a photograph by Alazanto, Kevin Davis, our son
This photo was taken on August 31, 2008
Puddle
Filed under Art, Photography
Coyote
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Today, coyote,
I will let you
own this land.
For you stood
your ground
this morning
across our path,
unwavering,
until I turned
to leave.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
Sonnet 21
by Thomas Davis
She’d showed him Vassar on his first day there.
That evening, going home, she saw him walking
a street so bleak he should have been aware
no stranger should be nonchalantly hiking.
She stopped her car, rolled down the window, frowning,
and asked him if he knew where he was at.
He laughed and said that he was lost, eyes sparkling,
“but I’ll be fine.” He was an alley cat.
She shook her head, but watched him walk and chat
about the universe, his mind engaged,
his deep-song spirit like an acrobat
that dares to fly upon Creation’s stage.
And somehow, starting from a place apart,
He/she flamed bright inside each other’s hearts.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
The Birth
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
To Sonja
I had no choice
because the earth and sky
threw up so much
poetry,
no choice
but to accept
the High Tea Ceremony.
That night,
and all the day before,
the earth was cold
with wind-driven snow,
inhuman nurses
in an old hospital,
the father barred
from my room.
Finally your time came
in the early morning
with dark skies and gray clouds
like the snow clouds
over the mesas this morning
that came
with wind-driven snow
and ice crystals.
But in a moment,
the sun had shone
in the threatening blackness,
and a great arc of rainbow
bowed across the western
and northern skies,
making it all worthwhile.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
Sonnet 19
by Thomas Davis
Where do the minutes that we cherished go?
Two little girls, small hands inside our hands
while four of us walk in a wonderland
of starting out, our faces, hearts aglow
with happiness unrecognized, the flow
of time suspended as its hourglass sands
erase the moment when our lives were grand.
What happens to the joys of long ago?
We never thought the love we two had made
would fly apart in anger, or be lost
to liver cells that turned, as renegades,
into a cancerous, dark, evil holocaust.
We never knew we’d face insidious shades
that leave us mourning all the times we’ve lost.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
Will’s First Perspective Drawing
In our family art, poetry, photography, and education are all part of everyday life. William, our grandson and Sonja’s son, is well on his way to joining Ethel, Sonja, Kevin, and Phoebe, our granddaughter and Mary’s daughter, as an artist.
Filed under Art
Llama, a pastel by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Filed under Art, Art by Ethel Mortenson Davis, Ethel Mortenson Davis
Messenger
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
The brightly-colored
towhee
brings webbing
to repair
my broken,
gray world.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
Sonnet 18
by Thomas Davis
The doctor said what needed to be said.
We asked the questions that we had to ask.
Compassion lined the doctor’s careful mask.
She held him; he held her; the awful dread
we’d felt at seeing him so weak in bed
now turned into a nightmare, a formal masque
that left our darkest primal fears unmasked,
our sense of living shattered, left in shreds.
How long? he asked the doctor as he sighed.
The doctor said, two weeks, some hours, some days.
She bent her head into his lap and cried;
he sobbed, his mother cried; I fought the haze
unmanning me. What could we do? I tried
to think, but, looking at my son, was dazed.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
fourwindowspress 