Tag Archives: lake

May 23, 2014 · 6:48 am

2

by Thomas Davis

He talked about the mirror of the lake,
reflected trees and clouds and sky, the still
so absolute, the waters dark, opaque,
no wind, no breath, no birds, no human will
to mar the moment made for memory
entangled in the webs of days and hours
that jumble, jangle, pounce, drone, laugh, and flee
across and through the fields of flowers
surrounding us and all the love we miss
but know inside our livers, gall stones, hearts
as hours blend into hours, and all our bliss
becomes a mirror that is but a part
of floating on a lake of trees and sky.
As rain begins to fall, a loon begins to cry.

16 Comments

Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis

Tagged as canoeing Boundary Waters, illness, lake, love, mirror, rememberance of son, Shakespearean sonnet, sonnet

March 22, 2014 · 5:57 am

The Lake

by Ethel Mortenson Davis

In the cold winters
around the Great Lakes,
ice moves
in constant, fluid motion
making cracking sounds,
thundering sounds
as ice heaves against ice,
shelf against shelf,
sending echoes out,
across a cold, stiff night,
that sound like a war
being waged,

like someone shooting off cannons
in some distant place.

She is telling us
she is still here;
she is still alive!

11 Comments

Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry

Tagged as cannons, ice, lake, Lake Michigan, nature, poems, sound of lake ice, winter

March 18, 2014 · 7:29 am

Goose Thunder

by Thomas Davis

An Italian, or Petrarchian, Sonnet

All week green waves had groaned and cracked great chunks
Of gleaming ice onto the bay’s curved shore.
Then waves of geese, wings arched, began to pour
Onto the shining lake—small, gabbling monks
Dark-cowled in heaven’s shining, winding trunks
Of bodies stirred by Spring’s esprit de corps
As gabble after gabble, more and more,
Became a mass as open waters shrunk.

A V of snow geese, white with sun-drunk wings,
Swooped down upon the lake. The darkness stirred,
A whirling vortex wild, as honking cries
Become a water spout so large it flings
The lake into a shadow, waters blurred
By roiling, whirring-dark, goose-rising skies.

Note: Nick Moore and I have been attempting different sonnet types the last few postings. I dedicated the first sestina I wrote to both Nick and John Stevens, two poets who gave me the courage to try to write one. I then followed that up with the insanity of a double sestina, “The Time of the Poetic Spirit’s Splitting,” a poem I am still pleased that I wrote. Nick then wrote his own double sestina about cycling, one of his passions, that is better than Algernon Charles Swinburne’s “The Complaint of Lisa,” the first double sestina ever written by one of the great poets in history. All of this, along with a lot of other really good poetry, can be found on his gonecyclingagain.com blog. There are a few wordpress poets who have influenced me over the years. Nick Moore is certainly one of the most important of those poets. He has published his Italian sonnet in response to our current sonnet-writing effort on his blog, along with his Spenserian sonnet. He, like I, have long written Shakespearean sonnets. Ina Schroders-Zeeders at inaweblogisback.wordpress.com has joined us in our sonnet writing challenge.

20 Comments

Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis

Tagged as geese, goose thunder, ice, Italian sonnet, lake, Petrarchian sonnet, poems, sonnet, waters

March 6, 2014 · 6:51 am

Remembering That Summer Will Come

a photograph by Sonja Bingen

4 Comments

Filed under Art, Photography

Tagged as Bingen, Boulder, fishing, grandson, lake, photos, Sonja Bingen, Wisconsin

February 14, 2014 · 5:22 am

In the Aftermath

by Thomas Davis

The woman wrapped the child against the cold
And walked into the forest where the glow
Of moonlight pooled a deeply shadowed gold
Beneath the trees on softly shining snow.

She gathered wood, the baby on her back,
And built a fire, its warmth a dancing light
Upon a great flat rock protruding black
Into the lake’s infinity of white.

Then, in the dark, sat, death-still, beside
The flames, the baby in her arms, the smear
Of stars above their heads a radiant tide
Of silence singing to the ebbing year.

