Tag Archives: poetry

January 27, 2012 · 6:44 am

The Engineer

by Ethel Mortenson Davis

In winter
a boy or girl could ice skate
up the branch
of Little Sandy Creek
as far as their strength could hold out
before the heavy snows of January
spoiled the ice.

It was here
they would dream
about who they would become,
about what they would do
with their lives
when they grew up—
before the willows
became too thick and
turned them back,

or when the shallow spots,
under the bridges,
with stones
would stop them.

Charlie could skate for miles
before he went home
to put steaming copper kettles
of water on his stove
to bend slats of wood
to make skis with curled ends

before the heavy snows of January and February
swept across us.

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January 25, 2012 · 6:28 am

2. The Old One

by Thomas Davis

The old one, fierce inside her double hearts,
Kept flying high above the human child
As snow whipped down from caves and jagged peaks
Into the plateau where the cottage stood.

She’d sensed the mother’s death and saw the girl
Construct a grave of heavy, rounded stones
And watched her as she harvested the garden,
Trapped rabbits, drying pelts outside the shed,
And fished in waters tumbling down the mountainsides.

At night, inside her cave where hot springs bubbled
From rocky walls, the old one’s dreams were filled
With how the human child looked as she faced
Her lonely life with only dragons flying
Above her to and from the caves set deep
In slopes so steep the mountain goats avoided them.
The dreams were like a fever, always there—
The human child so slight compared to dragons,
But real beyond what any child could be,
Her face emaciated, body starved.

Each day she flew above the cottage roof
She saw the child had made a fire and managed
To get herself through yet another night
As cold raged like a dragon spewing fire.

The humans in the valley far below
The girl stayed in their village, hunting deer
And other game, including goats the dragons
Depended on when winter frosted dragon hides.
The old one kept imagining they’d leave
Their cottages and climb the mountainside
To fetch the girl into their small white houses,
But days passed, weeks passed, a month, and then more weeks
And no one seemed to think about the girl.

At last, her dreams more powerful than ever,
The old one swooped down on a hunter far
From where the village was, her mind on fire.
The man was bigger than most humans were.
He had an arrow notched and stared at her
As wings threw shadows on the snowy ground.

“I know enough to shoot into your eyes!”
He screamed while standing tense before her scales.

She snorted smoke and dug into her memory
For human words she’d learned to use against
A foolish knight who’d sought to find her lair
In days when gold and jewels made her feel
The blazing glory of her dragoness.
Her honeyed words back then had brought him close.
He’d felt the deadly heat of dragon flame.

“The plateau woman’s dead,” she said, her voice
As guttural as water rumbling down a cliff.
“Her child’s alone and needs your human help.”

The hunter’s eyes glared fear and hate at her.
He looked as if he didn’t know if he should flee
Or stay and fight a battle to the death.

“A child?” he asked, voice hard, fear in his breath.
He seemed to search his memory to see
If he could understand what made a dragon
Concerned about a girl, a human child.

“The child above your village in the cottage,”
The old one said. “The little, lonely girl.
She needs your help to get her through the winter.”

“A little girl?” the hunter asked. His eyes grew large
As understanding dawned. “You mean the witches’ child?
The one who lives below the dragon caves?”

The old one’s fires stirred deep inside her throat.
She rumbled even though she tried to still
Her double hearts to keep the hunter calm.

“What foolishness,” she said. “A witches’ child.
What does that mean? A human is a human.
She is a girl, a human girl, and humans
Should have enough humanity to care
About their children when they face starvation.”

The hunter, frightened, drew his bowstring back
And shot an arrow at her shining eyes.
She turned her head and let the arrow bounce.
She roared her rage and sent a spume of flame
Toward the foolish man and set his beard
To smoking as the tree behind him whooshed
Into a puff of angry, flaring flame.
The hunter turned and ran as if he’d seen
The end of time confront him in the woods.
The old one sat and looked at emptiness.

What was a human child to her? she asked.
She’d lived through generations of the villagers.
What was a human child to her? She spread
Her wings and lifted heavily to sky.
She flew above the cabin, saw the little girl,
An axe blade swinging at a chunk of wood.

You humans are a clutch of stupid fools,
The old one thought. She flew up to her cave
And hoped she’d sleep without her troubling dreams.

