photograph by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Open Water
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Today we saw
black swans flying
close to the shore,
looking for open water.
We too look for open water
in our lives,
places that will
nourish and sustain us,
propel us through rocks and ice
that entangle us,
grab at our limbs
and minds, and bury us.
We yearn
for the boundless waters
of this vast lake
as glistening
black swans
yearn for spring’s
warming light.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
Four Black Swans
a Spenserian Sonnet
by Thomas Davis
Four swans, crow-feather black, fly low above
The lake’s ice, white with tints of apple green.
Upon a red roof ravens, croaking of
The way the blue-black of their feather’s sheen
Swift shadows on the snow’s white shining, preen
Into a circle, stirring whispering winds
That cause white wisps to pirouette, careen
Across the fields as daylight slowly ends.
A black cat tops a hill and then descends
Into a field where fourteen cats have made
A ring beneath a full moon; each pretends
The others aren’t as eyes glow green as jade —
The wind blows cold; the silver moon is bright
As black swans fly into the spell-bound night.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
Whiteness
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
On earth
there are no elements
here of humankind
that work in harmony,
but in the whiteness
of snow there are.
The whiteness is like
no other white.
The snowshoe rabbit
this morning looked
brown against it.
White is holy.
It fights back
the grayness
that is human
and wins —
for a few moments.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
Lake Michigan Ice and Shore
photographs by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Photography
Sitting on a Bench Waiting for the End of Winter
by Thomas Davis
Time hides in words spoke on the radio,
Inside newspaper columns gray with print.
The young girl, in the winter, watched the flow
Of snow wisps on the lake, her dreams intent
Upon the booming chunks of gleaming ice
That spring would heave on shore, great, white walls, cold
In spite of how the sun thawed sacrifice
From frozen ground and hazed the air with gold.
The young girl took her radio outside
And read the paper sitting on a bench
As winter waited for the moon-stirred tide
To free warm waters from its icy clench.
The young girl waited on her bench for spring
When she and ice and all the world would sing.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
Still Winter, Cave Point
Photographs by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Photography
Two Roads
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
I can’t remember
when I learned
to love animals,
but it was when
I was very young,
along with my three sisters.
Perhaps it started
when we were called
good-for-nothing girls,
forcing us toward
the animals.
It was where I learned
animals love their young
as much as we love
ours,
when the mother cow,
desperate that night,
cried in low,
hysterical bellows
for her dead calf.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
fourwindowspress 