At last, her voice a permutation slipped
Into the night, she started chanting words
Born deep in spirit as the blackened crypt
Of waters stirred beneath lake ice, and birds,

As black as mourning shrouds, began to fly,
The forest stirring like the waters, wind
A whisper as the baby voiced a tiny cry
And shadowy trees began to sway and bend.

The woman got up on her feet, her voice
As silver as the moon, and sang as deer
Began to bound onto the ice: “Rejoice,”
The woman sang, and as she sang the fear

Felt during hours of pain-filled, labored birth
Dissolved into the biting wind and light
That danced with deer upon the lake, the earth
And living integrated with the night.

8 Comments

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Tagged as child, dancing deer, darkness, fear, forest, lake, moonlight, poems

February 11, 2014 · 7:01 am

The Yellow Eyes

by Thomas Davis

The whiteness wailed with wind-swept waves of snow.
Upon the ice, a dozen miles from land,
The huge man walked into the vertigo
Of emptiness and bitter cold that spanned
Horizons darkening into a night
Intense with clouds that suffocated light.

He heard the wolf before he saw its eyes
Gleamed yellow in accumulating dark.
Its panting separated from the cries
Inside the wind so subtly that the spark
Of fear that nearly made his legs give way
Seemed like the rhythm of the dying day.

The great wolf, coat as black as anthracite,
Loomed like a shadow from a stinging wave
Of snow, a darkness darker than the night,
A vision dredged from dreams born in a grave.
A heavy tiredness weighed inside the man.
The wolf kept eyes upon the path he ran.

As hours passed hours the universe became
A movement shared between the man and wolf.
The storm died down. At dawn a yellow flame
Along the far horizon’s edge unveiled a roof
Of clouds that felt as if they were a vice
Pressed down upon the endless miles of ice.

The man kept staring at the white expanse
Stretched endlessly away from where they were.
He felt his spirit caught inside a trance
Transforming time into a senseless blur
Of wolf breath, gusts of wind, and running feet
Staccatoed pulsing through his heart’s strained beat.

As evening gathered up the winter skies,
The great wolf growled and shocked the man aware.
The yellow eyes looked deep into his eyes.
The storm swirled deep inside the untamed stare.
He stopped. The wolf stopped, growled so low
The storm stirred winds and stinging waves of snow—

And then the wolf was gone into the trees
That forested the hills above the rocky shore.
Alone, but near to land, still not at ease,
He walked toward the cedars bent before
Him like a haven from the plains of white
As suddenly the ice was bathed in light.

Years later, sitting by a council fire
As dancers danced the heartbeat of the drum,
A wailing howl rose from the forest, dire
As if the ending of the world had come.
The big man stood, the council’s patriarch,
And walked, without a word, into the dark.

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Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis

Tagged as council fire, ice, lake, poems, storm, trance, wolf, yellow eyes

October 29, 2013 · 8:29 am

By the Lake

a photograph by Sonja Bingen

2 Comments

Filed under Art, Photography

Tagged as Bingen, evergreens, fall, lake, nature, photos, Sonja Bingen

October 19, 2013 · 7:57 am

Spirit Bear

by Thomas Davis

As cold as fish, as gray as slate, a bear
Rose from a foaming wave and walked to shore.
Above gray limestone cliffs a fiery glare
Of maples bent into the tempest’s roar.

Out in the lake clouds churned a waterspout
Into a weave of water, waves, and sky
As frenzied schools of salmon, whitefish, trout
Leapt from the wind-whipped waves and tried to fly.

The bear, eyes black as lodestone stone, stood, roared
Into the roar of waves and shrieking wind
And tipped its massive head, its voice a chord
That stilled the storm and brought it to an end.

As winter gnarled inside the bear’s black eyes,
Its breath spilled geese into the lake and skies.

10 Comments

Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis

Tagged as Door County, fall, fish, lake, poems, spirit, spirit bear, storm, waterspout, Wisconsin