photograph by Sonja Bingen
a love poem to Ethel 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.
Originally published in The New Quiver, University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh, copyright 1972.
Filed under Photography, Poetry, Thomas Davis
an epic poem by Thomas Davis
Beside the pond’s white, frozen face, the sound
Of water from the stream beneath the ice
A muffled music in the morning air,
Wei waved her arms and conjured motes
Of fire congealing to a dragon’s shape.
She strained to make the dragon breathe with scales
As golden as Ssruaanne’s great shimmering.
She concentrated, gathering the whole
Of whom she was into the spell she wove.
The motes of light began to coalesce.
The dragon in the air took shape, its eyes
So bright they nearly seemed to be alive.
Wei felt the power in her young girl’s body
Sweep out of her into the dragon’s head,
Its nostrils flaring as she tried to find
A dragon’s breath in dragon lungs beneath
The light she wove into the winter air…
But then, just like the other times, the motes
Of light collapsed into a day’s blue skies.
She held the eyes a moment as they looked
At her, their golden green intelligence,
But even though she danced her hands and wove
Her body as she tried to find the power
That let the spell she’d made exist in time,
The dragon eyes scattered into nothingness.
The irritation that she felt was strong
Enough to make her want to cry, but deep
Inside she knew that if the tears began,
They’d wrack her body, bringing weariness
That would not let her try to form a dragon
From air again for days and maybe weeks.
She shook her head and felt the warmth the sun
Was pouring down onto the fields of snow.
A hint of spring was in the air, although
Real spring was still at least a month away.
Why did she feel as if she had to form
A dragon from the still-fresh memories
Ssruanne had left inside of who she was?
What kind of girl had she become? Her mother’s
Ethereal spirit once alive, now gone?
Her body thin enough so that it seemed
As if a puff of wind could scatter her
Just like the dragons that she tried to make
Evaporated into empty air?
She sighed and turned away from where the sun
Would shine upon the pond’s still face in spring
And walked to where the woodpile stood and took
Two chunks of wood into the cottage-warmth.
She put one piece upon the fire and watched
As flames licked up its sides through rising smoke.
Why had her mother’s ghost not come again?
She asked herself. Where had her mother gone?
She shook her head and picked the rabbit laying
Beside the sink up by its large hind legs.
The trap she’d made from fire had kept her fed
As winter kept its grip upon the land.
Strong spelling had its uses. That was sure.
She took a knife out of the drawer, started
The job of skinning rabbit fur and hide,
And thought about her coming birthday, how
It would not mean what once it would have meant.
She’d get no presents, eat no special meal.
She missed her mother, not the spectral form
That taught her spells out of her mother’s grave—
Her living mother quick to comfort her
And pick her up and make her feel love’s warmth.
She put the knife down, poured some water, washed
Her hands and quietly walked to her bed.
She’d never heard of anyone with power
Enough to make a dragon out of air,
But still, she felt as if she ought to breathe
And work her spells and feel a dragon’s life
Flow from her hands into a living dragon.
She sat down on the bed and looked at where
The dragon’s scale was burned into her arm.
A bunch of other kids would stare at her,
Then scream and run away to see the scale,
She thought. They’d know that she was strange.
She waved her arm above her head and felt
The scale grow warm. She moved both arms and felt
A spell grow in the air, its power stirring
Inside the cottage, stimulating life.
She started humming underneath her breath
And broke into a song that trilled and soared
And made her feel her power once again.
She was a girl, she thought. A girl. A girl.
A square beside the scale she wore began
To burn her flesh; she felt the fire inside
Her arm and felt a second scale begin
To grow beside the first, a dragon’s life
Inside her life, out of her life, a dragon…
She stopped and let her arms fall from the air
And let the silence come back to the room.
She held her arm up, stared at where two scales
Laid side by side, their gold burned in her arm.
She waved her arm and tried to feel if it
Was heavier than it had been before.
It felt as if it was her arm, but looked
As strange as any arm had ever looked.
What kind of girl had she become? she asked.
