a children’s poem by Thomas Davis
“The well has gone dry for the winter!
Oh my! Oh my! What shall we do?
The well has gone dry for the winter!
Oh my! Oh my! What shall we do?”
“Go down to the creek with a bucket
And clear the crusted ice away.
Dip the bucket into the water
And carry the water away.”
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
a passage from The Dragon Epic by Thomas Davis
1
The dire wolf woke Ruarther from his daze.
A male as large as any that he’d seen,
Eyes red, fur ragged, black as moonless nights,
Snarled, bold, into the opening between
The stone fence where Ruarther stood and woods.
It saw Ruarther, crouched in hunting stance,
And stared at him, its baleful eyes twin cauldrons
That bubbled hatred, blind ferocity.
Ruarther jumped down from the wall and grabbed
The bow from Cragdon’s lifeless hands and sent
An arrow at the wolf in one smooth motion.
The wolf, wise to the wiles of men, moved sideways,
The arrow burying into a tree.
Ruarther pulled the bow again and aimed
At where he thought the wolf would move to dodge
His arrow’s flight; the wolf howled; other wolves
Began to come out of the forest trees.
The wolf dodged sideways once again, but true
To how Ruarther’s aim had been, the arrow
Imbedded sharpened stone in flesh; the wolf,
Now maddened, blindly charged toward Ruarther.
Ruarther sent another arrow deep
Into the charging wolf’s dark heart; it fell
As other wolves howled rage that shivered
Into the roiling clouds behind their movement.
The chaos sang with noises not of earth.
A coldness colder than the fiercest storm
Rolled to the wall and poured into the village.
The howling voices of the wolves were silenced.
Ruarther heard the spirit bear, who’d tried
To occupy his body, in the cold.
It sniffed at him, then sniffed at Cragdon’s body,
Then turned toward the village as a dark
That was no dark descended on the world.
2
Above the battle Wei kept circling
As humans sent their flaming arrows splashing
Across hard dragon scales and dragons fought
With dragons as the village cottages
Caught fire and filled the air with smoke and flames.
She felt the chant Ruanne was singing deep
Inside her spirit, the song so powerful
It seemed to alter how time’s arrow moved
Across the day toward night’s distant rising.
Each time she wheeled to keep herself aloft,
She saw the clouds of chaos moving like
An anvil, dense as molten iron, toward
The village, humans, dragons, and the war.
She felt her mother’s and her father’s songs
Inside the chaos, felt her mother buried
Inside her human dragon triple hearts.
Extinction swirled inside the freezing clouds.
Wei felt the message from her mother’s singing.
A dragon flying through the air, she longed
To feel her mother’s loving human touch
Upon her cheek before her mother tucked
Her gently into bed, the long day done–
But she had lost her childhood when her hands
Had woven dragon flesh around her spirit
And made her more than what she should have been.
At last, the boiling clouds intense with cold
Near village walls, she joined Ruanne’s strong chant
And started changing it away from dragons
That spewed their fire toward her slender body
Toward the chaos threatening the lives
Of every creature, every tree, on earth.
The surge of power as she linked her voice
To Ruanne’s voice was startling; she flew
Toward the anvil-looking clouds and reached to find
Her mother’s and her father’s voice in chaos,
Their struggle as they tried to make an order
Inside a universe that knew no order.
Her mind was buffeted by winds so strong
And cold they numbed her sense of who she was
And almost knocked her from the skies she flew.
Her scales seemed like they would dissolve in cold
And flow into the winds that were no winds,
Her spirit part of nothingness that hurled
Its nothingness around for all eternity.
How could she live inside the nothingness?
The stream of chanting from Ruanne dissolved
Into a song so small she hardly knew
That it still tied her to the world beyond
The gray that sucked at her and tried to meld
Her spirit with the fleeting hints of life
That flowed and merged into the whirlpool-flow
That mocked the order that her parents sought.
Deep in her self, beyond the human dragon
That she had made, she reached toward a song
Beyond her individuality.
She tried to find the hearts of who she was
Beyond the being that she was, the truth
Of how life’s impulse strained against the chaos
Imbedded in existence, making possible
The beauty and the substance of the world.
3
Ruarther faced the cloud and cold and felt
The raging storm of nothingness unman
Him from the human man that he’d become.
He did not flinch, but reached into the place
That let him throw the surging spirit bear
Away from who he was and meld his essence
Into the spirit of the self he was.
The chaos storm’s noise roared into his flesh
And numbed the beating of his human heart.
The cold bit down into his will and sucked
Determination from the spirit that he was.
