Category Archives: Poetry

March 14, 2012 · 6:24 am

9. Ruarther’s Threat

by Thomas Davis

As Reestor glared at him, Ruarther felt
As if he’d turned to stone, his spirit hard
And eyes as cold as when the wall of ice
Had overtaken him inside the field.

“We’ve been at peace with dragons much too long
To start a war with them,” the old man said.
“You’re dreaming’s not enough to have them fly
Above us as their breaths chars all we love.”

“It was no dream,” Ruarther growled, his temper blazing.
“The dragon singed me with her stream of fire!
We have to kill the witches’ girl, or else
The world will change in ways that weird us all!”

Ruanne, disoriented, looked at her only love.
He’d kill the child? She’d dreamed of having children
Since childhood, playing with her handmade dolls.
What child had powers strong enough to cause
Grown men to quail before their unlived lives?
She tried to see inside Ruather’s rage
And understand what fear was driving him.
A hundred times she’d thought she’d earned his love,
But every time he’d danced away from her.

“Why do you meld the dragon with the child?”
A stubborn Reestor asked, eyes fixed on rage.
The man was weak yet, still affected by
The storm he’d barely made it through to home.

Around them half the village stood inside
The hall, the argument a bane when winter
Was harsh enough to threaten all of them
If they could not depend on long-term braids
To knit their wills together as they strove
To live until the distant, longed-for spring.

“The dragon spoke about the child,” Ruarther spat.
“Why wouldn’t they be linked? She spoke of her.
If not from spelling by the witch’s child,
Why would a dragon speak again to men?”

Old Molly grasped Ruanne’s slim hand and hissed.
“You’re young, young man,” she said. “Your blood runs hot
Or else you would have known what good is yours.
You’re foolish. In the past we fought the dragons,
And many died, but then the dragons seldom
Attacked unless they were alone, but now
They have communities just like this place.
If stirred, they’ll come together in a pack.”

Ruanne felt like she ought to scream the swirl
Of roiling feelings trapped inside her chest.

“The storm is done,” Ruarther said. “I’ll go.
It doesn’t matter what the village thinks.
I see the danger rising in a cloud,
and like I’ve brought back game when others failed,
I’ll save the village from temerity.
The weirding’s got to stop. The girl is dead.”

Ruanne heard children screeching in the snow.
The storm was over. Now they’d laugh and sing
As if the awful winds and cold had never been.
Inside her mind she felt the dragons flying
In multi-colored packs, an endless stream
Of fire and deadly claws out of their caves.

“I’m leader still. Not you, not yet. You won’t
Go up the mountain,” Reestor said. “We need
More meat. The hunters have to hunt for game.”

Ruarther glared at him. He glanced at Brand.
The hunter looked away as if he heard
His young ones as they worked to dig a path
Between the cottages through feet of snow.
At last Brand looked into Ruarther’s eyes.

“No hunter has your strength or skill,” he said.
“You need to throw your madness out and be
The leader that you’ve always been for us.”

“Nobody understands,” Ruarther said,
His bitterness a rancor in his voice.
“Nobody felt the heat of dragon flame.”
He turned and looked toward the hall’s great door.
He looked at Reestor. “I have always done
What’s good for all of us,” he said. “I’m certain
Deep down that what I’m doing’s for the best.”

Before the men around him moved, he strode
Toward the door, his face implacable.

Ruanne took flight outside her thoughts, her feelings
As raw as skin upon the head of children
Brought out into the light outside the womb.

“You’re wrong,” she heard herself say, voice as sharp
As sharpened knives. “You cannot kill the child!
To kill a child forever marks the soul
With blackness stained into an evil life.”

Ruarther stopped and looked into her panicked eyes.

“I’ll love you all my life,” he said, voice loud.

He turned, picked up his bow, plowed through the snow
Toward the stone wall built around the village.
Inside the hall a hunter, Cragdon, startled,
Then left the hall to join Ruarther’s rage.
His young wife grabbed at him, missed, wailed with fear.
The young man did not stop or even pause.

