a photograph by Sonja Bingen
Sonnet to a Bacchaian Age
Two Tuscan pirates seized sweet Bacchus fast
And with a shout of heady, lusty joy
Hauled him away to vineyards where slim asps
Were in the pirate’s blood and bones employ.
They said that they had earned wine’s sweetened fruit
That only Bacchus could with skill distill,
And they would have it though the awful brute
Of night descended with its anger singing shrill.
Sweet Bacchus let them bind him head and foot.
He let them hold his form inside their hands.
He brewed their liquor from the grape’s sour root
With parsley, thyme, and scabious grown in sand.
But when the pirates woke sweet Bacchus was gone,
And they were fishy dolphins senseless of the dawn.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
Lost
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
This morning,
when we saw a cedar forest
whose trees seemed
as if they were from another world,
we saw a child’s tale—
witches and goblins hiding
behind every tree trunk
on the soft fallen cedar floors.
Since we have moved
to this land of lakes and forests,
my body has moved,
but not my spirit.
It is still circling,
soaring in the sky,
keeping from lighting,
not sure whether
it will land
like
the Sandhill Crane
this morning
circling the marsh,
not lighting,
appearing to be lost.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
A Night of Jazz
by Thomas Davis
King Rotten picked a bone out of the air!
The ivories tickled white with music wild!
Gold flashed and slid within the living room
As fingers pumped and fingers danced and flew
And smiles flowed wine, and feet rugged up the floor!
King Rotten graveled down into his throat.
Queen White bird-thrilled into a belting song!
Prince Rotten grinned his legs too loose for joints
As Captain Jack peered through his windowed soul,
And Snuffer shuffled snuffling through the songs.
And then, as evening swirled her starry dress,
And Rotten grumbled at his puckered lips,
And Queen White sang of wanting fancy shoes,
The bone fell golden to the night’s tired floor,
And ivories danced until they danced no more.
I sat in silence, wrapped in jazz’s womb—
The music died; the silver silence mooned.
Originally published in Wisconsin Trillium.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
Shell
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
I can’t remember when
the old man’s house became unliving,
when the closed-off rooms became closed-off
from life and put on the shelf,
unusable like the clock in the attic,
the meaning all but gone.
Like the grandchildren’s forgotten names–
who once were through his loins,
now faded memories–
where once the sea breezes of June
and August swept down the hills
and through the house where
now
the shell of a man sits,
a seashell washed up on the shoreline.
Life has long gone out,
and the smell of the air is overpowering,
and I turn away
because it is the smell of death.
The fresh sea breezes
blow down hills
sweet with the wild rose.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
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