a photograph by Sonja Bingen
The Eagle and the Pelican
by Thomas Davis
The day was shining, water dancing blue
Below the hill still glittering with dew.
Achat, with Hurit by his side, looked down
Toward the pebble beach and lake, his frown
Intense with memories he’d long suppressed,
His heartbeat beating loudly in his chest.
Long years had passed since he had stood above
The place reminding him of timeless love.
His childish body hid behind a birch
Inside a grove upon the hill, his perch
The perfect place to watch his father run
Toward his mother on the beach, the sun
So bright with summer heat it bent the air
And danced above the terror of despair.
That night his father, in a shallow cave,
Had whispered, “When it’s light you’ll have to save
Yourself by hiding. They won’t try to kill
Your Mom and I. They want you dead. Your skill
In hiding where you can’t be found is all
The hope that’s left.” His mother’s night-bird call
Had told them she was near. “Remember, hide!”
He’d said, then left the cave, his son inside.
Five hunters left the trees. His father ran.
His mother stopped and watched. The biggest man
Stopped, pulled his bow string, let an arrow fly.
It struck his father’s back. His mother’s cry
Of anguish shattered silence. The big man’s yell
Of triumph echoed as his father fell.
A boy of ten, he knelt and watched the men
Walk slowly down the beach, knives drawn, a grin
Upon their faces as his mother cried
Until the bloody moment when she died.
As Hurit watched the shadows on his face,
Tears welled into her eyes. “This is the place?”
She asked. He stared into the distant past
And felt the shock and terror that had gasped
Into his spirit, forced him up the hill.
“Not here,” he said. “Up there. I saw them kill
My mother and my father here. I fled
So that I wouldn’t have to see them dead.”
He turned abruptly, climbing up toward
The cliffs above them. As an eagle soared
From off the rising rocks, Achat stopped, glanced
At Hurit, beautiful and strong, entranced
By mysteries she did not understand.
He felt his twisted back and twisted hand
Send shudders through the villagers who looked
At him. His gross deformities had hooked
A terror that their spirits could not shake
No matter how his parents tried to make
Him like another boy, a villager
And not some dark, unholy, malformed cur.
The eagle circled from the cliffs to where
They climbed; its piping cries a solitaire,
Bleak ritual that seemed to integrate
Their movements with dark auguries of fate.
The men upon the beach had seen him climb
Into the open. Scared and grieving, time
A shrinking leather strap about his neck,
He started scaling up the cliffs, a speck
Of darkness in the sky above him, fear
Inside each breath he took, his thoughts not clear.
At last, upon the cliff rim, looking down,
He watched the hunters point, an eagle’s brown,
Swift body suddenly above the cliffs,
A pelican below the eagle, riffs
Of offshore winds a trembling under wings
That folded as a beak’s bright yellow flings
Into the flying pelican as two
Large birds fell tumbling through the sky’s bright blue.
As blood spewed from the pelican, dense mist
Spread from the blood, a shadowy encyst
So thick Achat, the child, had lost his sight.
The summer day had turned into a night
So dark he could not move. He tried to hear
The hunters at the cliff’s rock base, a queer
Infinity inside his head, but all
He’d heard were whispers in the murky pall
That chilled his bones and goaded him to see
Again the murderous, wild sense of glee
That plunged a knife into his mother’s heart
And tore his sense of who he’d been apart.
As Hurit took his hand upon the rim
Above the cliff and bay, he looked so grim
He frightened her. “This is the place,” she said.
He felt the awful sense of blinding dread
That once had paralyzed him as he stood
In mist, the hunters out of sight, childhood
A past forgotten. “When my father came
And led me from this cliff,” he said. “My shame
At having hidden as my parents died
Was more than I could take. I thought the tide
Of life had ended, leaving me a husk
Who’d live his life inside an endless dusk.
I never thought I’d love or feel again.
My living felt as if it was a sin.”
“My father found you in a cedar swamp,”
She said. “He frightened me,” he said. “The clomp
Of boots through muck continued what assailed
Me while I dreamed of dying, as I railed
Against my hand and back and longed for death.”
“My father said he heard your rasping breath
Before he found you on a spit of land,”
She answered. “When you couldn’t even stand
He carried you. He’s always said he knew
That you were someone special, someone who
Would give to all our people special gifts.”
He looked down at the beach below the cliffs.
He saw the arrow in his father’s back
And saw his mother as a spirit, black
Eyes urging him to run, his father’s voice
An insubstantial whisper sapping choice
About continued living from his will,
His father’s running swift, but yet dead still.
A guttural howling haunted hate into his eyes.
He heard again his mother’s anguished cries.
“I watched you save my mother’s life,” she said,
Voice soft. “You took the fever from her head
And put it in the air. I saw you call
Old Weso back from death, the awful pall
Of waxen lifelessness inside his skin,
His face weird, twisted by his death-mask grin.”
He took a deep, long breath. The eagle flew
Above their heads. The sunlight seemed to skew
Into a twisted ball of blinding light.
The eagle disappeared, its soaring flight
An emptiness of bright blue summer sky.
Inside his head the pelican’s sharp cry,
As eagle talons sank into its flesh,
Forged summer light into an augered mesh
That jolted fire into a boy that made
His way through mist behind his father’s shade.