Audio of Ruarther’s Threat

Note: This is the eighth installment of a long poem. 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 to reach other sections, or go to the Categories box to the right under The Dragon Epic. Click on 1 to go to the beginning and read forward, 8 to read the installment before this one. Click on 10 to read the next section.

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March 12, 2012 · 7:06 am

Train Ride

by Ethel Mortenson Davis

She feeds him sweets;
he, her, in the seat
ahead of us.

Yesterday, we were young,
but today,
as we climbed
in the Adirondacks,
we felt our age–
hand over hand,
root over root,
tripping over history
and boulders.

I waited for you,
you, for me,
our legs straining
like stressed trees,
trees that send out
a chemical substance
like aspirin
to buffer
their dying–

a train we too
will have to catch.

All four of us stopped
to photograph
droplets of water
on the red maple leaves
suspended like placid lakes
in the rain-soaked day.

But now,
the conductor calls out,
“Express train to
Manhattan,
Grand Central Station–
The Big Apple.”

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March 10, 2012 · 7:28 am

Memories

by Ethel Mortenson Davis

I will take the key
that unlocks you
and peer inside
to see yards and yards
of colorful fabric
on assorted bolts,
some material so thin
air and light comes through,
some so soft and thick
it feels like gray wool
from the long haired mountain sheep.

There I find a memory
from a northern forest
when snow filled up the floor,
and wind blew so strong
we looked for shelter
and found a circle of white cedar
whose branches hung down like loving arms.
Inside the circle
snowflakes were suspended in mid-air
as if in a crystalline hour glass.

And then there was the memory
of the sweetest summer night
in the high desert
when cool breezes played with us
to the tune of dancing hummingbirds
chatting to each other
as the fullest moon came up over the hills:

Two braided ribbons I’ll place around my neck
and wear forever.

© 2010 I Sleep Between the Moons of New Mexico

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March 8, 2012 · 6:31 am

Sonnet 38, Kevin Michael Davis, February 16, 1982 – July 23, 2010

by Thomas Davis

He died enveloped in his mother’s arms.
The two of them alone, she felt so tired
from lack of sleep, she thought about the charm
of closing eyes and drifting off, transpired
into a dream where waiting, dread, and love
were not commingled with each ragged breath
he took. But then his breathing changed. She shoved
herself out of her chair and smelled his death.
She put her arms around him as his eyes
flew open, glancing one last time at light,
and then his breathing stopped. The cloudy skies
leaked rain. Eyes stared without the gift of sight.

Her daughter said, she brought him to the earth,
her love the bridge between his death and birth.

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March 6, 2012 · 6:41 am

All We Have Is Sky

by Ethel Mortenson Davis

In the end
all we have is sky.

He walked in winter
across the mountain
many times,
searching for the plant
dried by winter’s cold
that looks like all the others.

After many days
the medicine man
found the herb and planned
two ceremonies
for the whiteman,
a man who extended his arm
to The People, and they, The People,
extended their arms.

They took him
to a sacred place
high in the mountain,
performing the secret ceremony
where sky
is greater than the earth.

The white man walked
in two worlds.

“You will be okay,”
they said.

In the end all we have is sky.

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March 4, 2012 · 7:06 am

8. Shock and the Weirding of Boundaries

by Thomas Davis

Ssruann’s long neck jerked up into the air
And twisted to the cave’s night opening.
Outside the storm still raged and howled with winds.
She was awake, prophetic dreams had fled.
The human girl was watching as her mother
Used unseen lines between the waking world
And universes where the shadows swarmed,
In patterns sibilant with singing winds
That dragons, humans, spirit bears, and others
Who walked could not access with eyes or dreams,
To guide her daughter’s hands into the ways
Of power she had never known while breathing.
The daughter’s hands spewed webs of light.
A dance of heat ran through the webs and burned
Through cold and snow as if they’d never been,
Exposing ground beneath the piles of snow.

