For Troy Davis
by Ethel Mortenson 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.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
I heard
a temple bell
far away—
a deep rich
summoning voice.
Then
a medicine man
came to my bed,
beating the air
around my feet
and head,
beating the cobwebs
of sadness stretched
over me.
A dream.
I know because
the dog did not stir.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
This wind of eve
has a tinge of Hamlet’s madness
that harbors
the fear of this world
and the next.
The howling witch
casts a fear of man
across my throat and chin.
Blackness seeps
into my brain.
We cannot live,
nor do we want to die.
It is the worst of life and death.
How can I say
or write this word
when she takes
my tongue and hands
and leaves in their place
twigs to scratch with.
I glimpse the view
of the moon backwards
in my mirror—a kinder,
gentler heart.
This windy eve has a tinge
of Hamlet’s madness.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
by Thomas Davis
Inside the trailer sitting by a ditch,
the mixing bowl still clinging to the dough
that went into the oven hours before
to make the fresh-bread smell of early morning,
the poet, young, sat down to write a poem.
She pursed her lips and pledged a word to paper,
stopped, got up from the folding table, looked
as if a storm had started brewing thunderheads
behind her eyes, crossed out the word she’d written,
put down another word, and then another,
decided that the first line was not right,
crossed out the line, and searched for fire, for stone
grown out of ancient trees into a rainbow
of carbon, agate, life long gone remembered
in music swelled out of the lines she wrote.
She worked for hours, the crossed out words and lines
alive, then petrified into oblivion
across a half a dozen pages, images
half formed, then tossed away into the blaze
of other images born from the dance
of words dredged out of who she was inside
where light burned, thoughts danced, deep emotions swirled.
When, at long last, the poem was done, she shrugged,
picked up a stick of charcoal, stormed a portrait
of Pasternak, romantic, breathing, flaring
into his Russian world, onto a newsprint pad
and finished faster than the morning’s bread had cooled.
Pasternak, a Portrait
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
“Pasternak” originally appeared in The Rimrock Poets Magazine, Thomas Davis, Richard Brenneman, and Art Downing, editors, December 1967, Vol. 1, No. 1.
Filed under Art by Ethel Mortenson Davis, Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry, Thomas Davis
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
One
became caught
last night
in my net.
This morning
I untangled him—
eyes true and bright,
magnificent iridescent feathers,
and a warm beating heart
that stayed in my hand
as I threw him up into the air
so he could
continue his flight
across the universe.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
They packed
the odds and ends
of the house in the car—
along with the plants and dog.
She wanted to leave
at noon, but he wanted
more time to say goodbye
to his friends.
They left at 6.00 P.M.
No one was there
to say goodbye
after twenty-five years.
They pulled out onto the Interstate
towards Duluth–a six hour drive.
They waved goodbye
and also said some
“Good Riddances”
to “Their Town.”
A semi was following
behind them
and pulled up alongside.
He rolled down his window
and hollered, “Goodbye”—
Then waved again.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis
Deep January
never felt so warm–
when the strong arms
of the Red Army
picked up
the skeleton-like people
and set them
on blankets in the snow.
The evil snake
had reached down
deep into their bodies
and tried to snatch
their very souls,
but the soldiers
gathered them
like sick dogs
in their arms
and set them
into the sunshine.
Libertacja was like
the swinging
of a thousand swings
up into the air–
a day when poetry
began to be written.
Originally published in Gallup Journey, January 5, 2011
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis
