by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Nearly every night
Juno wakes me
With eerie sounds,
sounds that are crying,
tormented
from deep dreams.
She came to our gate
eleven years ago, starving,
having recently had puppies.
After feeding her for days,
she never tried to go back
to them,
so I thought they were dead,
or taken from her.
I go to her in the night,
comforting her,
telling her she is now safe,
telling her
humans are both tormentors
and saviors.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry
by Thomas Davis
I lay beside an ancient, quiet pool
and put my idle hand into the water.
A rainbow trout swam nibbling past.
Without a thought I held its thrashing fast.
The trout became a whiskery, wily otter.
I squeezed as if I’d turned into a ghoul
whose only thought was how to hold
an otter in my thrall forevermore.
The otter twisted like a fiend,
and when that failed, it bared sharp teeth and screamed.
My spirit quailed and heart turned icy cold.
Between two breaths the eagle was a child.
He looked at me and slowly, sadly smiled.
I dropped her when her human voice began to sing.
I looked into the shine of golden eyes;
the child became a woman beautiful and wise.
The woman turned and swiftly swam away.
I jumped into the pool, but she was gone —
And now I’ve spent these many years
bedazzled by an otter with a woman’s face,
Ensorcelled by a quiet water place.
Filed under poems, Thomas Davis
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
It is because
the earth is tilted
this time of year,
the sun brightest at sunrise,
October light exceptional,
that I can see
silver threads strung
across my path
among the oldest trees,
thousands of gleaming strings
made by tree snails or slugs —
trails of lubricant
caught by sunlight
in a mathematical moment;
glistening chains we put
around our necks
to take home with us
to put in our favorite drawer —
the one labeled “DISCOVERIES”—
there in the back of our mind.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
1
His art is of cows, goats, and pigs,
but mainly dairy cows, Holsteins,
great portraits of black and white Holsteins
posing with dignity and grace,
one with a large, bulging vein
running the length of the under belly
to its udder,
portraits rich in painterly quality,
showing a wondrous love for these animals.
2
A downed cow,
too sick to get on its feet,
is dragged with chains
to the slaughtering yard.
A man kicks her in the head
on her way past him,
dignity and grace
still in her eyes.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry
by Thomas Davis
As Ambrose Betts gulped down the whiskey shot
That Gullickson had given him, his face
Was flushed, the muscles in his neck a knot
So tight he winced, his outrage out of place
Inside the cabin’s half lit single room.
“A Winnebago brave! I tell you Gullickson,”
He said. “As large as life inside the gloom
Of Miner’s kitchen, Bullock looking drawn,
As if he’d seen a ghost, as black as coal.
I’ve never seen the like before!” he yelled.
“An Indian, white man, black man like a shoal
Of pebbles on a beach. The Indian held
His hand up, said, I swear, to Bullock, “You,”
He said. “The first white man I ever knew.”
“Old Bullock, black as night,
Smiled with those teeth of his
So dazzlingly bright white
My head began to fizz.
“And Miner looked like God
About to haul back, smack
The Indian into sod.
A white man that is black!”
Filed under poems, Poetry, Thomas Davis
a photograph by Ethel Mortenson Davis
fourwindowspress 