He looked at Hurit and his twisted hand.
He felt the power in the cliffs, this land.
He wondered, as he stared at distant waves,
If he was looking at his parent’s graves.
The day was shining, water glinting blue.
He said to Hurit, “I’m in love with you.”
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
Portrait of the Winter of 2014
a photograph from the Lake Geneva Winter Festival by Sonja Bingen
Filed under Art, Photography
Cougar
by Thomas Davis
The cougar, tawny shadow in the rocks,
Moved stealthily toward the maple grove.
Lake water glinted as the noisy flocks
Of geese stormed from the shelter of the cove.
The blinding sunlight still allowed the moon
To sail, ghost-white, into the dying afternoon.
Far out, a dozen miles from land, the swells
Of rocking waves beneath the tiny boat,
A man begins to celebrate and yells,
Emotions unaware of how remote
He is from land, the glistening chinook
Caught by the white bone of his hand-carved hook.
The winter’s done, he thought. At last it’s done!
He reached down for his paddle as a haze
Crept from the north and dimmed the western sun.
He felt a change inside the rolling waves
And saw how far he’d traveled from the trees
That shivered from a sudden, chilling breeze.
The cougar tensed its body on a ledge
Above a trail deer followed to the lake.
All day it fixed its eyes upon a hedge
The deer would file around, the bloody rake
Of claws in deer flesh promised in the way
It waited patiently throughout the day.
Clouds scudded black into the evening skies
As choppy waves began to spray the wind
Into the man’s cold face and reddened eyes.
At last his mind began to apprehend
The danger in the darkness of a night
Directionless without a hint of light.
A doe and fawn came through the hedge and stopped.
The cougar did not move. Time froze. The doe
Kept staring at the ledge. At last ears dropped.
The cougar watched the fawn, its cautious, slow,
Small movement made toward the cougar’s claws
Retracted, still, inside its twitching paws.
The mother snorted at the fawn. It flinched
Toward a maple trunk. The cougar sprang,
Its body twisting in the air, jaws clinched
As doe and fawn leapt through an overhang
Of cedars as the cougar hit the ground
And filled the silent woods with snarling sound.
Inside the rhythm of his paddling
The man began to dream of children’s eyes.
Outside the wind was constant, rattling
The thick bark walls he’d built, the haunting cries
Of winter deprivation in the breath
Of little ones too young to face their death.
Hours passed. He fought the waves. The shore
Somewhere inside the darkness beckoned him.
He dug into his tiredness, past the core
Of who he was, his perseverance grim
Enough to face the dance of spirits howled
Across awareness where disaster prowled.
Then, suddenly, the boat hit land. It threw
Him backwards. Lying still he felt life surge
Its song into his beating heart, the brew
Of wind and waves no longer like a dirge
Of doom, the willow basket full of fish—
Fulfillment of his family’s anxious wish.
The cougar’s eyes were fire. The man had placed
The basket on the pebble beach and pulled
The boat above the water when he faced
The cat, its eyes and crouching body bold
Beside the basket with the fish, it’s ears
Laid back, it’s growling stirring ancient fears
Of children, grieving with their mother, left
Alone inside a wilderness, the man’s
Life gone, their futures suddenly bereft
Of all the dreams he’d fashioned from his plans.
The cougar’s eyes were suns, a universe.
The man waved arms and shouted out a curse.
The cougar turned and grabbed a fish, the night
A darkness swallowing a shadow bled
Into an emptiness devoid of light.
The man stood frozen as the cougar fled.
At last he got the basket, climbed the hill,
The cougar in his life-force, tense and still.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
The Dance
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
At sunrise
she began to dance
so that humanness
would seep back
into the earth,
into the lowest
parts of the earth.
She danced for
the murdered
and missing,
the lost and forsaken.
Then,
she danced
all through the night
for the inhumanness
that filled her heart,
for the hatred and lack of love
that had captured her.
She danced and danced
until inhumanity
drained out of her,
out of the farthest parts
of the earth,
until the sun
came back to the world.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
In the Aftermath
by Thomas Davis
The woman wrapped the child against the cold
And walked into the forest where the glow
Of moonlight pooled a deeply shadowed gold
Beneath the trees on softly shining snow.
She gathered wood, the baby on her back,
And built a fire, its warmth a dancing light
Upon a great flat rock protruding black
Into the lake’s infinity of white.
Then, in the dark, sat, death-still, beside
The flames, the baby in her arms, the smear
Of stars above their heads a radiant tide
Of silence singing to the ebbing year.
At last, her voice a permutation slipped
Into the night, she started chanting words
Born deep in spirit as the blackened crypt
Of waters stirred beneath lake ice, and birds,
As black as mourning shrouds, began to fly,
The forest stirring like the waters, wind
A whisper as the baby voiced a tiny cry
And shadowy trees began to sway and bend.
The woman got up on her feet, her voice
As silver as the moon, and sang as deer
Began to bound onto the ice: “Rejoice,”
The woman sang, and as she sang the fear
Felt during hours of pain-filled, labored birth
Dissolved into the biting wind and light
That danced with deer upon the lake, the earth
And living integrated with the night.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
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