She felt the movements of the fate
That waited her and felt as strong and fierce
As any dragon born out of an egg.
To listen to this section of the epic, click on Another Dragon Scale
Note: This is the twenty-ninth 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 1 to go to the beginning and read forward. Go to Unexpected Warning to go to the section previous to this one. To read the next section of the epic, click on Valley of the Scorched Black Stones
Filed under Poetry, The Dragon Epic, Thomas Davis
a children’s poem by Thomas Davis
“Well,” said the walrus to the elephant upon the shore.
“Have you heard the news the fish are telling
To the whale that runs the General Store?”
“Yes, I’ve heard,” answered the elephant with an ivory grin.
“I’ve heard the crazy, busy-body fish
Are trying to make the whale think that he is thin!”
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
an epic poem, The Dragon Epic, by Thomas Davis
For four whole days Ruanne stayed in her cottage,
Her mind obsessed with understanding how
Ruarther had decided that he’d keep
His vile intent to kill Crayllon’s young child.
When Reestor knocked and called to her, she sat
Inside her rocking chair, her energy
So sapped she could not force herself to move.
When Old Broar came she listened to his voice
And told herself she ought to answer him,
But as she tried to force herself to move,
She lost her will and fled into a place
Where silence made her feel as if she was
A stone, a weight too ponderous to stir.
What’s wrong with me? she thought. How can I sit
When in the wilderness Ruarther stalks
The child, and dragons calculate how fire
Will rain upon the village that I love?
Why can’t I find some energy to act?
To try to talk to dragons, let them know
The humans want to keep the peace alive?
She got up from the chair, her restlessness
So powerful it seemed to make her move.
I need to sleep, she thought. Or maybe die.
The thought of suicide hit like a bolt
Of lightning coursing through her sluggish blood.
She’d been so positive, determined that she’d find
Ruarther, keep him safe, end threats from dragons,
And shield Crayllon’s child from Ruarther’s rage.
She sat down on the bed and longed to end
Insomnia and all the doubts that crowded
Into her head and took away her rationality.
She been awake for days, she thought. For days.
She laid down, closed her eyes, the universe
A journey in the dark toward a place
Immenseness spiraled ever outward, past
The smallness of the woman who she was,
Past consciousness into an emptiness
That seemed to stretch and stretch into forever.
The darkness overwhelmed her, made her feel
Alone, as worthless as a woman lost.
But then she felt a rhythm in the dark.
Hands wove a web into the nothingness.
A woman’s hands, had grabbed a spirit bear
Translating from one world into the next
And forged a passageway, a tiny portal,
Between the purgatory of the dark
And sunlight stretched across great fields of snow.
She felt Ruarther’s rage strike at the bear…
And then she felt a dragon’s curious mind
Invade her like a boiling swarm of bees,
His hugeness startled at the spark she sent
Across the fields into a darkened cave.
Her body shook to feel intelligence
That poked at her as if her insignificance
Was novel, hardly to be countenanced.
Inside the dragon’s thought she forced herself
Away from where she’d been inside her bed
And, sloughing off her lethargy, discovered
The fire of who she was, the woman wild
Enough to set off in the wilderness
To find the only man she’d ever loved.
She felt the dragon staring at her mind.
He did not speak, but stirred out of his thoughts
To see what human was confronting him.
At last he said, “And who are you?” his voice
So loud inside her head it made her tremble.
She looked into his eyes inside his cave
And wondered how she saw across the miles.
She could not think. His hugeness was too large.
He waited, looking patiently at her.
She felt a panic rising up into her throat.
“Who are you?” she demanded, wondering
At how she’d found the bravery to speak.
The dragon blinked. “I’m Mmirrimann,” he said.
“I ask again: And who are you that’s brave
Enough to face a dragon in his lair?”
His words unnerved Ruanne. Mmirrimann?
The leader dragon who had made the peace?
The murderer of Reestor’s father ? Legend
That spoke to her as if she was alive?
“The humans do not want a war,” she said,
The mission given her by Reestor flooding
Into her head. “Our children need to live.”