He turned toward the village, feeling nothing
Inside the dark that raged around his body,
And tried to feel his way toward Ruanne.
She had to be alive. His love for her,
Denied so often in his stupid pride,
Was strong enough to will that she still lived.
To listen to this passage click on
Note: This is the forty seventh 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 Retreat to read the passage before this one.
Filed under Poetry, The Dragon Epic, Thomas Davis
a love poem to Ethel by Thomas Davis
Our fathers died, and then your mother left
And took a train ride to her resting place.
There are no words for senses left bereft
The moment living left our son’s kind face.
Our love was glory when it first began to bloom.
We walked brown hills and felt the sky breathe light—
You took your hesitant, unlikely groom
And gave him more of life than was his right.
The days of work and turmoil, gladness, stress,
Have slowed us down and made us feel our years
As separateness has ground against the press
Of love through joyous days and bitter tears.
From gnarling roots of memories and time,
Love forges symphonies of changing rhyme.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
a passage from The Dragon Epic by Thomas Davis
1
The great black dragon’s hurtling unnerved
Ruanne, but, even though she felt like leaping
From roof to ground and hiding with the children
Beneath the floors of cottages in dark,
She pulled her bow and sent a flaming arrow
Into the dragon’s scales and saw him flinch
Back from the flame, his searing breath-flame missing
Where he had aimed at her, his claws a shrilling
Across the roof as wings fought hard to take
Him back into the air away from where she kneeled.
Inside her mind she chanted words that seemed
As if they’d come from someone else and sang
As if her chanting had a power far
Beyond the power that she knew she had.
She felt triumphant for a moment, seeing
The dragon swerve away from flames that spread
Out from the arrow’s mark across its belly,
But then he turned and aimed his massive body
At where she pulled upon her bow’s taut string
And hurtled at her smallness as she threw
Herself away from where he’d aimed, her arrow
Another flame into his hardened scales.
The dragon roared as Ruanne rolled across
The roof and tried to keep from plummeting
To ground, her eyes filled with a sky of dragons
So huge with searing flame and massive claws
The world seemed mad with frightened screams and roars
That shook the ground and made her feel half deaf.
“Undo the chaos of the universe,”
She sang. “Cleanse winds that are no winds.
Undo the chaos; stir the winds; make
The world anew, chaotic rage undone.
Undo the chaos of the universe.”
She did not stop the chanting in her mind
In spite of all the bruising that she felt
While desperately attempting to arrest
Her rolling on the hard slates on the roof.
She did not stop while hanging from the edge
Above the ground, her arms afire with pain.
She dropped to earth and rolled to ease the fall.
Her voice wrapped dragon roars and human screams
Into the chant she sang and tried to end
The fury overwhelming what the village
Had once been slumbering inside it peace.
She was no witch, she told herself, and still
She chanted witching words and reached for power
She’d never wanted, always shunned and fled.
2
Sshruunak felt Mmirrimann before he saw
The dragon horde above the village walls.
He threw himself toward the chanting witch,
Then turned as Mmirrimann came roaring down,
His claws extended as he tried to pierce
Shruunak’s black scales and end the village war.
Shruunak avoided Mmirrimann and tried
To understand the madness boiling skies
Alive with dragons fighting dragons, flame
And claws enraptured by the constant roar
And screams that made the universe unreal.
He’d never dreamed that Mmirrimann would lead
The caves to war against their sons and daughters.
His calculations had been wrong so often
That, even caught by rage, he knew his judgment
Was flawed so badly that he could not trust
The thoughts or feeling that were driving him.
He saw the human witch drop to the ground,
But then Ssruanne was diving at his wings.
He twisted as another flaming arrow
Unnaturally burned through his dense black scales.
He’d have to run. His followers would have
To fly toward the mountains where their lairs
Could not be found without a dogged search.
He roared, his pain so great it echoed like
A writhing snake into the village skies.
He started climbing, pumping wings in spite
Of how the flames upon his belly spread,
But then began to hover as he saw
The weirding clouds beyond the village wall
And dire wolves gleaming in unnatural light.
He saw the ending of the world of dragons
Foretold by Mmirrimann, despair so great
Escape was, like his life, like dragonkind,
A fantasy impossible to seize.
Fear clawed into his double hearts and made
Them beat arhythmically, the chaos singing
Inside the roiling clouds so powerfully
It overwhelmed his sense of who he was.
“Retreat!” he shrilled. “Retreat and fly away!”
