a children’s poem by Thomas Davis
Softly whisper to the snow
As the snow whispers down from the sky
And cover yourself with a blanket of song
As the snow comes down to lie
Upon the ground, to cover the ground
With a blanket white and cold.
Softly sing your snow white snow
And sleep with the sleep of the snow.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
Inside the cave he’d clawed in mountain rock
Sshruunak’s resentment at the inconvenience
Of living rough outside the dragon lairs
Far from community he’d always known
Kept waking him, the cold intense enough
To make him wish he’d spent more digging time.
He kept on saying that discomfort made
Him miserable right now, but soon the moon
Would be invisible and then the song
Of dragon wings would beat so dreadfully
The earth would tremble from the flames of rage.
The thought of nineteen males, six fierce females
Now following his lead to dragon war
Seemed like a gift more precious than his hearts
Inside the small cave’s dark, a bolstering
That made his plans more promising than he
Had dreamed that they could ever be before
Their force had left the caves to find Sshruunak.
Inside his head he saw his clutch of dragons
Spread out across the skies, their bodies large
Enough to make irrelevant the men
That scurried with their deadly arrows through
The lanes between their small stone cottages.
He felt the power of their thundering
Inside his hearts and felt so potent-wild
He thought that he could burst out from his cave
And wrest the ancient stories from ancestors
And make them live in glory in this time.
But then the image faded as he thought
About the news his new force brought: Of Mmirrimann
And all the elders on the conclave’s stone,
Especially Ssruanne who’d let her mate
Assume her place upon the dais to call
For dragon war, huge dragons battling dragons
So that the dragon race would grow and thrive.
The old ones’ foolishness enraged him, made
Him want to spew his fire into their smug,
Old surety with force enough to make them cringe,
But still, his followers were young and strong,
But could they face the dragons from the caves?
Could victory be carved from dragons first
And then from humans with their puny strength?
What had he done? Created dominance
That would ensure that dragons lived without
The endless threat that humans represented?
Or made a war where dragon claws and flame
Raked only dragon hides and forced a slide
Into extinction Mmirrimann was fond
Of warning all the dragon caves about?
He’d trained the young males that had followed him
In discipline and strategy, but now
His newer followers were here to join
The battle that he’d planned for carefully,
And though he’d lead his forces through the skies,
What would they do when dragons they had known
The moment when they’d left their eggs for light
Confronted them and came at them with flames?
He’d somehow thought the elders would sit back
And let him fight the humans in his war
And cower in the caves, afraid to stop
Him as he moved to rid the world of humans,
But if the dragons that had left the conclave
To join him in the mountains had it right,
His war against the humans was a part
Of what they faced, the other part a war
He had not planned or even contemplated.
The doubts gnawed at his stomach, made him want
To bawl his fear and helpless feelings out
Into the quiet night and make them vanish,
But if he showed his feelings to the others,
He’d heard the hesitancy in the way
The new ones told of elders at the conclave
And felt the cold dismay the males had felt
To feel the possibility of war
Fought with their fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers…
What could he do? he asked himself. What should
He do before he could not stop events from moving
So fast he had no choice but forward movement
Toward a destiny that was not guaranteed
To be the destiny his dreams had formed?
He thrashed inside the cave and cold and moved
His wings–and then had left the cramped, close cave
For air that whistled as he flapped his wings.
Stars shined so bright they rained their silver light
Upon the valley far below his flight.
Great dragon bodies moved uncomfortably
To hear him leave his clawed out earth and soar
Into the crystal darkness of the night.
For hours the newest dragons had clawed earth
To make themselves a cave where they could sleep,
But mountain rock was hard, and days were needed
To make a cave, not hours before night came.
Still, no one followed him into the sky.
One day to train the new ones how to fight
A war with strategy instead of rage,
He thought. Stoormachen and the others who
Had learned the tactics had to take the lead.
The clutch he led would not be quite as fierce
As what he’d dreamed when he had set his rage
Toward the moment when he’d wage a war
Against the hunter who had sent his arrow
To blind his eye and wrap him deep with pain,
But cowering was not the dragon way—
Not even if Ssruuanne and Mirrimmann
Were strong enough to fill the skies with dragons
Opposing him and what his mind had willed.
