Dragons in the deep earth beneath the wild landscape of New Mexico’s El Malpais wilderness, a thought-provoking adventure, stories of young love and madness and the undying love between a man and his troubled wife, the strange and beautiful witch of the El Malpais, and the violence inherent in our troubled 21st century are all present in a tale as powerful as one of Ursula LeGuin’s fantasy novels. A companion novel to the epic poem, The Weirding Storm, a Dragon Epic published by Bennison Books.
Category Archives: Thomas Davis
Juniper’s Dragon in the Year of the Dragon is now available
Filed under Published Books, The Dragon Epic, Thomas Davis
Juniper’s Dragon is almost here — Year of the Dragon
My newest novel, Juniper’s Dragon, arrived as a physical proof this afternoon! I’m excited.
Dragons in the 21st century? In the caverns below the El Malpais wilderness in New Mexico? Juniper, fleeing the beautiful and terrifying witch of the El Malpais scrambles into a blowhole in the wilderness where he lives with his father. There he discovers dragons, and his life begins to change.
Part wild adventure, part love story, part coming of age story in the land where Navajo and Anglos live, dragons suddenly discover they are creature of the earth and sky and not just of deep caverns and an underground river.
Humming pitched into a tornado of sound. Juniper put hands over his ears and pressed as hard as he could, but sound vibrated his bones. He started sweating even though the cavern was cold. Simalucroix twisted and stood on his hind legs, stretching his long neck, breathing flame into the darkness.
Small puffs of flame emitted from dragon nostrils all over the cavern, glittering the ceiling alight with orange, yellow, white, and green colors from minerals never touched by light.
Simalucroix twisted again. Skin from his back parted. Wings unfolded and gushed wind toward Juniper.
“We are dragons again!” Simalucroix roared triumphantly. “Great dragons!”
The humming became a sound of joy not heard for millennia. A thousand dragon voices rumbled, chortled, and buffeted Juniper. He felt sick deep inside his heart and fell to the ground. He felt small, insignificant, a firefly’s flicker in the universe’s immensity.
“Enough!” Simalucroix roared.
Silence was immediate.
Simalucroix, looking like a dragon from the times when St. George had hunted them in silver armor and a black and red head metal visor, walked slowly to the fallen man-child. He bent his long neck toward the ground and wrinkled his great nostrils.
“We forget ourselves. We have a guest. He has had to find courage to be here to see ancient ways become new again. Juniper?” he asked.
Juniper looked up into the glittering eye of a great, winged dragon.
Filed under Published Books, The Dragon Epic, Thomas Davis
Dying and the Mystery of Absence
When Ethel Mortenson Davis and I created this site while we lived in New Mexico, we did so partially to make sure that we had a creative place to not only showcase some of the poetry and art we have both produced throughout our lifetimes but to also honor our son, Kevin Michael Davis. Kevin had died in Poughkeepsie New York where he was a web designer for Vassar College after a short struggled against aggressive cancer. While we put this blog together, we were both still in the throes of grieving and trying to deal with Kevin’s loss.
Now, Bennison Books, a publisher in Great Britain, has come out with a new anthology, Leaving, an anthology of poetry about dying, grief, and the mystery of absence. The anthology features poems by both Ethel and I as well as some of the finest poets writing anywhere, Cynthia Jobin, John Looker, and A. Carder. As the forward to this magnificent volume says,
Both the grueling reality of dying and its indefinable mystery are revealed in this diverse collection. Grief is tranformative; we are profoundly changed by it. It is also prismatic, imposing new insights, a wider breadth of vision.
The new anthology is available at https://www.amazon.com/Leaving-anthology-poetry-mystery-absence/dp/1999740831/ref=sr_1_1?crid=S3YX5MBBHIVN&keywords=Leaving+Bennison+Books&qid=1699623562&s=books&sprefix=leaving+bennison+books%2Cstripbooks%2C104&sr=1-1
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry, Thomas Davis
The Prophecy of the Wolf Published!
