A drawing by Ethel Mortenson Davis for the cover of Thomas Davis’s novel for young adults, Salt Bear, which is published by Four Windows Press at our home in Continental Divide, New Mexico
Category Archives: Thomas Davis
40. The Shock of Rage
a passage from The Dragon Epic by Thomas Davis
The shock of rage from cold black dragon eyes
Stunned through Ruarther like a wave unmanning
The man he once had been before he’d faced
Ssruanne upon his hunt inside the forest.
A second sight surrounded him and let
Him see the spirit bear who’d governed him
Inside miasma holding who he was
Together with intensity of hate
Directed at the witch, Wei’s mother, who
Was brewing constancy inside of chaos.
He saw the past, and how he’d cowered down
Behind the boulder with a frightened Cragdon
As black wings swooped from darkness at his life
And spewed out darkness in its raging hate
That wanted all humanity to die.
The dragon he had passed flinched azure scales
As blackness roiled into her mind and echoed
Into the other dragons in the snow
Around the rainbow human dragon, Wei.
Ruarther felt the threat inside the rage
And shook himself, the core of who he was.
He saw himself before the Old One, bow
Pulled back as terror raged inside of him.
He heard the Old One’s pleading words that tried
To move him to compassion for a child,
And flinched to feel him send an arrow’s flight
Toward a being who had meant no harm.
He felt the flame that blazed behind his back
And saw himself, as frightened as a deer,
Turn, run toward the deepness of the forest.
He’d never thought he’d ever be a coward,
But only cowards sought a spirit bear
So they could have the strength to leave themselves
And hunt a young girl child they could have saved.
He looked at where he was, his body pointed
Toward the capitol where Clayton lived.
He felt his fingers on the bowstring taut
With death aimed at the rainbow that was once
A child and felt Ruanne inside his mind.
He felt the love she felt for him in spite
Of all the madness that she knew possessed
The man he once had been, and felt the bow
Fall from his hands into the plateau’s snow,
The human dragon child, the rainbow dragon
Oblivious to who he was or where
He stood with deadly rage in front of her.
The chaos whirled around him as the bear
Discerned his presence in the roiling void
And lunged in desperation at the path
Now open to the earth he longed to see.
Ruarther did not flinch, but closed the path
Sshruunak had opened with his wave of rage.
He felt the fires and claws of war intrinsic
Inside the blackness that had made the dragons
Flinch from the rainbow miracle unfolding
In front of Wei’s small house below their caves.
He touched the beard now overgrown from weeks
Without a razor, tried to understand
The cowardness inside of who he was,
And felt the creeping of depression slide,
As subtle as a snake inside deep grass,
Into his arms and thoughts that dredged a loathing
He’d banished from his life while still a child.
But then he squared his shoulders imperceptibly.
He had a task to do. He’d always been
A hunter who had brought game when starvation
Was in the children’s haunted, frightened eyes.
He’d been afraid of dragon flame when he
Had failed to hear compassion in a dragon’s voice.
He’d failed the test of what it was to be
A human being as the test was taught by gods
And values buried in the life the village
Had passed through timeless generations.
He looked out at the dragons craning necks
And looking at the skies as if they dreaded
A message trumpeted into the day.
He knew his enemy, the night-black wings,
The flame that seared his flesh and nearly sent
His spirit to the grayness of the void.
He could not face Ruanne or those he’d known
And fed for all the years he’d spent alive.
He felt her as she warned the village, Reestor
Of war launched from a mountain valley out
Toward the place where sentinels for humans
Lived close to where the mountain dragons lived.
He saw that he had always been conflicted
Inside himself and turned the love he’d earned
Away and felt unspoken feelings never
Imagined by Ruanne, the villagers.
Awareness sapped already weakened strength.
He’d never make the village by the time
The warrior dragons started up their war.
No dragon on the plain’s white snow had spread
Their wings and taken flight, but everywhere
Eyes searched the skies and waited as the wave
Of blackness dissipated into air.