To listen to this section of the epic, click on The Old One.

Note: This is the second section of a long poem that I am skeptical about publishing in wordpress format. The first section was published in this format earlier as “Dragonflies, Dragons, and Her Mother’s Death.” The story was inspired by John Keats’ tale in his narrative poem, “Lamia,” although this poem uses blank verse rather than the rhyming couplets Keats used. Click on the number to go to an earlier or later section: 1, 3.

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January 23, 2012 · 6:08 am

Habitat

by Ethel Mortenson Davis

The monsoons
sweeten the bounty
of the high desert meadows.
Curious blossoms
burst out everywhere.
Green grass
carried in the bellies of horses
finally becomes enough.

Perhaps the monsoons
will not return next year.
Our earth is not a permanent habitat.
One day our sun will explode
and melt our earth.
It will not care for us forever–

like my dog knows instinctively
when I leave her in the driveway.
Perhaps I will not return.
Perhaps that means
the end of her.

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January 22, 2012 · 8:08 am

Dragonflies, Dragons, and Her Mother’s Death

by Thomas Davis

She looked at all the red-eyed dragonflies
That hovered on the water of the pond.
Inside the small stone house, just ten years old,
But feeling like she’d lived at least two lifetimes,
She wondered how the dragonflies perceived
Her hugeness when she walked out to the pond
And stared at them, their gauze-like wings and bodies
As red as eyes that bugged out at the day.

Above her on the mountain peaks, in caves
That joined to caves through tunnels dug by dragons,
As large compared to her as she was when
She stood above the darting dragonflies,
The daily noise of dragonkind was echoing
Down rocky slopes, off cliffs too high for humans.

She wondered, looking at the dragonflies,
What she would feel if, suddenly, she grew
A dragon’s leathery wings and felt the power
The dragons felt when spewing streams of fire.

She did not look behind her where her mother
Was stiff in death, her aging face now smoothed
Of wrinkles wrought by weeks of endless pain
As life ebbed from her as she fought to keep
Herself alive so that her only daughter
Would not be left alone upon the mountain.

At last the young girl sighed. She had her chores:
She had to dig a shallow grave and find
Round stones to place upon her mother’s body.
She’d cried all day until the storm had left,
And now, inside a weariness that seemed
As heavy as the stones she’d have to find,
She had to face what was and nurse her courage.
She thought, this mountain’s home. I’m staying here.

Above the house a golden dragon drove
Its heavy wings through heavy summer air.
A rumbling echoed off the rocks and cliffs
That soared forever up into the sky.

The villagers, who lived a dozen miles away
Inside a wall of circled black, round stones,
Were terrified each time a dragon passed
Above their heads, its wing beats making thunder,
But she had always lived below the caves
And heard their moving, eating, talking noises
As they lived life the way her mother, she
Lived life, joy bubbling out of mountain stones.

Her mother would not weigh too much. Not now.
The stones she found would be much heavier.
She turned away from dragonflies and, careful
To keep her eyes away from where her mother
Looked up toward the dark stone ceiling’s thatch,
Went through the doorway’s arch outside. The chill
That night would bring was still two hours away.

She’d manage living on the mountainside,
She told herself. She’d learned her mother’s skills
At gardening and hunting game too small
For dragon’s bellies or their long, black claws.
She had a woman’s heart in spite of being young.
She went down to the shed she’d used for play
And got their spading shovel off the wall.

What should she do? She asked herself. The stones
Or digging first? She left the shed’s cold dimness
And walked down to a mound above the pool.
She wasn’t weak, she thought. She forced the blade
Into the rich, dark, mountain earth and watched
A worm slide out of sight into the ground.
She fought the tiredness in her spirit, lifted
The soil from the tiny indentation
And dug again, the rhythm of the work
A balm to memory, the single gasp
She’d heard her mother make as all her breath
Exhaled into a world she’d left unwillingly.

Night came too soon. Above her head a dragon
Flew overhead and circled, watching her.
She didn’t look at it, but kept on digging.
A moon as large as dragon fire rose red
Above the jagged peaks around the cottage.

She’d have to gather stones tomorrow morning,
She told herself. She looked back at the cottage.
In mountain air she couldn’t sleep outside,
Away from where her mother’s eyes stared sightlessly.

