a photograph by Kevin Michael Davis, our son, Alazanto)
ANMSI’s Moment of Decision
by Thomas Davis
Inside a dark cave,
looking at blinding light
through a waterfall’s curtain
that thunders into a pool that cannot be seen,
decisions dance into possibilities,
fracturing into edges
leading into an infinity of paths,
some dark, some dazzled light,
some thundering with water.
Inside this moment, at the dinner table,
decisions dance inside a spirituality
that has no words, but follows pathways
snaking from this moment, this center,
into a future bound into the cave’s darkness
beyond the waterfall’s curtain and thunder.
Somehow, through discussion, conflict, planning,
songs of voices telling what they know and believe
and what they remember in racial/cultural memory
and what they have remembered in their lives,
ANMSI has come down from the mountain
through a dark cave, Blacks, Hispanics, Indians
a mosaic that stands at the cusp, in this moment,
looking at the waterfall,
feeling the cave’s darkness,
transversed in the voyage of intense conversation
against the indifference of the national soul.
And what does this moment mean?
The darkness? The waterfall? The future
fracturing into the infinity of paths?
I remember shining hope
in the beginnings of the journey into the cave.
I remember days so heady with movement
the journey’s darkness filled with light
brighter and more glorious than the sun of any day.
I remember anger dark with emptiness and confusion.
I remember conversations between races and cultures
that sometimes, around edges not seen
by anyone speaking or hearing the words spoken,
trembled toward the possibility
of an American nation that could be.
And so, we sit here this night
after a day of meetings and voices
singing black, Hispanic, Indian, white words,
sitting at a dinner table
waiting for food, lit by candlelight,
looking out of darkness toward light.
As voices murmur into the conversation
that makes humankind human,
in the presence of the land community
that lives outside of conversation,
the question of this nation spins
upon the cusp, this moment,
in the candlelight of a dinner table waiting for food.
Note: ANMSI was an organization, Advanced Networking for Minority Serving Institutions, that I helped found. This was written in Washington DC during a time when discussions were going on between tribal, black, and Hispanic colleges and universities about trying to find funding to keep the organization going. That effort eventually failed.
Filed under Uncategorized
Winter Solstice
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
She rolled
up the mat,
turned out
the lights,
and we are plunged
into darkness.
December is like
living in a cave,
but the earth
will not hear of it,
unfolds her fetal position
in her darkened room
and allows light to emerge
longer in the morning
and afternoon—
Sunlight able
to warm our deepest bones.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
Loon
a pastel by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Filed under Art, Art by Ethel Mortenson Davis, Ethel Mortenson Davis
In Search of Poetry
by Thomas Davis
Eyes scudded dark, a roiling rage of storm,
The poet stood upon gray rock, the roar
Of boiling waves the cruciform
Of time, the slates of history a lore
Long lost, but still inside the chanting names
That sang a weaving with the waves.
The poet waves his arms. His presence claims
The past. He reaches past the earth of graves
And strains to bring the fire of poetry
From campfires blazing in forgotten nights
Beside the ferment of a Celtic sea
Onto a wild Wisconsin shore, old rites
Engendering a music mad with winds
That spills through words, a storm that never ends.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
Player
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
When I awake
I will not go to the theater,
play parts, do different characters,
but will be who I am.
I will never go back
to that again,
but will go where
there is wilderness and wildlife,
running water, and laps of waves—
See snorting deer.
I am my raw self;
I have no rifle,
and my bent toward you
is harmony.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
Thanksgiving After the Snowstorm
a photograph by Sonja Bingen, our daughter 
Filed under Art, Photography
Letter to an American Poet
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
I have waited for the prodigal son to arrive,
looking across the line of hills each day,
hoping to see his cherub-like face again—
but they say he is still in a distant land,
throwing away his inheritance,
living a debauched life.
For he has no real needs, they say.
Not like the Russians
Pasternak, Ginsburg, Yevtushenko,
Solzhenitsyn,
men of needs and wants
who cherish their inheritance
and are called sons.
I am waiting for you to come back to life again,
waiting to take the fattened young bull
out of his pen to celebrate your return.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
fourwindowspress 