His followers, disorganized and fearful,
Too many injured from the human’s arrows,
Began, as one, to climb above the battle
They’d started following Sshruunak’s black rage.
The fear Sshruunak had broadcast shocked their wings
Into a frantic flight toward the clouds
That boiled toward the village, whirling doom,
An ending, of the world that once had been.
To listen to this passage click on Retreat
Note: This is the forty sixth 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 Before the End of the World to read the passage before this one. To read the next passage in the epic, click on Living Inside Chaos.
Filed under Poetry, The Dragon Epic, Thomas Davis, Uncategorized
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
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
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
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
a passage from The Dragon Epic by Thomas Davis
1
Ruarther stopped his struggling inside
The golden dragon’s claws. They did not bite
Into his flesh or even make him feel
Uncomfortable, although the ground below
Sped by so fast it made his stomach churn.
He looked at how the other dragons flew,
Their eyes intense upon horizons set
Beyond his human sight, and looked in wonder
At how the human dragon with her scales
So bright with rainbow light it hurt his eyes
Flew like the dragons flew, her wings a steady
Beat, driving her toward the village where
Her father’s death had made her mother flee.
The spirit bear was just behind him, surfing
An eddy from the world of whirling vortex.
Behind him weirding bridging life and death
Swirled madly in the morning’s normal skies,
A song unnatural within the world,
A wrongness brought to life upon a day
Unlike another day from history.
Ruarther held his self, inside the talons.
Inviolate from spirit bear possession.
What was a human man, who’d lived the wrongness
That he had lived, do when a dragon grabbed
Him, lifted him to flight, and let him live
In spite of all the evil that he’d done?
He looked toward the human rainbow dragon
And wondered why he’d been fanatically
Determined that she had to die if humans
Were destined to continue with their stories.
The cold miasma following their flight
Was like a nightmare, troubling the madness
Inside the morning’s skies and shining light.
He kept himself as still as possible.
The golden dragon’s flight was way too high
To fall from if he valued living life.
Without a weapon, what role could he play
If he was dropped inside the village fighting
Against the ravages of dragon war?
2
The clashing din of war was obvious
Before Ssruuanne could see the devastation
She sensed as dragons battled villagers.
Then Mirrimann’s wings started moving faster.
A violet dragon, Sshisshiton, who’d left
The conclave he had called to end the madness
Sshruunak had generated from his rage,
Was on the ground, her wounds so great she drooped
Her head and did not look to see the sky
Completely full of dragons from the caves.
The tension in Ssruuanne reflected sounds
of battle now so loud it innudated
The universe and silenced miasma’s song
That followed them toward the tragedy
Now raging at the human’s small stone village.
Below her dire wolves howled to smell the blood
Of dragons and their human foes in air.
Then Mirrimann roared louder than he’d known
That he could roar. The other dragons echoed
The power inside Mirrimann as dragons
Aflame from burning human arrows danced
In skies and plunged toward the human archers
That bent their bows and sent their deadly flame
Into the scales of dragon hides, pain roiling
The dragons and the humans as they died
From injuries inflicted by Sshruunak’s
Mad war that had no chance for victory.
A dragon flung a human archer high
Into the air as roaring filled the skies.
Miasma’s silent roar of sound entwined
Into the battle’s roar, the dragon’s roaring,
And seemed to leap toward the chaos raging
Above the cottages and forest trees.
Deep in Ssruanne she felt the prophecy
That Mmirrimann had said in conclave, warning
About extinction for the dragon race.
She keened her sorrow at the sight of dragons
And humans battling toward their deaths.
Her keening made Ruarther, held by talons,
Squirm, trying to escape her talons’ grip.
Enraged, an ancient dragon male who’d led
The mountain dragons during all their years
Of peace inside the caves, a hurtling Mmirrimann
Flew like an arrow at Sshruunak’s black scales.
The coal black dragon felt his leader’s charge
And turned toward the threat he’d never thought
He’d have to face, his belly scales on fire,
His pain and rage so great the world seemed red
And violent in a mind unhooked from thought.
Miasma flowed toward the battlefield.
Once living spirits teemed and swirled in clouds
Of mourning, searching for the living light
Where absolution could absolve their spirits
Of darkness and the flowing cauldron central
To individuality’s privation.
The earth quaked in the shivering blood calls
From dire wolves’s gleaming, hungry, dull red eyes.
To listen to this passage, click on Confrontation
Note: This is the forty fourth 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 Dire Wolves to read the passage before this one. To read the passage after this one, click on Before the End of the World.
Filed under The Dragon Epic, Thomas Davis
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