by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Today, coyote,
I will let you
own this land.
For you stood
your ground
this morning
across our path,
unwavering,
until I turned
to leave.
Category Archives: Poetry
Coyote
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
Sonnet 21
by Thomas Davis
She’d showed him Vassar on his first day there.
That evening, going home, she saw him walking
a street so bleak he should have been aware
no stranger should be nonchalantly hiking.
She stopped her car, rolled down the window, frowning,
and asked him if he knew where he was at.
He laughed and said that he was lost, eyes sparkling,
“but I’ll be fine.” He was an alley cat.
She shook her head, but watched him walk and chat
about the universe, his mind engaged,
his deep-song spirit like an acrobat
that dares to fly upon Creation’s stage.
And somehow, starting from a place apart,
He/she flamed bright inside each other’s hearts.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
The Birth
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
To Sonja
I had no choice
because the earth and sky
threw up so much
poetry,
no choice
but to accept
the High Tea Ceremony.
That night,
and all the day before,
the earth was cold
with wind-driven snow,
inhuman nurses
in an old hospital,
the father barred
from my room.
Finally your time came
in the early morning
with dark skies and gray clouds
like the snow clouds
over the mesas this morning
that came
with wind-driven snow
and ice crystals.
But in a moment,
the sun had shone
in the threatening blackness,
and a great arc of rainbow
bowed across the western
and northern skies,
making it all worthwhile.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
Sonnet 19
by Thomas Davis
Where do the minutes that we cherished go?
Two little girls, small hands inside our hands
while four of us walk in a wonderland
of starting out, our faces, hearts aglow
with happiness unrecognized, the flow
of time suspended as its hourglass sands
erase the moment when our lives were grand.
What happens to the joys of long ago?
We never thought the love we two had made
would fly apart in anger, or be lost
to liver cells that turned, as renegades,
into a cancerous, dark, evil holocaust.
We never knew we’d face insidious shades
that leave us mourning all the times we’ve lost.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
Messenger
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
The brightly-colored
towhee
brings webbing
to repair
my broken,
gray world.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
Sonnet 18
by Thomas Davis
The doctor said what needed to be said.
We asked the questions that we had to ask.
Compassion lined the doctor’s careful mask.
She held him; he held her; the awful dread
we’d felt at seeing him so weak in bed
now turned into a nightmare, a formal masque
that left our darkest primal fears unmasked,
our sense of living shattered, left in shreds.
How long? he asked the doctor as he sighed.
The doctor said, two weeks, some hours, some days.
She bent her head into his lap and cried;
he sobbed, his mother cried; I fought the haze
unmanning me. What could we do? I tried
to think, but, looking at my son, was dazed.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
An Evening
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
For Sophia and Phoebe
Because this night is filled
with black-winged pelicans
coming in to land,
a sail being taken down,
a sliver of a moon
climbing above
the white birch trees,
and laugher from young girls
rising above the lapping waves,
no more can fit
into the evening.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
Sonnets 14 and 15
by Thomas Davis
14
On Friday nights I’d work all day, then walk
home from the office where two teenaged girls
were streaming past their mother with their talk
about this boy, this girl, their endless whirl
of friend, near-friend relationships that bloomed
and changed like clothing changed from day to day.
The minute that I touched the door excitement spumed
as I gulped down a meal before Green Bay—
and then we drove for forty country miles
to where two girls could dance and laugh to songs
and show that small town girls had mastered styles
that big town girls would envy all night long.
I sat inside a dinghy Burger King
and read while daughters spread their teen club wings.
1Green Bay, Wisconsin
15
An eagle hovered in the air above
our heads, wings trembling as it looked at us.
He’d been depressed for days, rejecting love
we’d tried to say, to show, to mean, discuss,
but driving Lake Superior’s rocky shore
he’d stared at forests we were driving past
and mumbled when he spoke, the sore
he felt so deep it kept him mute, downcast.
But when the eagle hovered in the air,
then dipped its wings and soared into the sky,
he smiled, his inward-looking eyes aware
of being, for a moment, in an eagle’s eyes.
From then on, though he struggled with black nights,
he found an eagle’s eyes and launched in flight.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
Butterfly
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
The yellow and black swallowtail
came to the window
(I told you because
you were looking for a sign—
so you could leave).
The doctor said,
“Hours or weeks.”
We all wept together.
Hours would have been more humane.
Do you remember
when you were little,
and you asked,
“When you die
do you close your eyes
and go to sleep?”
‘Yes,” I said.
Filed under Poetry
Sonnet 12
by Thomas Davis
Before we reached the bank two twelve year olds
were on the water in the good canoe.
Both Brand and I looked at our sons1, their coup
apparent as they grinned at us, both bold
enough to know that, ten feet out, they controlled
the moment even though the wind still blew
and rain was falling hard, the clouds a stew
of swirling turbulence and cold.
“Okay,” Brand said. Inside the inlet, calm
prevailed, but as we went into the lake
the waves were higher than our heads. The qualms
I’d had at seeing youngsters make their break
to manhood with a crazymad aplomb
unmanned me–as they left me in their wake.
1 Brand Windmiller and his son, Jesse, and Kevin.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
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