by Ethel Mortenson Davis
The brightly-colored
towhee
brings webbing
to repair
my broken,
gray world.
Tag Archives: poems
Messenger
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
Sonnet 18
by Thomas Davis
The doctor said what needed to be said.
We asked the questions that we had to ask.
Compassion lined the doctor’s careful mask.
She held him; he held her; the awful dread
we’d felt at seeing him so weak in bed
now turned into a nightmare, a formal masque
that left our darkest primal fears unmasked,
our sense of living shattered, left in shreds.
How long? he asked the doctor as he sighed.
The doctor said, two weeks, some hours, some days.
She bent her head into his lap and cried;
he sobbed, his mother cried; I fought the haze
unmanning me. What could we do? I tried
to think, but, looking at my son, was dazed.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
An Evening
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
For Sophia and Phoebe
Because this night is filled
with black-winged pelicans
coming in to land,
a sail being taken down,
a sliver of a moon
climbing above
the white birch trees,
and laugher from young girls
rising above the lapping waves,
no more can fit
into the evening.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
Sonnets 14 and 15
by Thomas Davis
14
On Friday nights I’d work all day, then walk
home from the office where two teenaged girls
were streaming past their mother with their talk
about this boy, this girl, their endless whirl
of friend, near-friend relationships that bloomed
and changed like clothing changed from day to day.
The minute that I touched the door excitement spumed
as I gulped down a meal before Green Bay—
and then we drove for forty country miles
to where two girls could dance and laugh to songs
and show that small town girls had mastered styles
that big town girls would envy all night long.
I sat inside a dinghy Burger King
and read while daughters spread their teen club wings.
1Green Bay, Wisconsin
15
An eagle hovered in the air above
our heads, wings trembling as it looked at us.
He’d been depressed for days, rejecting love
we’d tried to say, to show, to mean, discuss,
but driving Lake Superior’s rocky shore
he’d stared at forests we were driving past
and mumbled when he spoke, the sore
he felt so deep it kept him mute, downcast.
But when the eagle hovered in the air,
then dipped its wings and soared into the sky,
he smiled, his inward-looking eyes aware
of being, for a moment, in an eagle’s eyes.
From then on, though he struggled with black nights,
he found an eagle’s eyes and launched in flight.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
Butterfly
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
The yellow and black swallowtail
came to the window
(I told you because
you were looking for a sign—
so you could leave).
The doctor said,
“Hours or weeks.”
We all wept together.
Hours would have been more humane.
Do you remember
when you were little,
and you asked,
“When you die
do you close your eyes
and go to sleep?”
‘Yes,” I said.
Filed under Poetry
Sonnets 9 and 10
by Thomas Davis
9
I listen to the patterns of his talk,
not words, but how intelligence melds tight
into the rhythm, substance, breathing, walk
of who he is, our precious son, the light
we want to hold so awfully hard and tight
his brightness will survive for years and years.
But now his voice is weak. We face a plight
no parent wants, but every parent fears.
We sit beside his bed and hold back tears
and wonder why intelligence is not
enough, acknowledgement by all his peers,
his friendships, days of happiness are not
enough, not while I listen for his thoughts
expressed as rhythms in his too-soft talk.
10
Our girls, when young, while we were driving, clapped
their hands and sang a rhythm song, their voices
so beautiful we felt as if they’d wrapped
the two of us into a world where choices
flowed like a shining river to the sea,
our lives a rhythm graced by daughters’ song.
We had our cares, but we were really free
of troubles that can make life seem so wrong.
Now here, today, I hear my daughters clapping,
hands flying from their sides up to their palms,
and listen to our heartbeats snapping, snapping
across the years to help our hearts stay calm.
Inside this turbulence I’d love to see
our daughters like they are inside my memory.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
For You
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
you
smell like
wild snow
or
of trees
that hug
the earth.
turn your head.
you can hear
the moss
cling to the sides
of trees
and the sun
make your hair
the color
of red honey.
not there.
leave that hill
unnoticed.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
fourwindowspress 