a photograph by Ethel Mortenson Davis 
A Poet’s Becoming, Fionn’s Gift Across Time
by Thomas Davis
Fionn, son of Mairne, a Chief Druid’s daughter, was instructed by the Druid…to cook for him a salmon fished for a deep pool…and forbidden to taste it; but as Fionn was turning the fish over in the pan he burned his thumb, which he put into his mouth and so received the gift of inspiration. For the salmon was a salmon of knowledge, that had fed on nuts fallen from the nine hazels of poetic art. Robert Graves, The White Goddess. 1966 (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux), p. 75.
Upon the dark dolomite jutting
Shoreline out into lake waters,
Brooding, the poet pondered, rising
Vapors misting white where otters
Often twisted brown bodies in brightness
During days of lithesome lightness.
Longing to discover poetry’s essence,
Plunging into intensifying agony,
Its agitated angst and strange candescence,
Searching for wisps of hope, honey
Spirited into hazel nuts fallen
Into waters fused with wisdom’s pollen,
Praying, the poet chanted phrases
Empty of meaning, madness exploding
Dystopian dreams into glazes
Filming stratums in mist, imploding
Into a dance of time: Land distinct,
Shrouding tales of peoples long extinct.
Milky mist rose from the waters.
Paddling in a coracle, Fionn,
Singing softly as sleek otters,
Angled after salmon in an eon
Ever-ending, inspiration
Infusing words into desperation.
Dancing in the poet’s pounding
Heartbeat, language’s lilting incantation
Metamorphosed landscapes, people’s living,
Into a singing suffusion of creation:
Fionn spanning time and continents,
Salmon swimming past despair to resonance.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
Night Ride
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Come with me,
down where the trees are,
for there is a line of sky
without clouds,
and soon the earth
will be the color of red honey.
Come with me,
for there is enough feed
for the horses,
and when we stop to sleep
we’ll keep the dogs close
to warm us.
Come with me,
for the songs of the Ancients
are calling.
Orion is straight above our heads,
and we must make
this night’s journey.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
The Road I Walk
a photograph by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Filed under Art, Ethel Mortenson Davis, Photography
By The Skin of Our Teeth, a Sonnet of Hope
by Thomas Davis
Sweet Bacchus in a passion ate his heart
As spirits floated through his pounding head.
The wood nymphs cheered, and rogues proclaimed the start
Of celebrations for the grateful dead.
The world went mad, and all the heavens rang
With shouts of drunken gods and mortal fools.
The mad embraced the mad. Chimeras sang
That chaos had replaced all laws and rules.
The stars inside the sky flew at the sun.
The peaceful moon turned red with hidden fires.
The night turned white and then began to run
Like liquid paint into the fires of funeral pyres.
But just before destruction raised its lovely head,
Sweet Bacchus died. Sweet Eros died. Was dead.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
Climber
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
This is the right time
of the year
to be a climber of trees,
trusting only
the youngest
and strongest limbs
with your life,
your cheek resting
on the nook
of a shoulder—
the right time
of the year
for fireball colors.
This is the place
where one can look
back below
to see if mankind
has become a race
of Renaissance men.
Not yet,
the climber says,
not yet.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
Patterns in Potowatomi Forest
a photo essay by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Cedar Fall
Wild Grapes
Filed under Art, Essays, Ethel Mortenson Davis, Photography
Planting the Wings of Monarch Butterflies
by Thomas Davis
In Southern Door an aging man, face fixed,
Pulled up beside a country road and walked
Toward a wooden fence where milkweed mixed
With grass and weeds, fall’s fiery colors stalked
Into a forest’s weave of summer green,
The season’s changing edged into the day.
Beside the fence the man bent down, serene,
Intent on picking milkweed pods, a fey
Gleam in his eyes. He got into his car
And drove until he found an empty field,
Stopped, pulled a pod out of a mason jar,
And freed milk fluff into a wind that wheeled
Time through the winter to a glorious spring
That sprung a summer graced with monarch wings.
Note: After reading an editorial by Peter Devlin in the Door County Advocate.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
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