragon Epic by Thomas Davis
1
Up from the mountain slopes above the circle
Of black stone, dragons filled the sky, their hearts
And spirits fierce with dragon rage and war.
Above them, eyes afire, Sshruunak watched fiercely,
Exultant that his time had come, the skies
So filled with rising dragons that they seemed
A swarm of blackness, death aimed at the humans.
The sun was bright and echoed off the snow
That covered jagged peaks thrown at the sky.
He glided as they came to him, then turned
Toward the village closest to the caves
And shrilled his challenge at the universe.
2
The blackness emanating from the mountains
Made Wei attempt to move her too large wings
And lift herself into the morning air.
The snow around her sprayed and glittered light
Into the shining blue of cloudless skies.
Ssruuanne moved quickly back to miss the force
Of wings more powerful than Wei could know.
The human child inside the dragon body
Felt tears well up inside her tearless eyes
As nothing seemed to move as muscles strained
To lift a body not her body off
The snowy ground to insubstantial air.
Wei moved her massive legs and beat her wings
And roared frustration, startling her hearts
That thundered in her chest and frightened her.
She was a child, she thought. She could not be
A dragon with a dragon’s roar and hearts.
A little way away a wild-eyed Mmirrimann
Kept glancing at the sky and then at Wei,
His feet a drum-like tattoo on the snow.
He looked as if he did not know if he
Should launch into the skies or watch the rainbow
In front of him take life that seemed unreal.
Around him, stretched as far as Wei could see,
The other dragons stared at Mmirrimann,
Then Wei, as if they waited for a sign
That told them what the black mind-storm assailing
Them meant inside a day of miracle.
Great dragon eyes whirled colors at the light
Intense enough to make the morning golden.
Ssruuanne was silent as the human dragon
Strained at the gravities of solid ground.
She looked confused, as if she could not make
Her thoughts reorder to reality.
Reality seemed skewered from the course
Of natural life, its permanence undone.
At last, the struggle in her thoughts’ confusion
So strong it made Ssruuanne feel more human
Than elder dragon born with dragon strength,
She shook her massive golden head and grumbled,
“On ground this flat you have to run to fly.
The question is, what are you flying to?”
Sshruunak’s cry slammed its triumph through the plateau
As Wei began to run, her panic turbulent.
She lurched from one side to another side
As Mmirrimann and other dragons cleared
A path for her and wings that did not match
The rhythm of her wildly churning legs.
Ssruuanne took off so smoothly, wings
A golden flashing in the light, she seemed
A definition of a dragon’s grace.
Along the edges of the dragons’ circle
A dozen other dragons leaped to flight.
Then Wei, her heartbeats double beating rhythms
Her legs and wings could synchronize, so slow
It seemed as if she’d slam into the ground,
Rose from the snow into the air in flight.
She murmured to herself to feel the wonder
Of being what she was, a dragon flying
From human form into the heaven’s skies.
Around her dragons filled the air, so many
There did not seem the space to hold them all.
The blackness drumming at her mind suppressed
Exhilaration storming through her spirit.
She was a human dragon flying, strong
Enough to be the being she’d become!
And then she felt another cry, a human cry
That shivered where her arms had been and made
Her human heart asynchronous with how
Her dragon hearts beat with the beat of wings.
She gasped, a human, still a dragon. Fear
And anger made her stall, then start the beat
That kept her in the air again, the blackness
A song outside of who she’d ever be.
3
The coal black dragon led the arrowhead
Of dragons flying at the waiting village.
His heart calm, Cragdon turned and shouted out
The warning that the village knew would come,
Then dropped behind the wall and took his bow
Into his hand and lit a flaming arrow.
There had to be more dragons in the flock
Of dragons flying to their human war
Than he had ever seen in all his life.
Ruarther had not flinched to fight a dragon
By moonlight when the two of them had faced
What seemed to be a night of certain death.
Ruarther had no spirit of his own,
But Cragdon had a wife and child and love
And would not flinch to splash his arrow’s flame
Into the hardness of a dragon’s scales.
He waited, glanced to see the dragon’s distance,
Then knelt behind the stony wall again.
4
Ruanne, upon her cottage roof, heard Cragdon’s voice
And knew the time of blackness came on wings
Of many colors as attacking dragons
Gave shape to darkened songs inside her mind.
She felt the power of their warrior song
And felt her witch’s power stirring in response.
Come on, she thought. Come on. We’ll meet you here.
She lit the pot that leaped with flame and yelled
Defiance at the coming dragon horde.
To listen to this passage of the epic, click on The Deadly Dragon Horde.
Note: This is the forty second 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 Fate and Sentinels to read the passage before this one. To read the following passage, click on .
Filed under Poetry, The Dragon Epic, Thomas Davis
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Raven is a kicker.
He loves to have fun—
nose dives in the sky,
rides the sixty mile an hour winds,
sliding over the Santa Fe railroad
coming from California
and over highway 40
as the semis roll by.
Raven loves to make someone his joke—
sneaks up on his buddies
and scares them to death.
Smart old cuss too.
I saw him flying
with a pop can in his beak,
heading west toward Gallup.
He’ll do well.
They pay seventy cents a pound.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
a love poem to Ethel by Thomas Davis
Like a snowflake in August is my love,
Like an August sun on a winter day,
Like the small thunder of a shining raindrop
Striking on a roof of stone.
O lobster colored sunfire,
How can the heavens be strewn with stars
When the sun has not felt the coolness
Of the gently silvered moon?
I have felt snowflakes in August
And been warmed by an August sun in winter.
I have heard small thunder ringing,
Brought by the drumming of raindrops,
Upon the stone roof of my soul.
O lobster colored sunfire,
Do you not know the differences made by love?
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
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