My new novel, The Prophecy of the Wolf, has been released by All Things That Matter Press! It’s available now at Otherworlds Books and More and Novel Bay in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin and Yardstick Books in Algoma, Wisconsin. Readers can also order it from almost any online venue.
I spent three years working on a historical novel that is set in the mid to late 1600s on the Door Peninsula and Washington Island as famous French priests and fur traders started to seriously impact the traditional lives of Native Americans. The Neshnabek, or Potawatomi Tribe, are at the heart of the story as Ogima tells about how he, as a young man, became embroiled in the affairs of Quapaw, a powerful waubeno that has had a vision given to him by a storyteller wolf. Quapaw, because of his shaman visions, starts to try to keep the Neshnabek from falling prey to the fur trade, the beguilement of French trade, and power of Christian conversion. The novel explores the largest themes possible as event follows event, eventually reaching a crescendo that has become a distant legend even in our time. In the process the lifestyle and beauty of Neshnabek civilization and culture becomes a beautiful backdrop to the action.
Filed under Published Books, Thomas Davis
In the Aftermath
For World Poetry Day, from my novel, Prophecy of the Wolf, close to being released
Thomas Davis
The woman wrapped the child against the cold And walked into the forest where the glow Of moonlight pooled a deeply shadowed gold Beneath the trees on softly shining snow. She gathered wood, the baby on her back, And built a fire, its warmth a dancing light Upon a great flat rock protruding black Into the lake’s infinity of white. Then, in the dark, sat, death-still, beside The flames, the baby in her arms, the smear Of stars above their heads a radiant tide Of silence singing to the ebbing year. At last, her voice a permutation slipped Into the night, she started chanting words Born deep in spirit as the blackened crypt Of waters stirred beneath lake ice, and birds, As black as mourning shrouds, began to fly, The forest stirring like the waters, wind A whisper as the baby voiced a tiny cry And shadowy trees began to sway and bend. The woman got up on her feet, her voice As silver as the moon, and sang as deer Began to bound onto the ice: “Rejoice,” The woman sang, and as she sang the fear Felt during hours of pain-filled, labored birth Dissolved into the biting wind and light That danced with deer upon the lake, the earth And living integrated with the night.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
Sophia and Erik’s Wedding
At our granddaughter Sophia's wedding, Ethel wrote one poem for the wedding that she read out loud during the ceremony. A friend of our daughter Mary read another poem by Ethel that was written 55 years ago during our courtship. Then, at the reception I sat down and wrote a poem commemorating the event as the mariachi band played and people people danced as sunlight streamed out of the clouds for the first time all day. The poem Ethel read: Hope Dear Grandmother, today your great, great granddaughter is getting married to a fine, young man, and they promise their love is greater than their parents’ love and their grandparents’ love. They promise they will be happier than their parents were or their grandparents. And they promise their children will be loved more than all the ancestors put together. Dear Grandmother, this is their promise, and this is our hope. The poem from 55 years ago: How Could I Know? It looks to me as though you’ve been around, perhaps, since time began— and I have lived at least as long. Oh? Only that much time? I’m sure there was no life before for you or me. How could I know your face so well? As well as some old rock I’ve seen hang, clinging to a mountain wall, and I know what wave of brightness, or of darkness, to expect there waiting for me. You step and make some rounded move. I know beforehand which way to go. How could I know? Unless. . . You’ve been around, perhaps, since time began. I know I’ve lived at least as long. The poem I wrote: At My Granddaughter’s Wedding First the bald eagle above the bay, water dancing light on lines of waves, then cranes in the greening field, Babies and parents communicating with legs, moving necks, and wings in the sun, and then the rumor of storms brewing black clouds in the north, stirring with big winds. But then, after a night of worry, the ceremony was to be outside, the wedding day came, cloudy, a fifty percent chance of rain. But then the rain didn’t come. Wedding roses lined paths to the small wooden church. Then, the words as ancient as human spirits, were spoken by the bride and groom, and then the sun came out as the mariachi celebration began, as clouds thinned, and my granddaughter and her love danced as music rose into an evening sky— and love was everywhere. Everywhere.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry, Thomas Davis
In Memory of Richard “Snuffy” Dodge
Poem by Ethel Mortenson Davis, essay by Tom Davis
Reserved
Look at
the cedar grove
near the edge
of the lake.
