My newest book, Story Poems From a Western Colorado Boyhood, is out. I have been writing these stories for decades. Some are funny, others serious, some mythical in the sense that, though they really happened, they still touch the spirit of the mountains and high deserts of the West. The wonderful cover photo was taken by our son, Kevin Michael (Alazanto) Davis. We miss him.
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a pastel by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Filed under Art, Art by Ethel Mortenson Davis, Ethel Mortenson Davis
By Ethel Mortenson Davis from her new book, The Woman and the Whale
The day was a day of celebration.
A small Right Whale stood vertical,
head out of the water,
straight up in the air,
his dorsal fins reaching like arms
toward the sky.
A woman diver
from a South Pacific Island
said the whale tried to tuck her
under his dorsal fin
when she interacted with him.
At first, she struggled to get away—
until she saw the shark
circling her, trying to get at her.
The whale kept his body between
the diver and the shark.
Then the whale grew agitated,
slapped his tail at the shark,
before finally running it off.
Today, the whale came back with his family,
many heads sticking straight up in the air.
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a pastel by Ethel Mortenson Davis
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by Ethel Mortenson Davis
She had to take her nursing infant
with her to her final exam
because the babysitter hadn’t shown up.
The professor threw her out,
but she completed her degree
and has been teaching for thirty years.
Now she is facing another exam,
one called cancer.
We, as mothers, daughters, and grandmothers,
are connected through our wombs.
We will stand with her, all of us together.
No one will throw her out.
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by Ethel Mortenson Davis
We are in need of the Archangel to come down
and tell us we have lost paradise,
to come down and tell us we have lost the wonderment
of the child as he looks into the face of the black and white warbler,
or the wonderment of multi-colored lichen
on the facade of giant boulders.
We are in need of an Archangel to tell us we have lost heaven,
and there will be no Messiah to save us from ourselves.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry
by Ethel Mortenson Davis from her book, I Sleep Between the Moons of New Mexico
A prince stepped
out on our land
this morning
from some far away place.
He wore a spectacular black headdress
and was dressed
all in blue
with geometric checkers
across his shoulders.
I slipped an extra banquet
out to him
so he would stay
a bit longer.
But he wiggled his white eyebrows,
a fine prince of a fellow,
then hurried off
to catch a wind.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry
For Troy Davis
I hope you are in a place where there is justice, where there is love unconditionally, the end, where young men no longer are lynched by ropes, or the machinations of killers, where there is light and not the suffocating, ethered mud, a place where you will rise above humanness. I hope you are in a place called Justice, a place that will never be named Georgia.
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In Memoriam, February 16, 1982 – July 23, 2010
Sunset in Chaco Canyon Ruins
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a pastel by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Filed under Art, Art by Ethel Mortenson Davis, Ethel Mortenson Davis
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