Ruarther looked at hands that held no bow.
They trembled slightly as he looked at them.
He turned toward the village, shrugged, and started
To run toward the home he’d always loved.
He hoped the dragons in the snow surrounding
The rainbow dragon did not mean to join
The war the night-black dragon meant to wage.
The village had no hope if all the dragons
Began to move against their human foes.
He had to pace himself; he had to try
To add his arms and wits against the storm
No human could escape once it had come.
To listen to this passage, click on The Shock of Rage
Note: This is the fortieth 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 To War! And Raging Dragon Hearts to read the passage before this one. To read the next passage click on Fate and Sentinels.
Filed under Poetry, The Dragon Epic, Thomas Davis
The Kettle and the Stove
a children’s poem by Thomas Davis
“Well fellow old, my faithful friend,”
The kettle sighed as she began.
“We’ve cooked away until the end
And finally our long earned rest’s at hand.
“Sleep softly this black household night
And when bright morning trumpets in
We’ll wheeze and steam just like the light
And start our work all up again.”
“Oh yes,” the old stove answered her.
“The morning always seems to come.
The only thing is that I’m tired
And wish that all the endless work was done.”
“Oh yes,” the kettle wheezed and sighed.
“I know the feeling. Yes, I do.
Sometimes I get steamed up inside
And boil the silliest things. I do.
“Why, just today some tea was poured
Into my deepest inside part,
And I steamed up with salty tears
And salted tea down in my heart.”
“There, there,” the old stove gently said.
“Now don’t go getting steamed again.
My fires are cold and long since dead,
And sleep’s the thing that eases sin.”
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
39. To War! And Raging Dragon Hearts!
a passage from The Dragon Epic by Thomas Davis
Above the earth, stars hard and bright against
The thin, cold blackness of the atmosphere,
Sshruunak felt faint from lack of oxygen.
The tug of gravity was powerful enough
To make him strain his wings to stay in flight,
And then he felt the weirding far below,
The swerve of history as rainbow light
Congealed into a dragon’s hardened scales
Around the heartbeat of a human girl.
From Mmirrimann an image filled with dread
And wonder seemed to dance before his eyes.
He felt outside the ganglia of minds
That sparked into connections buried deep
In dragon memories linked back to times
When solitary power filled the minds
Of dragons hid in solitary caves.
He felt a journeying that seemed outside
Of who he was, kaleidoscope of rage
Red-eyed, incensed that human brains could scurry
In bodies small as ants and still wrap him
With ropes that would not let him save himself.
He felt the memories of Mmirrimann
Begin to sing into the rainbow light
That haloed round his stratospheric flight…
And then, his self alive inside the old,
Dark dragon’s mind, the power surging out
Into connections not available
to younger dragons still involved in making
The self that would protect them from the songs
Miasma and the ancient memories
Could strike into a dragon’s hearts, Sshruunak
Exploded with a black, cold rage that slammed
Into the human woman linking him
And Mmirrimann, the human that had burned
An arrow deep into his eye, and humming
That throbbed from dragon spirits to a world
Upon the cusp of breaking from its egg
Into a newness never known before.
He felt the woman fall, saw the human evil
Beside a dragon in the snow fall down,
And heard the grumbling rage in Mmirrimann
Distract the ancient dragon from the light
Inside the field and force awareness, harsh,
To lock on Sshruunak’s seething bolt of rage.
As Mmirrimann’s awareness ricocheted
Back to Sshruunak, the younger dragon’s wings
Collapsed, and suddenly he fell as if
He’d lost what strength he had to have to fly.
He plunged toward the cold, hard mountain peaks,
His rage so great he could not make his wings
Flare outward, letting air support his weight
And finishing the free fall hurtling him
Toward a death he’d never contemplated.
He struggled as he fell and twisted, turned
Until, at last, he forced his wings to flare
Into the thickening of air as flight
Came back to him and let him feel control
And let him flatten out his flight above
The earth and let him feel alive again.