He drove his wings down, spurted higher, up
Into the thinner air toward the stars.
They’d win, he screamed inside himself. They’d win!
They had no other choice than victory.
To listen to this section of the epic, click on Determination, Doubt, and Dreams of Victory
Note: This is the thirty-fifth 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 Metamorphosis to go to the section previous to this one. To read the next section of the epic, click on Mesmerized Cave Dragons.
Filed under Poetry, The Dragon Epic, Thomas Davis
by Thomas Davis
Now the responses, once fresh,
Are natural and automatic.
The moon still shines, a silver crystal
Polished and hardened into bright stone,
And the stars still glint alive
The dark, unknowable spaces between stars.
But the responses,
“I love you,” “yes, honey,” “Darling, Darling…”
Are like jackets worn too many times,
Old…familiar…and too comfortable
To be emotion.
I remember a night, late summer,
With stars crowding out the sky,
When I held you against an old wagon
Left resting in an empty, dark field.
You were warm and responsive,
But I was tense, filled with anger at words,
Struggling against commitment,
Against the flow of years that would flow after
In endless succession, endless time.
Then I spoke, afraid, bold,
Wild as a man playing marbles
With blazing, cateyed stars.
Then the universe expanded, exploded
Into a dance of darkness,
A celebration of silver and dark.
I reached out, became one with you,
Spirit, soul, body, and mind,
And threw away the sense of years
With responsibilities and commitments
And endless waiting on the flow of time.
Now the responses are familiar.
“I love you,” I said and meant it,
But the flood of emotion was a trickle,
An acknowledgement of the past
And the possible future
And those myriads of things said
And unsaid…
Are the years that dark?
So hideous in their alternations
Of good time, bad time, good, bad?
Is the waiting nearing an end?
A resolution of emptiness? Fullness?
You put on a yellow nightgown,
Shadowy curves through misty silk,
And I look from light into darkness
Strewn with the dim lights
Of silver stars and silver moon.
I look and see you running madly
In and out between the fiery suns
Of dim stars, brighter than stars,
Brighter than the stone smooth moon.
I put down this pen and wait…
For darkness…for the unraveling of hours.
The words are natural, cold with fire.
I have learned to handle suns
Without scorching flesh.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
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
1
He woke as groggy as he’d ever felt
In all his life, miasma thick inside
The copse and deep inside his self.
The fire he’d built was smoldering as light
Crept through the branches to the snowy ground.
He forced himself to sit, then slowly stood,
The weirding powerful enough to change
The way the trees stood as he tried to find
His balance in a universe that seemed to roll
As if the land had waves beneath its soils.
I have to kill the witch’s child, he said
Into a wilderness that did not hear.
He bent and carefully picked up his bow
And sheaf of arrows, then walked warily
Out of the copse into the fields of snow
That climbed toward the mountains and the green
Of pines that snaked between the dark cliff rock.
He had to orient himself toward
The cabin where the witch had made her home,
But then felt better as he slowly made his way
Across the blinding fields of crusted white.
A half mile from the copse he felt a wave
Of nausea sweep through his body, hands
He could not see opposed to letting him
Continue on the path he’d set himself.
The witch, he thought. She’d died. The dragon said
She’d died, but she had used the spirit bear
To forge a link out of the chaos wild
With death and nothingness and willed his will
To falter as she made the universe before
Him toss and turn into a whirling wall.
How could I know what’s going on? he thought.
And then he saw the spirit bear refracted
Out of his walking body on the snow.
His arm hair stirred with skin that tingled fear
Into the coldness of the snow and light.
He’d lost the battle that he’d thought he’d won.
He’d sent the bear into the nothingness
Out of the who of who he was, the man,
But now he was Ruarther and the bear.
He was a monster walking on the earth.
He looked again and felt the shadow bear
Beside him as he walked across the snow.
What should he do? he thought. What could he do?
The witch and bear were locked in mortal combat,
And he was in the center buffeted
By forces greater than mortality
Could hope to face and still survive intact.
2
Ruanne froze as her hand reached for a nail.
A vertigo so powerful it stunned
Her made her freeze upon the steep sloped roof
Where she was working on a shelter made
To hold a bowman who could shoot his arrows
At roaring dragons with a hope he’d live
When claws or fire came raking from the sky.