Do what you have to do, she told herself.
You’ll live through this. Do what you have to do.

Note: This is the beginning of a poem too long to publish on wordpress. The story was inspired by John Keats’ tale in his narrative poem, Lamia, although this poem uses blank verse rather than the rhyming couplets Keats used. To go to the next section of the epic, click on 2.

Ben Naga asked me to do an audio of the poems I have not yet put in place. I’m not sure that that is important this late in publishing the epic, but this is the audio for the first installment of the dragon epic: Dragonflies, Dragons, and Her Mother’s Death.

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January 19, 2012 · 6:42 am

The Source

by Ethel Mortenson Davis

I am going deep within myself,
to where gates no longer open,
but instead
walls are crossed upon walls
between the four directions.
Here is where the wolf
cannot penetrate again,
and the lion cannot eat my flesh.

Like some wounded animal
that crawls back to his source,
I am going deep within myself
to find the cool stillness.
I will not come out again
until my skin has thickened.

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January 18, 2012 · 6:46 am

Sonnet 34

by Thomas Davis

We talked about the birthday cake he’d had
for over twenty years. He couldn’t eat,
but said, I’d eat a bite right now. His mother, glad
to feed his memories, got to her feet
and drove to Rhinebeck for the right supplies,
the afternoon familiar as she whipped and stirred
an angel food and let it slowly rise
into an arabesque of whipped cream whirred
with Marciano cherries, chocolate,
and mother’s love as old as he was on that day.
She brought the cake out with a coffee pot
and beamed to see a smile and sense of play

that fought, a moment, pain and hours of dread
he braved while in the prison of his bed.

Note:Kevin and Tamar’s apartment, where we spent two weeks under Hospice care, is located in Rhinesbeck, NY.

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January 16, 2012 · 7:44 am

John Hope Franklin

by Ethel Mortenson Davis

John Hope Franklin
remembers
he and his mother
boarding a train
and getting on a white coach
by accident.

“They stopped the train
and threw us off.”

He was six years old,
crying and afraid,
but his mother told him
that he was as good
as anyone else
in the whole world,
and that he shouldn’t
waste his energy crying,
but instead use it
to prove his worth.

John Hope went on
to get a PhD from Harvard,
rewriting American-African history.

In 1934 he handed
Franklin Roosevelt a petition
against the Cordie Cheek lynching,
marched for civil rights
in Montgomery Alabama in 1965,
testified against Robert Bork’s
nomination to the Supreme Court in 1987,
and won the Medal of Freedom in 1995.

He recently said,
“when I reached 80 years old
I thought it would change,
but instead I’m insulted every day
of my life.”

Copyright © 2010, I Sleep Between the Moons of New Mexico

Notes: A “quiet lynching” is how Sheriff Claude Godwin described the hanging of Cord Cheek, a twenty-year-old African American. Cheek was accused of, but never indicted for, attacking an eleven-year-old white girl. When the Maury County,Tennessee grand jury refused to indict Cheek for the alleged attack, residents took matters in their own hands in 1933. Franklin’s testimony during the confirmation of conservative Robert Bork to the Supreme Court in 1987 helped lead to Bork’s failure to gain confirmation by the United States Senate.

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January 15, 2012 · 11:19 am

A Poet’s Age

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.

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January 14, 2012 · 11:56 am

Song of Ecstasy

a pastel and poem by Ethel Mortenson Davis

Song of Ecstasy

She is the sort that hears the song
the hills make after a heavy rain—
a humming sound one hears
first through the finger tips,
then the ears.

She’s the sort that dances with antelope at dusk,
playing in the field until dawn.

She’s the sort that makes the insect song—
not bell, nor click, but a rhythm in-between:

like the sound the silver pieces
sewn on her dress and leggings make,
a sound like wind and bell
as she makes her grand entry
in a circle around the village—

head held high,
her hair flowing behind her—

tasting the song of pure ecstasy
like honey on the tongue.

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January 13, 2012 · 6:57 am

Tecumseh

by William Bingen, our grandson, his first poem

The white people took his land.
Earned respect from his people.
Confidently fought in battles.
United the Shawnee People with his bravery.
Many people didn’t believe the white people had the right to take the land.
Shawnee battled the new settlers.
Earth is beloved to them.
He died in the Battle of Thames in 1813.

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