The line between the dragons in the field
And him was gone, and in its place he saw
He could not wait for night to start his war.
A miracle had caught cave dragons deep
Into a rainbow mesh they did not understand.
He could not let them extricate themselves
If he and all his followers were fated
To ever rid the earth of human evil.
He aimed toward the valley where black stones
Were charred with dragon fire and flew so swift
The air around him whistled from his flight.
The light was growing in the sky as shadows
Retreated from the slowly rising sun.
He shot his urgency into Stoormachen.
“The war has come!” he screeched inside his mind.
“We’ve got to make the war begin right now!”
Stoormachen startled from the shallow cave
He’d dug into the mountainside and looked
Into the sky to see Sshruunak’s black scales.
He seemed confused, unsure of what dark threat
Had changed the plans Sshruunak had drilled in him.
“We have to move!” Sshruunak repeated, wild
With edginess, afraid delay would end
Up ruining all the dreams he’d brewed inside
Since arrows buried fire into his eyes.
“The dragons and the humans are distracted.
The plans have changed. We’ve got to hurry! Move!”
Stoormachen spotted blackness in the sky,
Sshruunak’s flight swift enough to startle him.
The followers Sshruunak had gathered felt
A stirring in their spirits and their hearts.
They heard the urgency Stoormachen bleated
Into the mountain air and felt the fire
Of battle lust so suddenly inside
Their minds that they could barely see the boulders
Below them shining in the early sun.
They looked and saw Sshruunak’s wild flight and moved
Their wings to greet their leader’s urgency.
The time had come; the dragon’s legacy
Of fire and claws and mindless rage had come!
They watched Sshruunak plunge like a meteor
Into the valley’s eastern edge, his blackness
Contrasting vividly against blue skies.
“To war!” their leader roared. “To human death!
And fiery dragon flame and raging hearts!”
To listen to this passage, click on
To War! And Raging Dragon Hearts!
Note: This is the thirty-ninth 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 Mind’s Black Fire to read the passage before this one. To read the next passage in the epic, click on The Shock of Rage.
Filed under Poetry, The Dragon Epic, Thomas Davis
Love Story
by Thomas Davis
For Ethel
The golden eagle, dark brown against deep blue of late spring sky,
Hovered, wings adjusting to wind currents.
In the cool canyon, beneath the ancient cottonwood tree
With its streaked white trunk,
Beside the stream shrinking from spring’s fullness,
We sat next to our picnic blanket.
The eagle dipped, then soared into a great arc
Toward, then over, sandstone canyon walls
Where years of rain had flowed over the canyon rim
And stained rock as it fell to where it fed the stream below.
That day was not our beginning.
Our beginning was in letters chained from Wisconsin to Colorado
As never-met poets began to explore what might come to be.
Where my poetry raged with fumbling working toward form,
Your poetry burned on the page,
Words boiled into images.
But in Unaweep Canyon on a day that seemed like it should last forever
We talked and began weaving invisible bonds
That show no signs of weakening
As we leave middle age and become elders
Visited by the pains of age and wear of time.
The moments of our lives together tremble,
Like the golden eagle’s wings:
Days spent learning the intensity of each other
As we walked Orchard Mesa’s huddled foothills,
The moon rising so deep an orange it was almost red,
Growing larger and larger
As it labored over the Prussian blue rim of Grand Mesa;
Tears coming to your eyes when you singed
The wedding dress you worked weeks to make
On the night before our wedding;
The long drive to Washington State’s Anacortes Island,
Possessions piled on top of an old car,
As we searched for life–
And then the even longer drive to Wisconsin
As we traveled over mountains,
Through orchards and fields of crops, deep into forests, across plains
Until we came, at last, to Lake Superior shining sunlight.
Then the birth of Sonja, Mary, and Kevin.
