by Ethel Mortenson Davis
“I run because it is my culture.”
“My father is not there for me
because he is a drunk.”
“The runners with me
are my family.”
“My culture says that I must greet
the sun by running.”
“I think about my future
when I am running.”
“I think about what my life
is going to be.”
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
It looks to me as though
you’ve been around, perhaps,
since time began—
and I have lived at least
as long.
Oh? Only that much time?
I’m sure there was no life
before for you or me.
How could I know your face
so well?
As well as some old rock
I’ve seen hang, clinging
to a mountain wall,
and I know what wave of brightness,
or of darkness, to expect there
waiting for me.
You step and make some rounded move.
I know beforehand which way to go.
How could I know? Unless. . .
You’ve been around, perhaps,
since time began.
I know I’ve lived at least as long.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
I can’t remember when
the old man’s house became unliving,
when the closed-off rooms became closed-off
from life and put on the shelf,
unusable like the clock in the attic,
the meaning all but gone.
Like the grandchildren’s forgotten names–
who once were through his loins,
now faded memories–
where once the sea breezes of June
and August swept down the hills
and through the house where
now
the shell of a man sits,
a seashell washed up on the shoreline.
Life has long gone out,
and the smell of the air is overpowering,
and I turn away
because it is the smell of death.
The fresh sea breezes
blow down hills
sweet with the wild rose.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
by Thomas Davis
For Ethel
The golden eagle, dark brown against deep blue of late spring sky,
Hovered, wings adjusting to wind currents.
In the cool canyon, beneath the ancient cottonwood tree
With its streaked white trunk,
Beside the stream shrinking from spring’s fullness,
We sat next to our picnic blanket.
The eagle dipped, then soared into a great arc
Toward, then over, sandstone canyon walls
Where years of rain had flowed over the canyon rim
And stained rock as it fell to where it fed the stream below.
That day was not our beginning.
Our beginning was in letters chained from Wisconsin to Colorado
As never-met poets began to explore what might come to be.
Where my poetry raged with fumbling working toward form,
Your poetry burned on the page,
Words boiled into images.
But in Unaweep Canyon on a day that seemed like it should last forever
We talked and began weaving invisible bonds
That show no signs of weakening
As we leave middle age and become elders
Visited by the pains of age and wear of time.
The moments of our lives together tremble,
Like the golden eagle’s wings:
Days spent learning the intensity of each other
As we walked Orchard Mesa’s huddled foothills,
The moon rising so deep an orange it was almost red,
Growing larger and larger
As it labored over the Prussian blue rim of Grand Mesa;
Tears coming to your eyes when you singed
The wedding dress you worked weeks to make
On the night before our wedding;
The long drive to Washington State’s Anacortes Island,
Possessions piled on top of an old car,
As we searched for life–
And then the even longer drive to Wisconsin
As we traveled over mountains,
Through orchards and fields of crops, deep into forests, across plains
Until we came, at last, to Lake Superior shining sunlight.
Then the birth of Sonja, Mary, and Kevin.
Tense waiting at hospitals
Until finally the joy of new life explodes;
The loneliness of a hospital room at night
While Mary struggles for breath inside a clear plastic bubble
As doctors fight an illness that seems to last forever;
The day when Kevin convulses
As doctors and nurses rush into his room
And force us into the hallway scared at not understanding.
Days spent walking to Lake Winnebago
Dragging a red wagon behind us
With Sonja talking ceaselessly while one,
Then the other, carries Mary in our arms.
The years of school and the search for a teaching job
Until, at last, we end up in a small Midwestern town
Working in an alternative school on the Menominee Reservation.
Life fills up with the details of living,
Moments of emotion:
Joy, anger, frustration, desperation, hope, sadness, grief, laughter,
A flowing that stretches into a landscape of bends and rocks and hills.
When we moved to Wisconsin Dells into the Gold Mine House
With its basement field stone floor and huge fireplaces,
Bald eagles sat with white heads and brown backs and breasts
Nearly every morning during winter and spring
In trees along the Wisconsin River,
Snow falling as one or another took wing off its pine perch
And soared into cold to look for open water.
A poem, or a hundred poems, cannot give life to either life or love.
Marriage begins, and time passes;
Children are born, and time passes;
Jobs are won or lost, and time passes;
Daughters and a son run through a million minutes
Of motion and meaning, and time passes;
Grandchildren are born and become blessings, and time passes…
Our lives spark against each other,
Spiraling out like skiers I remember one night in Aspen, Colorado
Who came down black mountains slopes
Carrying torches that glided and wove,
Suspended high above where I was standing, in the night sky.
And inside the passing of time a golden eagle still hovers above us
Beside a small stream
That sings as it flows over small shelves of sandstone
Until one morning we wake, and you grind fair trade coffee beans,
And we sit before a fire in the fireplace in New Mexico
That you say is good for our souls,
And we deal with the pains in your knee and my back,
And we try to understand each other
In the way we have always tried to understand each other,
Braiding our lives through moments when we are together.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
“I run because it is my culture.”
“My father is not there for me
because he is a drunk.”
“The runners with me
are my family.”
“My culture says that I must greet
the sun by running.”
“I think about my future
when I am running.”
“I think about what my life
is going to be.”
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
by Thomas Davis
He walked into the dark, high, empty room
And moved into the labyrinth of racks
Until, at last, the winter cold so sharp
His breath flowed white then disappeared in air,
He reached the shelf beside the ancient tomb
Of some forgotten king, the zodiac
Portrayed above a dimly painted harp,
And took a book in hand with tender care.
The darkness seemed to dance with wisps of light
As, walking through the stacks, he seemed to grow
As shadows leapt before him on the floor.
He seemed a shadow, like reflections deep
In Plato’s cave where shadows thought that night
Is all there is—that what their minds could know
Was real and true in spite of how the door
Of waking opened only in their sleep.
He left the racks and put the massive book
Upon a marble table, struck a match
And lit a candle placed beside a jar of ink
And took an old black pen and set the quill
Upon rich velum, in his eyes a blazing look
Of fire, as if his mind could swiftly snatch
His blood and flesh and make his true self shrink
To strong, honed words shaped by his flawless skill.
For thirty years his pen had moved his hand
And bled his life into the book, each day
His writing draining life from who he was
Into the words that crawled from page to page
As pages seemed to magically expand
Each time he walked through stacks and made his way
To sit down at the table as the buzz
Of life wrote songs that made his spirit age.
As words flowed from his pen, his hair grew white,
And in his heart the burdens placed by years
Wrapped tight against the beating of the drum
That let him be the poet that he wished to be.
The pages glowed and danced as if the plight
Of humans and their lives were only fears
That scattered when the words began to strum
Their shining lives into eternity.
His hands began to shake. His wrinkles spread
Across his face and hands. He felt so old
The thought of living yet another day
Seemed heavier than what his heart could bear.
He sighed inside the darkness, closed the dread
That emanated from the words that told
The story of the love that rises fey
Into the human self, our spirit’s prayer—
And as the book’s dark cover slowly closed,
The book’s soft light lit up the poet’s flesh,
Long years fled from his pain-filled, reddened eyes
And, in a moment, time reversed its flow.
He got up, made himself calm, strong, composed,
Walked to a rope, pulled, let the daylight’s fresh,
Sweet light spill from the winter’s cold blue skies
Into the darkness, on the book’s soft glow,
Then turned and took the book into his hands
And walked through racks so filled with endless books
They seemed to never end, the evidence
Humanity still lives, thinks, feels, and sings.
Around him whispered time’s ephemeral sands;
He reached the last, cold shelf and heard the rooks
Of spring alive in ancient forests dense
With life before there were lost graves for kings.
Note: This poem follows the conventions of an octave, but expands that convention to eight stanzas.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
We must not only be subjected to painful experiences. Life, within all its complexity, is not simply a “good” experience–it is full of all sorts of experiences. In so many respects this stands as one of the most beautiful aspects of life. Alazanto
Filed under Art, Essays, Photography
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
we went past
somebody’s place,
and there were things
sitting all over
and kids
and a woman looking
out a window
at a cat,
and the kids
were in puddles
with their eyes in oceans,
and they were waiting
for a storm or something,
and the place
looked twice as junky
as it did when the snow was,
but it didn’t matter
because it smelled warm,
and the sky was heavy,
and life stood in the mud, open-mouthed.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
fourwindowspress 