a photo essay by Sonja Bingen
The winds of early spring sing windy songs
and young boy’s thoughts begin to long
for wings that lift his feet off ground to sky
and let his spirit start to fly.
He starts upon a hill, runs, lets legs stretch
as gentle winds begin to catch
the kite into its dance of buffeting
as paper, string, and tail go soaring
into a place where boys have always run
into the joy of springtime’s sun.
Filed under Art, Photography
by Thomas Davis
Back in New Mexico the monsoon rains
had turned the desert green. Massed sunflowers blazed
with purple bee balm in the fields, the stain
of colors so intense there was a praise
of living in the vibrancy exploding
across a landscape barren, dry, the earth
so sterile that the thought of burgeoning
into a garden seemed a cause for mirth.
We walked in beauty like the Navajo
and thought about our son and how his eyes
would never look again into the glow
of fields of flowers, see the flight of butterflies.
The moment that that thought occurred to me,
I stopped. How can this be reality?
Note: This was written just days after our son’s death in Poughkeepsie, New York.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
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
a photograph by Alazanto, Kevin Davis, our son
November 18, 2007
Filed under Art, Photography
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
By Ethel Mortenson Davis
I have been a soliloquy
upon the landscape–
A letter on the horizon’s poem.
I have been accustomed
to aloneness.
We travel well
together.
She has been with me
when I searched
the deep forest
as a child
and
now in the desert,
allowing me to be
who I am,
learning from the sacred earth—
the poetic ground.
She has made me
resilient
like the coral desert blossom
I picked yesterday
and found in my pocket
today,
still fresh, still alive,
still vibrant,
drawing from the deep water
held tightly
within.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
a photograph by Alazanto, Kevin Davis, our son
Note: This was taken on the day that Ethel wrote about in the poem, “Train Ride,” below.
Filed under Art, Photography
