a photograph by Sonja Bingen, our daughter
Publications by Ethel Mortenson and Thomas Davis
Both Ethel and Thomas have had recent publications. Ethel’s poem, “Love Songs,” one of the best poems she has written that has not found its way to publication until now, has just been published by Bramble, the new literary magazine of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets (WFOP), at http://www.wfop.org/love-songs. Bramble (http://www.wfop.org/bramble-lit-mag) is a new effort by WFOP, and this is its first issue. The poems in the first issue are well worth reading.
Tom has just had a sonnet published in Ariel Anthology 2016, Inward and Outward, “Of Those Who Could End the World — So There Osama bin Laden, ISIS, and the Archbishop of Treves!” This is the third year his sonnets have been published in Ariel, which is arguably the best anthology published in Wisconsin. This year’s anthology also contains two black and white drawings by Ethel, “Electric Horse” and “Night Sounds.” Ariel can be ordered online at https://www.amazon.com/Ariel-Anthology-2016-Inward-Outward.
Tom also had two children’s poems published in an anthology by Brick Street Poetry, Inc., Words & Other Wild Things. The poems were “Milk Maid” and “The Fisherman.” The anthology can be ordered online at https://www.amazon.com/Words-Other-Things-Street-Poetry.
Filed under Art by Ethel Mortenson Davis, Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry, Thomas Davis
The Reader
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
He has taken
his dinner with delight,
relishing each morsel,
tasting each bite
by rolling it
on his tongue.
He mouths the words,
forming them
on his lips,
smiling,
as he escapes
to his world —
the one called ecstasy.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry
Four Windows Press Publishes New Book by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Four Windows Press has published a new chapbook, The Healer, by Ethel Mortenson Davis:
These are powerful poems about healing and the human spirit by an imagistic poet of the first order. The book can be purchased for $10, via check or through PayPal to paypal.me/fourwindowspress, which covers all postage and handling. The Galleria Carnaval in El Morro, New Mexico, http://www.galleriacarnaval.com, also has copies at the gallery for sale. The address for checks is: Four Windows Press, Ethel Mortenson Davis, 231 N Hudson Ave., Sturgeon Bay, WI 54235. If you use PayPal please let us know by email, sending us your address, at http://www.davisetheltom@gmail.com.
Filed under Art, Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry
Killdeer
a pastel by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Filed under Art, Art by Ethel Mortenson Davis, Ethel Mortenson Davis
The Patriarchic Dark
by Thomas Davis
a sonnet from the Waterkeeper’s sonnet cycle
The old man stood inside the freezing dark
And watched the Indians in their makeshift camp.
He felt his age, an ancient patriarch
Who’s seen too much of living hard to tamp
The rage he felt into a discipline
The oilmen in their fancy suits and ties
Embraced each time their spokesmen put their spin
Upon the outrage in the Indian lies
That let them dance and sing and carry on
Their protests as the winter iced men’s blood
And civilization turned into a pawn
Of waterkeepers dredged from river mud.
Our Mother Earth, he sneered, then turned away.
The Law will win, he thought, and have its say.
Note: The Waterkeeper’s Sonnet Cycle is in honor of the protestors in North Dakota who are enduring harsh winter weather while still keeping their protest going. This is the second sonnet in the cycle published here.
Heaven
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Heaven
An astronaut that repaired
the Hubble spacecraft
said recently
that when he stepped out
on his first spacewalk
and saw the lighted
blue and white earth
underneath him,
he knew
he was looking
at heaven.
I wonder how
we would have thought
of the land, the animals,
and the people
if we would have known
our earth was heaven?
If this was all the heaven
there will ever be?
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Photography, Poetry
Water Warriors
a sonnet by Thomas Davis
They danced, and then they sang, and on the plains
The winter came as men with guns and eyes,
That hated who they were, looked half insane
And tried to stop their dance and song, the pain
Engendered by the cold, their fears, dark skies,
Brave words that had the force of hurricanes.
But in the deepness of our Mother Earth,
The dance and song of waterkeepers stirred
An earth song, water song, a shining birth
Of human visions that were not deterred
By guns and eyes and human anger spurred
Alive by those whose sense of human worth
Could never see the dance or hear the earth-deep song
The drum-heart beats and beats all winter long.
Filed under poems, Poetry, Thomas Davis
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