Tense waiting at hospitals
Until finally the joy of new life explodes;
The loneliness of a hospital room at night
While Mary struggles for breath inside a clear plastic bubble
As doctors fight an illness that seems to last forever;
The day when Kevin convulses
As doctors and nurses rush into his room
And force us into the hallway scared at not understanding.
Days spent walking to Lake Winnebago
Dragging a red wagon behind us
With Sonja talking ceaselessly while one,
Then the other, carries Mary in our arms.
The years of school and the search for a teaching job
Until, at last, we end up in a small Midwestern town
Working in an alternative school on the Menominee Reservation.
Life fills up with the details of living,
Moments of emotion:
Joy, anger, frustration, desperation, hope, sadness, grief, laughter,
A flowing that stretches into a landscape of bends and rocks and hills.
When we moved to Wisconsin Dells into the Gold Mine House
With its basement field stone floor and huge fireplaces,
Bald eagles sat with white heads and brown backs and breasts
Nearly every morning during winter and spring
In trees along the Wisconsin River,
Snow falling as one or another took wing off its pine perch
And soared into cold to look for open water.
A poem, or a hundred poems, cannot give life to either life or love.
Marriage begins, and time passes;
Children are born, and time passes;
Jobs are won or lost, and time passes;
Daughters and a son run through a million minutes
Of motion and meaning, and time passes;
Grandchildren are born and become blessings, and time passes…
Our lives spark against each other,
Spiraling out like skiers I remember one night in Aspen, Colorado
Who came down black mountains slopes
Carrying torches that glided and wove,
Suspended high above where I was standing, in the night sky.
And inside the passing of time a golden eagle still hovers above us
Beside a small stream
That sings as it flows over small shelves of sandstone
Until one morning we wake, and you grind fair trade coffee beans,
And we sit before a fire in the fireplace in New Mexico
That you say is good for our souls,
And we deal with the pains in your knee and my back,
And we try to understand each other
In the way we have always tried to understand each other,
Braiding our lives through moments when we are together.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
38. The Mind’s Black Fire
a passage from The Dragon Epic by Thomas Davis
Inside her cottage, weary from the work
She’d done with all the other villagers,
Alone, the comfort of her rocking chair
Suffusing through the soreness in her bones,
She felt a sudden rush of fear and wonder
Infect her with a dread so powerful
It made her look around in panic.
She felt the dragons fleeing from their caves
And wondered if the war was suddenly
Reality, a monster wolfing human, dragon lives
And leaving devastation in its wake—
But then she saw Ruarther draw his bow
Upon a field of shining, endless ice
And saw his face dissolve into a mask
Of weird bewilderment, as if his life
Was ending as it spiraled on outside
The life he’d lived up to that moment’s instant.
Inside her sewing room she saw him drop
His bow and lose the madness that had made
Him find the witch’s child intending murder.
And then she saw him think of her, Ruanne,
And home and how he’d brought game home to help
The village live its life inside the forest
Where dire wolves came in winter and the dragons
Flew past so high they seemed mere colors specked
Upon the clearness of the endless skies.
But then she saw him stare into the whirling
Intensity of one great dragon’s eyes
And felt him turn away from where he’d lived
His life in honor, flinching from the shame
He felt at having worked obsessively
To kill a girl he’d never even seen.
She felt him kneel in snow and start to search
for where his spirit could find peace again
away from weirding spirit bears and dragons
and even her, the woman whom he loved.
How could she see him? Not through dragon eyes,
Ssuranne or Mirrimann, but through a cord
Of spirit sense that bound her heart to his
No matter how insane or evil he might be
In struggling against the demons fused
Into the human that he should have been.
She put her hand up to her mouth and let
A small cry echo through the sewing room.
But then she felt a sense of miracle
And fear inside the dragons spread across
The fields of snow outside the cottage where
The child Crayllon had brought into the world
Had lived beneath the dragon’s mountain caves.