It looks like
a bed between
tree trunks.
Soon I must
take my rest
on the soft coverlet
of leaf litter,
a place reserved
in my name.
I woke up this morning, after a somewhat restless night, realizing what a blessed life I have been privileged to live. Richard, Snuffy, Dodge, a Menominee code talker who helped Navajo code talkers get from place to place in China and Southeast Asia during World War II as they found Japanese forces, traveled behind the blanket earlier this week, and his passing at the age of 94 has caused me to think about how many truly extraordinary people I have known.
I met Snuffy in 1973 when I was working as an English and History teacher at the Menominee County Community School on the Menominee Reservation in Wisconsin. One of the first of the Indian controlled schools that later morphed into the Bureau of Indian Education’s contract school system that funded tribes to operate their own school systems, the Community School was a seat-of-the-pants effort that I suspect both Snuffy and his highly intelligent wife Paula did not fully see as the history of Menominee education.
When the Menominee County Education Committee, however, led the effort to create the Indian controlled school district that came to be known as the Menominee Indian School District, Snuffy got elected to the first school board. Although I wanted to work at the new high school, the Superintendent, whom I had helped get the job, did not hire me. Ironically, that led to me getting to know Snuffy better than would have happened otherwise and helped enrich my life.
The job I got after failing to get a teaching job at the school district was as the first Director of Planning for the Menominee Restoration Committee that was restoring the Menominee Nation after the disastrous termination policy that had decimated the tribe’s fortunes during the Dwight Eisenhower presidency. In that job I started working extensively with Gordon Burr, a Stockbridge tribal member, who was also working closely on Comprehensive Education and Training Act (CETA) efforts with all of Wisconsin’s thirteen tribes. Snuffy was also working closely with Gordon, and the three of us started an effort to help first Menominee, then all of Wisconsin’s tribes, for the next several years.
After a year working for Menominee, I joined Gordon to work at the Great Lakes Indian Tribal Consortium, and Snuffy, I, and Gordon raised millions of dollars in CETA, Economic Development Administration (EDA), State of Wisconsin, and Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds for tribal projects. We traveled together a lot, working at the state legislature in Madison, developing projects on various Reservations, and writing what seemed to be an endless stream of proposals. The truth is that Snuffy and Gordon were both gifts to Wisconsin Indian tribes during those years, and the three of us, and our families, developed close bonds.
The stories I can tell about Snuffy are pretty close to endless. One of my favorites was when he was in Chicago working with the Regional EDA Administrator who was also named Dick Dodge. He was in EDA Dick Dodge’s office talking to him about a project he and I were working on when the administrator got an “urgent phone call.” With Snuffy sitting in his office, the EDA Dick Dodge’s eyes got really big, and he bellowed out, “They did what?” It turned out that a Michigan tribe had developed a hog operation as an economic development project, and one of the project’s administrators had got the idea to fund a tribal feast, and he’d managed to provide the breeding hogs for the feast, destroying the project.
If that wasn’t an unfortunate time for a representative trying to get funding for an economic development project for a Wisconsin tribe to be in that office, I don’t know what unfortunate means, but Snuffy always knew how to smile and laugh and get people off their high horse into a serious negotiation, and the upshot of the story is that we got that grant funded. EDA Dick Dodge was not pleased, but he was working with Snuffy Dick Dodge, and surely that meant that things would work out okay.
The most important project Snuffy and I tackled together was when the Ho Chunk in Lake Delton wanted to take control over the Stand Rock Indian Ceremonial where they had performed for decades so that they could get the economic benefit for what they had made possible. We worked with Dells Boat Company and other business leaders in the Dells, as well as the American Legion that had originally started up the Ceremonial, and helped to make that happen. The Neesh-La Indian Development Corporation that we worked with Alberta Day, the President of the Corporation, and other Ho Chunk people from the area to create, is still operating successfully today.
