Photograph by Sonja Bingen
Tag Archives: deer
Flow of the Albino Does
a Spenserian sonnet by Thomas Davis
Albino does emerge from banks of snow
Into the moonlight of the winter night.
The sheen of silver from the ghostly glow
Of luminance stained from the full moon’s light
Spreads through the shadows where the snow’s soft white
Moves with the movement of the silent deer.
The maple trees begin to stir, a slight
Breath silent through a sky pristinely clear.
A huge tree cracks. A wave of startled fear
Jerks through the deer. A wind begins
To blow through barking trees, the atmosphere
Alive with movement as the moonlight spins
Light dancing through an empty field that flows
With running waves of ghostly silver does.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
Where the Deer Were
a photograph by Ethel Mortenson Davis
When we visited Cedaredge, Colorado, taking Tom’s mother with us, the motel we stayed in was filled with hunters. They got up before dawn to go out on Grand Mesa to hunt, but later on in the day we went for a drive in the area around Cedaredge and found fields full of deer close to houses where they would be safe.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Photography
Orion
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
In the early morning
Orion is already setting
In the western sky.
I follow it,
getting closer
to the spring equinox,
pointing north past
the north star.
The north,
where spring first appears
in bunches of wild leeks,
the first green in the forest,
dug up by deer
for their delectable bulbs.
Then a carpet of
spring beauties and anemones follow,
flooding the forest floor.
It was there
where you laid your head
in a bed of wild flowers.
The fiddle-head ferns
were just unwinding
and in a month
would reach our shoulders.
It was there,
where you wore
bells on your hips
so as not to surprise
the black bear with cubs
and the gray timber wolf
on his trek across the land.
Now Orion sets in the southwest,
pointing toward spring.
I will plant corn this year,
perhaps on the western side
of the garden.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
The Deer
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
You came to the edge of the woods today
to catch my eye.
My dog did not see you, though,
young girl-deer.
You came to tell me “thank you,”
or so it seemed that way,
for digging you out of the mud yesterday.
Flailing, you were caught up to your neck.
My dog and I saw you
throwing your head from side to side, exhausted—
on our walk in the rain-soaked morning.
Two came to dig you out,
and, after resting, you got up
and ran away.
So today you came back with gratitude,
or your face looked that way—
like my long lost daughter.
You came to make me understand
that you were full of thankfulness,
to catch my eye,
or so it seemed that way.
Copyright © 2010, I Sleep Between the Moons of New Mexico
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
Migrations
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
The stealth of migrations
move across the land
under cover of darkness,
moving in hundreds
and then thousands.
You told me
about your car lights
shining in a canyon
one night–
“More elk than
one could imagine,”
moving to the southern places
where canyons lap over canyons,
lands whose vastness is greater
than the mind can comprehend,
unlike the northern deer
that migrate further north
to find giant spruce trees
whose branches touch
the ground to make
a snowless, warm canopy
for the wintering.
You said, “The axe blade
is sharpened, ready
to chop the bone
at the joints.”
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
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