The voice that filled her mind was not the voice
Of Mmirrimann, but even larger, singing
With powers amplified by centuries
Of dragon elders taking care of dragons
In spite of all the awful human/dragon wars.
The dragon looked at her, evaluating
The woman that she was, and sighed so deeply
The sigh seemed dredged from all eternity.
“I am Ssruanne,” the dragon slowly said.
The golden dragon’s eyes blinked twice, and then
Ruanne was in the fields of blinding snow.
Ruarther, sheltering a spirit bear
Much larger than his body, eyes as red
As blood inside his veins, stood stunned, his life
Undone by knowing that he’d let the bear
Inside of him in spite of what he’d thought he’d done.
Without a thought Ruanne screamed out, “Ruarther!”
The village workers stopped their preparations
For dragon war and stared at how she stood
Upon the roof, her body aimed toward the mountains.
Ssruanne conducted all the power streamed
Into Ruanne’s wild cry toward Ruarther.
She shattered through the whirling chaos dancing
In waves around the hunter’s muddled head.
3
Ruarther felt a wave of raging love
Slam at the spirit bear inside of him.
He felt the bear’s fierce spirit spit a spume
Of hatred at the cry that pierced it like
An arrow singing from Ruarther’s bow.
He stood up straight. The winter air was clear
Of all the whirling that made the morning
Miasmic, filled with chaos, hatred, loss…
He felt as if he’d found himself and shrugged
The forces centering into his body out
Into a universe he could not know or see.
He looked toward the mountains, and the trees
He’d not seen lost inside the cold miasma.
He felt as if he was a child at night
Who was alone as dire wolves howled their hunger
Toward the darkness of an unseen moon.
A mile away a small stone cabin stood
Alone inside a wilderness that seemed alive
With songs too powerful for stone to silence.
He felt as if he’d starved himself for days.
He knew he’d reached the cottage that he’d sought
So angrily and single-mindedly.
He could not see the witch’s child outside,
But smoke was rising from the cottage fireplace.
He knelt down on the snow and took an arrow
And notched it on the bow’s taut, ready string.
He’d show the golden dragon that his heart
Was strong enough to mock her dragon fire,
He thought. He’d found the witches’ child she’d tried
To make him save from winter’s deadly storms.
To listen to this section of the epic, click on Vertigo and the Moment of Truth
Note: This is the thirty-third section of a long narrative poem, which has grown into The Dragon Epic. 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 Mmirrimann Inside the Conclave He Called to go to the section previous to this one.
Filed under Poetry, The Dragon Epic, Thomas Davis, Uncategorized
by Thomas Davis
a children’s poem written when Sonja and Mary were young
After the stars were all hung out,
Some wet and some half dry,
Rain dripped down from heaven’s black
And cleaned the blue into the sky.
Then the laundry woman left
And let the stars grow dry and cold,
Shining, flapping in the sky,
Becoming stars instead of clothes.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
a love poem by Thomas Davis to Ethel
The thunder is silence.
It came upon the morning
With clouds more enormous
Than mountains
(Mountains etched against
The dome of sky)—
And now it is silence.
First it rumbled, clouds black,
Anger on quick gusts of wind.
Then it roared, cluttering day
With grumbling songs
And skies of darkened gray.
Now the thunder is silence.
The noonday light is blackness.
We walked into the field…
The daisies were trembling.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
an epic poem, The Dragon Epic, by Thomas Davis
1.
The weirding shocked Ssruanne awake and stirred
Inside of her a fear that made her hearts
A double drum vibrating in her bones.
Beside her Mmirrimann was sleeping like
A dragon slept, not like a dragon caught
Inside miasma’s cold, chaotic winds.
He twitched to feel her movement, stirred,
But stayed asleep, his eyelids fluttering.
She softly moved away from him and stood
Upon the ledge outside his cave, her eyes
As restless as the beating of her hearts.
She spread her wings and launched into the air.
Disturbances seemed everywhere, the signs
Of abnormality small waves in drafts
Beneath the surface of her golden wings.
She looked toward Wei’s cottage, felt the wilding
That seemed frustrated as the human girl
Attempted magic far beyond her skill;
Then turned her neck toward a copse of pine
That seemed to swirl with chaos not unlike
The chaos Mmirrimann had fled to find
His life again inside the dragon caves.