The dragon blinked again. Inside his eyes
So alien to human eyes Ruanne believed
She felt a sadness powerful beyond
The human sadness that had troubled her.
“I too would like to keep the peace,” he said.
“But I am old, and younger males see war
As part of who a dragon ought to be.
You’d better let your leaders know my words.
I cannot stop the war to come though I
Would give up all my years to see the peace
Stretch out into an endless march of time.
War’s near, and though I’ll try to keep its rage
From ending dragon life, I’ve searched, but found
No way to stop the conflagration’s fires.”
He looked away. The emptiness returned.
Ruanne stared at her hands clutched in her lap.
The greatest dragon that had ever lived
Could find no way to stop the war Ruarther
In madness had engendered from his rage?
Someone was pounding at her cottage door.
“Ruanne? Ruanne?” a worried Reestor called.
“You can’t hide from the world, Ruanne,” he said.
Ruanne remembered sadness in the eyes
That stared so powerfully into her eyes.
She got up, went to open up the door.
To listen to this section of the epic, click on Unexpected Warning
Note: This is the twenty-eighth 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 1 to go to the beginning and read forward. Go to Conversation From Love Through Fear to go to the section previous to this one. To read the next section of the epic, click on Another Dragon Scale.
Filed under Poetry, The Dragon Epic, Thomas Davis
by Thomas Davis
The round, close face,
Soft like gentle hills
And as misty as the sky
Full of coming rain,
Inspires this song—
The beauty beyond thought
And love beyond the beauty.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
a children’s poem by Thomas Davis
Like fat, old clowns with hilly pants
The clouds stride up the mountain sides
And foam their draughts of bright, white brew
And shout and dance with joyous cries.
I stand three hundred miles away
Upon a grainy yellow plain
And wonder what sweet airy sap
Will fetch clouds past the mountain range.
Although written a long time ago, in a year of terrible drought, this seems an appropriate poem for this drought stricken year.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
The Dragon Epic by Thomas Davis
Ruarther woke to sunlit cold, his head
So sore he felt as if his life was bound
Inside the thrumming pain that made him scowl.
The burns were gone from arms, legs, chest,
And though he felt as if he could not move,
His spirit rose to know that he’d survived
The night black dragon and its searing flame.
The fire beside the boulder smoldered, smoke
Still rising from the cold, gray, lumpy ash.
He stirred up from the hollow in the snow
He’d made for sleep and, groaning, found his pack
And put a slice of jerky in his mouth.
The goat was strong beneath the heavy spice,
But he had never tasted food so good.
He was alive and eating, wolfing meat
That tasted like sweet honey to his tongue.
He looked toward the campfire, felt the cold,
And thought he’d build it up and warm his hands,
But then he picked his pack up, shouldered it,
And started climbing through the dazzling fields.
He’d not find where the witch’s cottage was
Before the sun blazed down, he told himself.
He’d better move before his will had failed
And warmth became the cause for lethargy.
He’d never kill the child by staying put.
The surface of the snow had frozen hard.
He moved as swiftly as his legs could move.
The walking cleared his head and made him feel
As if he’d found his humanness again.
He thanked the spirit bear inside his mind,
Exhilarated at the strength he felt.
But then, just miles from where the cliffs rose black
Into the winter’s white, he stopped, confused.
The air in front of him looked charged, a mass
Of swirling chaos threatening to end
The world’s solidity with nothingness.
He felt the bear rear up inside the chaos,
Felt snow and fields and light sucked into dark.
A woman, waving hands, had somehow grabbed
The bear with energies Ruarther felt,
But could not see, a battle raging far
Beyond his senses even though he sensed
The powers devastating what was real,
Miasma threatening existence anchored
To life he’d always thought was all that was.
He stepped back as the chaos inched toward
Where he had stopped, the swirling wild with songs
Originating from beyond existence.
A greater fear than what he’d felt the day
He’d faced the golden dragon seized his heart
And made it beat so fast he could not breathe.