The Old One’s golden eyes expanded, whirled
While power flowed into the human girl.
It was a dragon’s power, power drawn
From blood more ancient than the blood of dragons
That lived inside community inside
The caves dug deep into the mountain’s heart.

Ssruann’s two hearts were beating with a force
That seemed to echo through the caves and tunnels
Where dragons waited out the storm so they
Could climb on ledges, launch into the air
To hunt for mountain goats and sheep and deer
Now hunkered down, protected from the storm.

Where did the power now inside the girl
Orginate? What did it mean? What force
Had mother’s love sent from the songs of death
Unleashed into the world of dragons, humans,
The seasons marking, marching, passing time?

A long, low wail lunged from the unseen peaks
Above the cave and rolled with fearsome winds
So filled with shards of ice it seemed as if
The mountain’s face would sheer away and leave
A grinning skull of gaping mountain bone
Into the valley where the human girl
Turned back toward the fire that threw its warmth
Into the cottage’s deep darkness, air
Alive with possibilities not known before.

Appalled, her pounding blood a double beat
That sang the history the dragon race
Had lived inside the shining web of time,
The Old One stared into the stormy darkness.
The human girl was linked to her, she thought.
Linked somehow deep inside her dragon blood.
What sorcery is this? She thought. She’d known
The mother, but had never thought too much
About the woman living in the valley
Below the dragon’s mountains and its caves.

But now? Her blood was boiling contradictions,
A moving tapestry of fear, hope, rage, delight,
A stream that made her feel sick from the strength
That surged and ebbed inside her pounding blood.

There were no walls between the universes
That never touched except in tiny whorls
That knitted all that was together, bound
By actuality, the mind of God.
The weirding of the storm and darkness raged
Inside the webs of light the young girl wove.
Ssruann, the Old One, stared and stared at where
Her cave led out into the storm and dark,
Her long neck rigid with a dragon’s fear.

Audio version of the poem: Shock and the Weirding of Boundaries

Note: This is the eighth installment of a long poem. 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 to reach other sections, or go to the Categories box to the right under The Dragon Epic. Click on 1 to go to the beginning and read forward, 7 to read the installment before this one. Click on 9 to read the next section.

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February 29, 2012 · 7:23 am

Walk

by Ethel Mortenson Davis

March
and new snow
last night.

Black dog
on white,
two miles
into the woods,
and we see
timber wolf tracks.

Then sister wolf
flashes past us,
a great roaring ball
of white and gray
whose size
dwarfs you,
dog.

But we are
not afraid.
Just in awe.

To see a glimpse
of you
is like a gift,
like an eagle
taking off
into the air,
and we are lifted up.

I see a surprise
smile on your face.

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February 27, 2012 · 2:22 pm

People Speaking, Mixing Up Words, Glossing Over Details

by Alazanto, Kevin Davis, our son

below the hasty gridlock of contradictions
and among minced words on tall podiums,
a man preaches about compassion,
his eyes limpid.

an annishinabe woman once told me about relationships:
her people, skidding across moments, carried by wisdom,
the blood of her people seeping through these moments,
droplets ingrained with the soil.

but does the soil judge us as a merciless god?
my eyes follow a parched river basin.
the sun retreats to greet those who have been forgotten.

resting on the horizon, the flow of the river can still be felt.
bloods join, racing through the veins of sleepy sandstone cliffs.
their faces emerge in the crisp warmth of sunset, eyes limpid.

compassion and inequality, conflated, are left to fend on barren streets.
the woman taught me that no matter our origins,
drops of our blood seek out clemency.

rivers flow.
soils take root.
the earth does not judge,

but among our minced words progress paves over the basins,
and our blood is sealed away.

