The artists in our family include Ethel Mortenson Davis, Kevin Davis, Sonja Bingen, and Phoebe Wood. Sonja is primarily a muralist, but Bay Stones is done on canvas.
Palais de Justice
This photograph by Alazanto, our son, Kevin Davis, seems to be an appropriate companion to Ethel Mortenson Davis’s poem, To the Innocent below.
Filed under Art
To the Innocent
For Troy Davis
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
I hope you are
in a place
where there is justice,
where there is love
unconditionally,
the end
where young men
no longer are lynched
by ropes,
or the machinations of killers,
where there is light
and not the suffocating,
ethered mud,
a place where you will
rise above humanness.
I hope you are in a place
called Justice,
a place that will never be named
Georgia.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
Mustang, a pastel by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Filed under Art, Art by Ethel Mortenson Davis, Ethel Mortenson Davis
A Life Piles Up in Heaps of Moments
by Thomas Davis
A life piles up in heaps of moments locked
Inside a memory that sputters like
An engine on a day when trees are frocked
In ice and cold coagulates and strikes
Into the spirit of mechanics, heart
Of arrogance engendered by humanity.
My mother, eighty-five and still as smart
As when a forest fire compelled her family
To flee the lumber camp in Colorado,
Remembers how she acted when a plate
Of deep-fried whistle-pig, her mother’s bravado,
Seemed like the inevitability of fate.
But yet she has no memory of what
My father faced at Anzio Beach in World War II
Where death walked sandy shores and lives were cut
From life as sunrise glinted light from morning dew.
My wife walked out onto a ridge as lines
of light streaked clouds down from a thunderous sky.
She did not see the stallion in its prime
Half merged into the land, its wild, deep eyes
Fixed on small tufts of dried-out grass and weeds–
Her life encased by all the great immensities
Surrounding her and him and all the seeds
Of memory that bloom, meander, flee.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
The Bell
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
I heard
a temple bell
far away—
a deep rich
summoning voice.
Then
a medicine man
came to my bed,
beating the air
around my feet
and head,
beating the cobwebs
of sadness stretched
over me.
A dream.
I know because
the dog did not stir.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
Tree at Sunset, a photograph by Alazanto
Sonja Bingen is not the only photographer in our family. Kevin Davis, Alazanto, was known for his photography as well as his design. The “Tree at Sunset” was taken near Taos, NM. in Rio Grande Gorge. Alazanto’s flickr site can be accessed at http://www.flickr.com/photos/springofdark.
Filed under Art
An Eve of Wind and Shakespeare
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
This wind of eve
has a tinge of Hamlet’s madness
that harbors
the fear of this world
and the next.
The howling witch
casts a fear of man
across my throat and chin.
Blackness seeps
into my brain.
We cannot live,
nor do we want to die.
It is the worst of life and death.
How can I say
or write this word
when she takes
my tongue and hands
and leaves in their place
twigs to scratch with.
I glimpse the view
of the moon backwards
in my mirror—a kinder,
gentler heart.
This windy eve has a tinge
of Hamlet’s madness.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
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