He saw the bear’s face waver in the light
And then the woman’s weaving web of hands
As death came from its natural place and tried
To build a portal to Ruarther’s world.
He wondered why he’d left his days-old camp
To face a wilderness he’d thought was myth
Made up by women and old, doddering men.
The great bear turned away from chaos, stared
At where Ruarther stood in front of him
Inside the realness of the real world
And leaped toward the body with a heart.
The witch is doing this, Ruarther thought.
The witch! He tried to dive away from where
The bear had aimed his leap, but even though
He moved as fast as any human could,
Convulsions ripped his consciousness.
He fought against the spirit entering
His spirit, tried to be the self he was,
But in his mind the great bear roared and roared.
Time wavered as the sunlight flared, then died,
Then flared alive again, the chaos mixed
With life’s stability, existence swelling
With spectres lost beyond the boundaries
Of what could ever be or come to be.
The child, Ruarther raged inside himself,
The witch’s child had made the dragon mock
Him as he hunted in the woods that day,
And now she’d witched the bear into his spirit.
He’d kill the child, he roared. He’d kill the girl.
The spirit in him roared against his roar.
Ruarther felt the self he knew recoil
As chaos swirled into his head and bones.
I’m stronger than the bear, he snarled inside.
His heart beat crazily, his fear
The only rage that kept him from possession,
The end of who he was, a human man.
I’ll kill the girl, he chanted in his head.
The witch’s girl is dead. I’ll kill the girl.
The great bear twisted as it fought to find
A place away from where the woman’s hands
Wove order out of chaos in chaotic song.
Ruarther twisted painfully in snow
So cold it seemed to burn his throbbing flesh.
He felt as if he was inside a furnace,
The brick kiln burning with a glowing heat,
His skin so sensitive it seared with pain,
As if he’d touched a fiery red-hot coal
And spread its agony across his face,
Hours blistering into eternity.
The bear retreated from the searing pain,
Life’s sharpness shredding who it was
Into the emptiness of air and sky.
Chaotic swirling dissipated like a mist.
The sunlit cold possessed the world again.
Ruarther, body still, stunned, felt his life
Inside the who of who he was, a man.
Splayed out upon the snow, he wondered how
He’d ever thought he had the strength to kill
A witch so powerful she had the force
To bend a dragon’s spirit to her will.
He could not countenance that he still lived
Outside of deathless chaos in his world.
To listen to this section of the epic, click on Escaping Possession.
Note: This is the twenty-sixth 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 1 to go to the beginning and read forward. Go to 25 to go to the section previous to this one. Go to 27 to read the next section.
Filed under Poetry, The Dragon Epic, Thomas Davis
a love poem by Thomas Davis
I have hidden my face.
The green grass has grown wild about my house,
And the hiding places of the heart
Have multiplied and become numerous.
Spring croaks and thrashes at the wind.
The stars grow plump like yellow pears,
And the trees stand up, straight and proud,
From the soils of the earth.
I chant the words of love
And let my tongue grow dry with history.
I sing out the beauty of the sky
And tell the clouds to be silent
And to cease their rumbling.
Summer is the promise of the sun.
Conflict is the garment of drama.
O woman, you are the wind
And the sound of the wind.
O woman, you are the spirit of the stars.
I have hidden my face.
The green grass has grown wild about my house.
The hiding places of the heart
Have multiplied and become numerous.
O woman, on slippery ground
I will catch you and hold you in my arms.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
an epic poem by Thomas Davis
The darkness, black as scales upon Sshruunak,
Awash with atmospheres that breathed unrest,
Intensified inside the mountain valley
That saw one dragon, then another, then
Another glide with silent wings to land
Into a ring of black obsidian boulders.
Sshruunak, placed in the ring’s dead center, glared
At each great dragon as they flared their wings
And settled in a loop around his force,
Eyes glittering to see he’d left his cave.
No dragon spoke, but waited for Sshruunak.
The wounded male puffed fire into the air.
It let them see each other in the dark,
But only briefly as Sshruunak began
To speak inside his mind about his plans.