The swirling seemed to buffet her with winds
That were no winds, repelling her to heights
She hardly ever tried to reach in flight.
Behind her, deep inside the mountains, stones
Scorched black from dragon fire grew tangible
Inside her mind, their silence testament
To how the dragon race would face extinction.
She shuddered at the death they emanated
Into the cold, high beauty of their valley.
Downhill she felt the fear inside the humans
That huddled in their village cottages,
But also felt the strength infused in bows
They’d use to face unwanted dragon threat.
They would not face Sshruunak oblivious
And unprepared, she thought. His plans had gone
Awry without his knowing once again.
The clarion call from Mmirrimann inside
The caves stirred deep in dragon blood and tipped
Her wings so powerfully she almost plunged
Toward the fields of snow beneath her flight.
Her neck whipped round toward the ancient call
And wheeled her in the air toward the caves.
She shuddered at the implications buried
Inside the call, the threat of dragon war
Where dragon’s faced each other in the skies
And tried to force their will through claws and fire
Into the hearts of spirit, sentience.
How had their peace devolved to this? She thought.
2.
They all were there: The nine huge elders sat
Upon the round, black dais, their eyes a-swirl
With patterns troubling to look at, each
One grim with seeing Mmirrimann perched high
Above them on the dais where, during peace,
Ssruanne, the oldest one alive, presided
While conclaves delved into the wisdom born
Of dragon dreams and dragon sentience.
Before the nine of them the dragon race
Was gathered, restless, angry, filled with fear
Born from a dread that overwhelmed the hall.
Ssruanne walked in the massive cavern
And took her place below her lover’s mass.
He’d shed the weariness he’d felt before
And looked as if he’d never faced a time
He doubted his own strength and dominance.
“The younger males are stirring dragon blood,”
He said, “and taking on another war
That adds another chapter in the long,
Long history of battling the human race.
“I’ve journeyed deep into our memories
And tried to see if they could find a way
To victory that would not threaten all
The strength of dragonkind with racial death,”
He said. “But in the chaos where the dead
Are gathered in a storm of chaos empty
Of who we are upon this splendid earth,
I saw despair without a shred of hope
If dragon/human war erupts again.
I’ve called the call against our senseless sons
Not out of love for humans, but for our eggs
Still incubating in the birth cave’s warmth.
“If any can convince Sshruunak that he
Must not continue in his path, I ask
You for your words and passion. Otherwise
I’ve seen no way that dragons will survive.
The puny humans are like swarms of wasps
That sting and sting no matter how we sear
Their lives with dragon strength and claws and fire.
I’ve warred upon them time and time again,
But dragons dwindle every time we choose
To face our foe with war instead of peace.
“We must choose peace to build our population’s strength.
That’s what I found inside miasma’s chaos.
I saw no other way to keep our eggs alive.”
The nine great elders stared into the mass
Of dragon eyes that whirled perplexity.
As Mmirrimann kept staring at the eyes
That stared at him, a clutch of males positioned
Toward the passages into the cavern,
As silently as possible, began
To turn and leave the hall to join Sshruunak.
Williama sighed so loud she forced Ssruanne
To turn her head to look at her dismay.
At least another dozen males had left.
At last, his voice so sad it seemed to flood
Miasma from the chaos through the hall,
His whirling eyes uncertain, Mmirrimann
Rose to his hind legs, larger than Sshruunak
Or any other male alive, and roared,
“We cannot fail. We must succeed. To war!
To war against our brothers and our sons
And all their unwise dance with dragon deaths!”
To listen to this section of the epic, click on Mmirrimann Inside the Conclave He Called
Note: This is the thirty-second section of a long narrative poem, which has grown into The Dragon Epic. 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 Doubt to go to the section previous to this one. To read the next section of the poem, go to Vertigo and the Moment of Sudden Truth.
Filed under Poetry, The Dragon Epic, Thomas Davis
by Thomas Davis for Ethel
But my love is also like the quietness of the earth,
like the wind passing by from the north to the south,
like words wonderful with knowledge,
telling of the measurements of justice and truth.
Her spirit is like a threshing instrument
that can harvest even the wild waters of the sea.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