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February 25, 2012 · 7:16 am

Old Woman

by Ethel Mortenson Davis

i the old woman,
with breath on my hand,
have come before–
down this hill with stoney sides–

have come
with
the spears of grass
against my legs–

and then the sea
and its green smells
after the rain–
until this garden.

i have come
thinking
the flowers to be richer
in the coming spring,
reaching out for their smell
with only my finger tips,
sitting awhile,
and waiting.

i the old woman
have passed
the sea
many times,
not looking
at the whale
of the waves,
thinking i have
time,

tomorrow.

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February 24, 2012 · 8:48 am

7. The Heat of Webbed Light

by Thomas Davis

The snow kept falling for a second day.
Wei looked at wood piled up inside the bin
And thought about the difficulty facing
Her if the wind kept growing drifts of snow.
At times the wind died down as giant flakes
Came drifting from the skies, and, looking out
The frost encrusted window by the door,
She saw how deep the drifts were piling up.
Each time the blizzard winds died down, they started
Again, ferocious, constant, howling rage.

As evening darkened skies, her nervousness
So great she felt half sick, she pushed the door.
It did not move, the snow too dense to move.
She strained to open up a crack. She stopped
And tried to force the panic rising up
Inside her chest to calm into her thoughts.

What could she do? She had potatoes still,
And onions. Though she needed meat for strength,
She would not starve, but wood! Beside the shed
Her daily work had built a high, square pile,
But if the drifts imprisoned her inside,
The fire would turn to ash and cold. What then?
She put her back against the door where cold
Seeped in. What then? The question froze her arms
And made her legs as heavy as her thoughts.

She had not cried since burying her mother,
But now she felt as if she was a little girl
Who needed comfort, needed mother’s love.
Her body heaved from sobs that made her shake.
The fire would die without more wood to burn.
She wailed aloneness, fear into the night.

She forced the sobs to end. She could have walked
The mountainside to stone built houses, walls,
But living in her dreams she’d thought her strength
Could let her stay beside her mother’s grave.
She got up from the floor and put a log
Into the embers red with dying flames.

And then, behind her and the fire. . . She turned.
The firelight dancing on the wooden floor,
She saw no source for noise. Her skin crawled, tingled. . .

Beside her mother’s empty bed the darkness
Seemed solid, like a pool that shimmered substance
Into a place where substance could not be.
Wei stared into the darkness, opened up
Her mouth and tried to scream, but silence swallowed sound.

Inside the pool of darkness, small, intense,
A light began to grow. Wei held her breath.
Her mother’s body, lined in pulsing light
Upon the narrow bed where she had died,
Began to weave her graceful arms and hands.
Wei gasped, her sudden grief subsumed by awe.
Her mother here? The storm outside so fierce?
The light glowed like her mother’s gentle smile,
And then an unreal darkness swallowed light;
Then darkness was the darkness of the night.

The sudden disappearance of the light
Hit Wei as if a fist had slammed her stomach.
The fire behind her felt as if the dark
Had fed its flames and made the cabin bright
As just before the day’s last light fled sky.
Wei straightened, looked into her hands, and saw
Her mother’s motions as she’d moved as light.
Wei walked, entranced, toward the window.
She made the pattern from her mother’s hands.
A web of burning light flowed from her fingers
Through window glass into the howling dark.
Her hands felt warm, as if the light she webbed
Through glass into the night was more than light.

The crusted frost upon the windowpane
Evaporated in the freezing dark.
Wei stopped the movement of her arms and hands.
Her mother, buried under snow, had given her
Survival from the storm, she thought. Her life.

The door would open as she moved her hands.
She’d melt a path to get more wood come dawn.
She had to think about the webs of light.
Her skill had uses she’d not understood.
She felt so tired she wondered if she’d stay
Awake enough to keep the fire alive.

The Heat of Light audio file

Note: This is the seventh installment of a long poem. 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 to reach other sections, or go to the Categories box to the right under The Dragon Epic. 1, 6 to read other parts of the epic. Go to 8 to reach the next section.

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