“The humans cannot live,” he said. “Their minds
Are dangerous to dragonkind, their tools
As evil as their deadliness and hate.
I’ve learned,” he said, his voice still silent, “how
Our strength is not enough to make them cower.
They swarm like wasps inside a paper hive
And pour out on the ground with deadly arrows
As if their puny bodies boiled alive
The end of who we’ve been through centuries
Of living strength upon this earth, our earth.
I’ve lost an eye and feel the pain they bring
To every dragon who has sense to rage
Against abomination in our midst.
“I’ve brooded long,” he said. “I’ve seen their power.
I’ve seen that if we try to use our strength,
Our fiery breath, our flight, our deadly claws,
To end the peril that they represent,
We’ll end up fertilizing earth in graves
That mark the final end of dragonkind.
Old Mmirrimann is not the fool he seems.
Ssruanne’s geas capturing our spirits
Burns from a knowledge born of memories
And senses I have never known or dreamed.”
His rumbling stopped. The long necks of the others
Stopped moving from the trance he’d interweaved
About them, capturing them through his mind.
At last, the silence lengthening, Ssshraann,
The dragon closest to Sshruunak, his red,
Dark scales dull in the valley’s darkness, sneered.
“And so we hide inside our caves and let the humans
Grow stronger year by year as dragons weaken?”
He shook his massive head and almost grinned.
“That’s not Sshruunak,” he said, his voice intense.
Sshruunak stayed silent, but his voice rang out
Inside his head and stunned the other males.
“The humans swarm,” he said. “Like ants or wasps,
And then they use their tools to penetrate
Our scales and seek our vulnerabilities.”
He paused, his eyes alight with swirling colors.
“Each dragon feels his power in his hearts.
He breathes his fire and spreads his massive wings
And throws himself at puny, boiling ants
And rends and tears their flesh and spills their blood
In gallons on the ground and murders them.
But never does a dragon swarm and boil
Like wasps stirred from a threatened nest,
And so we fly into their stinging arrows
And die as solitary as our spirits.
We murder them, but let their numbers murder
Each one of us as if we were alone
And had no species linked to who we are.”
“We learn to form an army like the humans?”
Sshraann asked. “Act like insubstantial fools?”
Sshruunak raged fire into the night, his breath
So hot it penetrated dragon hides
And made each dragon step away from him.
The great snow covered peaks around the valley
Grew even darker as his fire went on and on.
He roared so loud an avalanche began
To roar in distance down a mountainside.
The males, eyes glittering, stared amazed
At dragon power unleashed into the world.
The silence following the roar was sudden,
A chaos filled with dreadful absences.
Sshruunak’s great head bowed down toward the snow
Inside the circle of obsidian.
He spoke outloud, his voice as soft as snow
Descending slowly out of windless skies.
“I see us flying in a full moon’s golden light,”
He said. “As silent as my voice is now.
We’re primed with fire and human discipline.
Each one has targets to attack and kill.
Each one of us is bound by orders planned
So that we decimate our enemies.
We come upon a human town and swoop
Into the human helplessness and burn
Their leaders as they try to form defense
Against a threat they’ve never thought would come.
I see our legions wing into their mass,
Our darkness deadly, purpose aimed and armed
With knowledge born of dragon strength and wiles.
I see the humans dying like the ants they are,
Their villages and towns black, smoking ruins.”
Sshraann grinned in the darkness, showed his teeth,
And looked into Sshruunak’s bright, whirling eyes.
He felt the dragon army forming in the night
Around him, Drressel, Stoormachen, Waanderlund,
The leading males born since the human peace
Born in the caves agreeing with the vision
Of dragons massed into an army, flying
Through moonlit skies toward the final answer
To humans and their domination of the earth.
Click on Planning Human Extinction to listen to this section of the epic.
Note: This is the twenty fifth 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 1 to go to the beginning and read forward. Go to 24 to go to the section previous to this one. Click on 26 to go to the next part of the epic.
Filed under Poetry, The Dragon Epic, Thomas Davis
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