What could she do? What should she do? The weirding
Was emanating waves of witch’s power
Into the dormant depths inside her spirit
And made her want to use the knowledge she
Had spent her life denying as the world
Swirled change and bridges to a place forbidden
Into a fabric never meant to be.
A black fire seared into Ruanne and bounced
Into Ruarther, ricocheting off
The shields he’d built when exorcizing forcefully
The spirit bear into Ssruanne whose eyes
Were drawn from Wei’s mutation up
Into the skies above the mountain peaks.
A recognition of Ruarther flared
With hate so toxic that it made Ruanne
Sink to her knees upon the cottage floor.
She felt the dragon up so high its lungs
Were straining for each breath, its flight a rage
Containing promised death for humankind.
Ssruanne’s mind blocked the fire that scorched Ruanne.
Surprised, Ruanne heard screaming blistering
Into the cottage’s small space and saw her door
Fly open as a half a dozen men
Came storming in to find out what was wrong.
The last man in was Cragdon whose pale face
Grew paler when he saw how Ruanne looked.
He gasped, “the dragon!” Then collapsed as if
He’d felt the black fire sizzling Ruanne.
“What’s wrong?” a worried Reestor ordered, voice
Commanding, filled with panicked dread.
The men around her looked like spirit beasts,
Their faces wavering with spirit light.
As Ruanne tried to find normality,
Bright rainbows seemed to dance before her eyes
And dragon voices sang their humming songs
Into a universe no longer like
Reality that made life possible.
What could she do? she asked. What should she do?
She looked at Reestor, eyes so bright
They seemed as powerful as dragon eyes.
Outside a crowd had gathered, wondering,
Had Ruanne sensed that war and death was cusped
Upon the flight of coming dragon wings?
Ruanne held Reestor’s eyes and fought
To force the black fire and its burning hatred
Out of her mind into the wilderness
Around the village, but she felt the dragon
Above the earth turn from its climbing flight
Into a hurtling toward the peaks
Where other dragons waited in the snow.
To listen to this passage of the epic, click on The Mind’s Black Fire.
Note: This is the thirty-eighth 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 Song of Becoming a Dragon to read the passage before this one. To read the next section, click on The Mind’s Black Fire
Filed under The Dragon Epic, Thomas Davis
The Catfish River
a children’s poem by Thomas Davis
The catfish river starts,
Snorts with a small ripple of foam,
And then goes to sleep again.
The afternoon is covered with sky,
The blue cloth creeping into cradles of stone
And covering dark shallows.
The catfish river rolls over,
Swells with an oily, gray, collapsing wave,
And then goes to sleep again.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
A Moment
a love poem by Thomas Davis to Ethel
The aftermath of a moment
Is hard to describe:
The beauty:
A flash of sunlight
Through the storm darkened sky,
The wonder of beauty
Which may never come again.
Love, there was a night
When the stars were slung
Over the sky’s black face.
You were singing a lullaby,
And I was changing words into song.
We were happy and love filled.
The night was a rhythm of ourselves.
You laughed and made me see geese
With white wings in dark skies.
I laughed, and you stopped your lullaby.
Love is a kin to the silence
And also to the song.
You and I were singing,
And both of us stopped
To listen to silence.
It was a wonderful evening, love.
It is a wonderful time.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
36. Mesmerized Cave Dragons
an epic poem, The Dragon Epic, by Thomas Davis
1
Ssruanne’s cry ripped through Mmirrimann and jerked
Him upright in his cave, his whirling eyes
So bright they made the morning light seem dim.
He moved toward his ledge and launched in flight
Like other dragons from their sheer cliff caves.
The sky was filled with dragons, colorful
And urgent as they flew toward Ssruanne.
As Mmirrimann flew violently toward
The cottage where the witch’s child was braving
The harshness of the winters’ cold and wind,
He saw an image of Sshruunak, black wings
A smudge above the icy mountain peaks,
Imagining his victory against
Ssruanne and Mmirrimann, his mind still not
Aware of all the forces lining up
Against the brightness of his shining dreams.
