Photographs of Spring by Sonja Bingen, our daughter
April
a poem by Ethel Mortenson Davis
April on tossed hair,
in trees,
across the paths and grass
with branches stuck in seas of sky,
comes,
and
nowhere
is the snow
that covered us
and protected us,
but now
green
pushes up,
and
i
hold on
a moment like bark
and hear
a swinging down
out of trees
and
i see
your surprised
face
when
the earth jumps up fast to meet your legs.
Filed under Art, Ethel Mortenson Davis, Photography, Poetry
by Thomas Davis
We kissed his forehead, yellow, cold, inert,
sobbed our goodbyes, left his body, drove
to Poet’s Walk above the Hudson, hurt
beyond expression, where, on hills, small groves
of ancient trees are interspersed with fields,
a place where, Kevin said, he liked to go.
And as cremation’s fires consumed, annealed
his spirit to our spirits, as the glow
of July’s sun warmed flesh too numb to feel,
we walked where he had walked and tried to find
our balance in a world turned sad, unreal—
our son was gone, his smile, his wondrous mind.
And as we walked the wings of butterflies,
black mourning cloaks, danced through the summer skies.
At the University of New Mexico Cancer Center in Albuquerque, where I am now being treated once a week, a healing bear greets patients as they enter the building. Marked with ancient symbols, shining black in the sun, Ethel and I stand before it every time we come to the Center. The major question in my mind at the moment, one that I cannot shake, is, why am I surviving my bout with bladder cancer while Kevin, only 28 years old, did not survive? I would have given him my life without a thought if he could still be present, thinking about butterflies that were such a constant, powerful symbol to him from the time he was a child to the day of his death when, as Ethel has written in a powerful poem not yet posted, a butterfly visited his hospital room so many stories up in the middle of the city. I understand there is no answer to such a question, and I am deeply grateful to have more years with Ethel, my children, and grandchildren, but both Ethel and I miss our son. This sonnet was written after our visit to Poet’s Walk Park on the Hudson River in New York. Ethel has also written about our experience there. After this moment we flew back home to New Mexico. Just over a year later we discovered my cancer. One of Ethel’s many photographs of the healing bear is below as a symbol of survival and strength in the face of devastating tribulation.
photograph by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Filed under Art, Essays, Ethel Mortenson Davis, Photography, Poetry, Thomas Davis
an abstract pastel by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Filed under Art, Art by Ethel Mortenson Davis, Ethel Mortenson Davis
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
The golden-throated lark
has returned to play
his gilded song,
a three-dimensional tune,
as if it comes
from golden instruments
cast in some
heavenly place–
like the music
from the golden singing
bowls of Tibet,
hammered and made beautiful
by Buddhist monks.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Because they can’t feed them,
the poorest people
turn their horses loose
in the desert.
These horses find some
grass and weeds
a couple of months in a year,
but mostly brown stubble,
and water that is impossible
to find.
Finally they round some of them up,
with sand in their bellies,
and ship them to slaughter houses
in Mexico
where men with knives kill them
by stabbing them up to twenty times
before they are brought down,
before they see
grass as tall as their shoulders
near a watering stream.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
an abstract pastel by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Filed under Art, Art by Ethel Mortenson Davis, Ethel Mortenson Davis
a photograph by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Filed under Art, Ethel Mortenson Davis, Photography
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
I will take the key
that unlocks you
and peer inside
to see yards and yards
of colorful fabric
on assorted bolts,
some material so thin
air and light comes through,
some so soft and thick
it feels like gray wool
from the long haired mountain sheep.
There I find a memory
from a northern forest
when snow filled up the floor,
and wind blew so strong
we looked for shelter
and found a circle of white cedar
whose branches hung down like loving arms.
Inside the circle
snowflakes were suspended in mid-air
as if in a crystalline hour glass.
And then there was the memory
of the sweetest summer night
in the high desert
when cool breezes played with us
to the tune of dancing hummingbirds
chatting to each other
as the fullest moon came up over the hills:
Two braided ribbons I’ll place around my neck
and wear forever.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
an abstract pastel by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Filed under Art, Art by Ethel Mortenson Davis, Ethel Mortenson Davis
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
In the end
all we have is sky.
He walked in winter
across the mountain
many times,
searching for the plant
dried by winter’s cold
that looks like all the others.
After many days
the medicine man
found the herb and planned
two ceremonies
for the whiteman,
a man who extended his arm
to The People, and they, The People,
extended their arms.
They took him
to a sacred place
high in the mountain,
performing the secret ceremony
where sky
is greater than the earth.
The white man walked
in two worlds.
“You will be okay,”
they said.
In the end all we have is sky.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
fourwindowspress 