a photograph by Will Bingen, our grandson
So Small
Note: Our big move from Continental Divide, New Mexico to Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin is finally complete. We drove over 1,200 miles with our two dogs, Pax and Juneau, and the moving truck showed up, and we are a long way toward removing everything from boxes. Sturgeon Bay is beautiful, located on a peninsula that juts out into Lake Michigan. Our daughters, Sonja and Mary, their husbands, Bill and Rick, and three of our grandchildren, Phoebe, Will, and Joey, were on hand to greet and help us. Without their help we would still be struggling along rather than comfortably situated. We are located less than two blocks from the bay of Sturgeon Bay and a couple of miles from Green Bay, the bay that stretches from the Lake, past Sturgeon Bay, to the famous city of the famous football team. Right now Canadian geese are flying over the house during all the hours of daylight, and, when it is not raining, sun shines on the dark blue of lake waters and waves. Tom and Ethel
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
At night
Venus,
with wildrose eyes,
climbs down
her ladder
of matchstick rungs
until
she disappears
behind
the trees,
the horizon,
the earth.
So small she seems.
But in reality
she is so large,
the distance between
the stars
so great.
I wonder,
when we start
travelling between stars,
and we look back at the earth,
If we will have regrets?”
Like the mother fox
this morning who doubled
back across the highway
to check if her dead young
were still alive.
Will we regret not
taking care of each other?
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
A Country of Stones
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
It is a country of stones—
Stoneland.
All you have to do,
when you walk,
is look down,
and there are
the most interesting stones.
All kinds, colors
and strenghs.
Looking down today
I saw petrified wood.
It is a land
more about itself
and less about humans,
it’s vastness
overwhelming.
The animals,
with adept feet,
steal away
where people never see,
a private land,
so much undiscovered.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
Kahukura
by Thomas Davis from World Indigenous Nations Higher Education Consortium Poems, Navajo Technical University Press
Two long days of writing a constitution
And making the structure of an accreditation authority,
Then the long drive from Porirua to Hamilton
Through the Ruahine range of mountains
And mountains and hills of the Wanganui River.
All day we passed from sunshine to storm,
Rain and even hail blowing out of clouds
That crept white and shifting down green mountains
Where rows of pines waited for cover
Before they marched in maneuvers
Designed to confuse eyes of hawks and human beings.
We traveled so long we forgot about white manes of seahorses
That galloped in heavy winds beneath ocean
Into unmoving rocks of shore.
For hours rainbows walked ahead of us,
Sometimes one, bright in its arching,
And at other times two, dark one larger than the bright one
And always trailing behind,
A mother watching out for her adventuresome child
That once darted so close to us it made the wet branches of a pine tree shine.
We did not stop at the proceedings at Moutoa Gardens
Where Maori camped in bright colored tents,
Occupying ground in order to assert sovereignty
As old as the naming of the shaky isles by Aborigine,
But passed gorges plunging to river waters
Before greenness that covered hills and mountains
And fell into valleys blessed by singing birds
That kept trying to tell of the rainbow’s walking glory.
At the Lady of the Waterfall, in rain,
Mana Forbes blessed stones we had taken to ourselves
After we had climbed down steps to the waterfall
In the country of kings.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
Shiva
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
In my two weeks of absence
I deeply missed
Shiva, my dog.
When I arrived home
she danced in circles;
then approached me slowly,
smelling my head—
smelling bone, flesh and brain fluid
slipped into my breath.
At night she lay
her head across
my chest,
like the old nurse
from the night shift,
an angel of mercy,
who came to my rescue.
The old dog who knew
about healing;
she showed me
how to be human.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
The Journey to Advancing the Foundations of WINHEC Meeting in Todd Park, New Zealand 11-9-02
by Thomas Davis
We stood beneath graves of kings,
And Mana, silver haired, large in life, words, and laughter,
Stood with a staff made in Sante Fe, New Mexico
And spoke as a New Zealand bird sang,
Voice liquid as wind.
Later we stood above Huka Falls and the Waikato River
And saw colors of flowing water change
From a blue dark, with movement toward stones,
To white and turquoise as water tumbled and raged
To escape closing-in stone,
And then into turquoise blending toward green
As white, with turquoise flecks,
Thundered/rushed/calmed into river again.
Then, later still, we passed Pihanga Mountain
As she quietly made trouble in morning air
Near to where she had caused a larger mountain to move,
Leaving a great gash in the earth.
Until, at last, around a bend,
Below mountains covered with green grass,
Breathing with ribs
Made by sheep grazing over time,
We came to the sea where waves sprayed
Over dark shore rocks,
Ending our journey,
Which began in Minnesota winter
And ended here, in the land of Maori,
Where music is breathing
And woodcarvings scrawl a people’s story
From a time of canoes and great forests
Into a time borning
A storm of pride and promise.
Note: Mana in the poem is Mana Forbes, a man who talks to the ancestors and was our guide when we went to New Zealand in order to help establish WINHEC. WINHEC just held their annual meeting at Navajo Technical University in Crownpoint, NM where the World Indigenous University (WINU) was formed. The story of an organization that was just a vision thrown around in Hawaii when the first poems of this series were written continues to grow.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
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