Then, heart beats wild, the ancient dragon felt
The place where grim shades gloamed inside the dusk.
He felt disintegrating history
As dragons failed into miasma’s cold.
He almost plummeted to earth to see
Ssruanne upon the ground beside a whirling,
Wild dance of colors where the human girl
Was changing from a human’s frail, small shape
Into a dragon’s powerful, full form.
The girl was melding spindly bones and flesh
Into hard scales that shined with rainbow light
That caught the morning sun and danced and whirled
With making so unnatural and weird
It made him want to flee to memories
Where life was how it ought to be and weirding
Was more a legend than reality.
He roared so loud he thought he’d strained his lungs,
But then he heard the other roars surrounding
The place of transformation, heard the fear
That raged into the morning’s clear, clean skies.
He spread his wings and landed as a hundred
Great dragons found a place to place their legs.
What madness had inhabited the world?
The dragons sat inside a massive circle
Around the human girl and felt her melding
As power danced out of her human heart
Into the thunder of a dragon’s hearts.
As time coagulated, formed, then flowed
Into the swirl of being, nothingness
Around the rainbow dragon, human girl,
Ssruanne began to hum deep in her chest,
Her song so deep it throbbed out of her bones.
Her song memed out into the other dragons,
Their voices oscillating through the snow,
The earth caught in the miracle arising
From where the nexus of the ether-world
Had linked into a weirding of reality.
The thrumming dragon song reverberated
Off mountain peaks and echoed through the caves
That sang the song into the valleys far
From where Ssruanne and Mmirrimann sat stunned
Upon the plateau climbing to the mountains.
What madness had inhabited the world?
Huge dragons, rainbow colored, like small hills,
Upon the whiteness of a winter’s snows,
Around a rainbow swirl of burning light
Shaped like a dragon never seen before
In all of space or time, hummed dragon songs
That seemed to fill the universe in time
And where the chaos of the swirling souls
Spun emptily past dragon memories.
2
What have I done? Ruarther thought. I am…
The golden dragon that had made him run
Away from her so long ago came down
And landed in the snow beside the child
Transforming from her small girl human shape
Into a swirl of light now dragon shaped,
And then another dragon landed, then
Another, then another, wings so loud
It made him deaf to any other sound.
The dragons closed around him, breaths so loud
It made him feel as if he’d chanced a storm
Too powerful to live through if he stayed
In place without a shelter from the winds,
But not one dragon even looked at him.
They landed, whirling eyes fixed on the light
That burned a rainbow dragon’s hearts alive
Into a life that could not really be.
Ruarther dropped his bow into the snow
And turned toward the forest evergreens
Around the cottage’s stone-earthen walls.
He moved around the dragons one by one.
They did not threaten him or even see
That he was like an ant inside their midst.
He felt the emptiness inside of him,
The absence of the spirit bear who’d lived
Inside his body longer than he’d dreamed.
He thought about Ruanne, her dark disgust
At how a man she loved could dream of killing
A child he’d never known or even met.
How could he have become that evil man?
What madness had inhabited his world?
The dragons did not frighten him or make
Him feel the way he’d felt the night the great
Black dragon had attacked him by the ledge.
He felt confused, afraid of whom he’d been.
He stopped. He could not go back to the village.
He’d never wanted anything so bad.
He wanted to forget the witch’s child
Burned like a brand inside his tortured spirit
And go back to the days when he had been
A hunter bringing game to feed the people
Depending on the skills he’d honed from childhood.
What had he done to him? he asked himself.
Inside the trees he still maneuvered slowly
Around the dragons mesmerized in snow.
To listen to this section of the epic, click on Mesmerized Cave Dragons.
Note: This is the thirty-sixth section 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 Determination, Doubt, and Dreams of Victory to go to the section previous to this one. To read the next passage, click on The Song of Becoming a Dragon.
Filed under Poetry, The Dragon Epic, Thomas Davis