There are simply so many stories. During our travels Snuffy would always want to eat out at higher class restaurants where he could have a glass of Chablis, and Gordon preferred down-home cooking at what were in essence greasy spoons. The battles always put me in the middle, although neither one of them ever got angry at the other one or me when they didn’t get their way that day. Snuffy always read the Wall Street Journal every day, stopping at a news stand when we were on the road so that he could check on the stock he was invested in and check up on the news of the day. These are the small things that loom big when you look back and contemplate what has long passed by.
One of the most memorable times of my life was when Ethel, Paula, Snuffy, and I took a trip to Atlanta, GA one year over the Smoky Mountains, enjoying each other’s company. We were doing the Neesh-La project at that point and trying to learn more about the tourist industry and how it worked. We learned a lot at the convention we attended, but we enriched all our lives by making a magical trip together.
No short essay is going to illuminate any extraordinary individual’s life, of course. Richard Snuffy Dodge was a delightful human being who was complex and intelligent and forward-thinking all at the same time. When Ethel and I visited him and Paula for the last time, we talked about the past, and he gave me a long hug, even though he was already having trouble eating at that point, as we left their house in Keshena for our home in Sturgeon Bay.
As I said, this morning I woke up after a troubled night and realized just how blessed a life I have lived with Ethel, my children, and all the extraordinary people I have been privileged to have known.
Filed under Essays, Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry, Thomas Davis
Joey with his copy of Apples for the Wild Stallion
I wrote Apples for the Wild Stallion after Joey’s mother, Sonja Bingen, while starting to read the first book in the Harry Potter series while we were visiting one day, looked at me and said, wistfully, I’ve been trying to find books that has a character Joey can relate to, but I’ve only been able to find one. After getting home to Sturgeon Bay, I sat down and started writing this novel. After all, Joey loves horses, and here he is with the novel.
Sonja tells me that she is going to start reading it with him after she finished teaching in early June. She ordered the book from amazon, though, not willing to wait for the copies I’ve got coming in from All Things That Matter Press, and here is the photo she sent of Joey with his copy of the book written for him.
Filed under Published Books, Thomas Davis
Apples for the Wild Stallion is Published!
I just received some unexpected news! All Things That Matter Press has just published my newest novel, Apples for the Wild Stallion. Written for my grandson, Joey Bingen, after his mother Sonja looked up at me one day while starting to read the first Harry Potter book to him and told me that she had been looking for books that he could relate to but couldn’t find any, the novel features a hero that cannot talk because of his autism, but is a hero anyway. He, along with his family living on Wrangler Road just outside Continental Divide, NM where Ethel used to take her daily walks into wilderness, face up to a gang of thugs that threaten them and their neighbors and a magical wild stallion that keeps coming for apples that Austin, the hero, keeps placing between a grandmother juniper tree in the Zuni Mountains where their ranch is located.
Sonja Bingen, our daughter, contributed the photograph that is on the cover and wrote a small piece about Joey in the book. His grandfather is hoping that when Joey listens to the novel it not only gives a character that he can relate to but also gives him an experience he never forgets. I expected the book to come out in June, but now it can be ordered from bookstores, from amazon.com, and other places where young adult books are sold!
Filed under Published Books, Thomas Davis
John Looker Reviews Meditation on Ceremonies of Beginnings
The High Window is an important poetry review site dedicated to covering international poetry in Great Britain. The High Window just published a major review by the British poet John Looker, artwork by Ethel Mortenson Davis, and poems from Meditation on Ceremonies of Beginnings published by Tribal College Press, written by Thomas Davis. This is just a stunning issue of the website, at least from where I sit in the universe.
The link to the website is: https://thehighwindowpress.com/2021/04/27/thomas-davis-river-of-people/?fbclid=IwAR3F5LB_pDFwhf2t7x5ei8JLBpriz1MdfJEdWA3MdsB3zVRN4gKGdx3CirQ
Filed under Art, Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry, Published Books, Thomas Davis
fourwindowspress 