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
by Thomas Davis
Before we reached the bank two twelve year olds
were on the water in the good canoe.
Both Brand and I looked at our sons1, their coup
apparent as they grinned at us, both bold
enough to know that, ten feet out, they controlled
the moment even though the wind still blew
and rain was falling hard, the clouds a stew
of swirling turbulence and cold.
“Okay,” Brand said. Inside the inlet, calm
prevailed, but as we went into the lake
the waves were higher than our heads. The qualms
I’d had at seeing youngsters make their break
to manhood with a crazymad aplomb
unmanned me–as they left me in their wake.
1 Brand Windmiller and his son, Jesse, and Kevin.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
I have dropped
most moments
onto the darkened sand,
except for a few
that I have held in my hand—
like a small child
holds your hand—
too tightly.
There I go, in secret,
into the darkened cloak
of the Great Purple Hairstreak,
getting lost among
the bright blue and yellow jewels
at the outer edge
of her wings.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
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
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Oh,
how the white delirium
has set in me.
Memories ache in my throat.
Sweetness stains my mouth.
I cannot forget
your unfamiliar eyes
that cried out to me,
the end of us!
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
by Thomas Davis
We drove to Mesa Verde as the San Juan’s rose
in morning sunlight green, majestic, soaring.
I’ve met this girl, he said. He rubbed his nose
as if he had a pounding headache starting.
But I don’t know, he said. I feel like smiling
whenever thoughts about her make my day.
She’s with another guy she’s basically supporting.
He sighs. Sometimes I think she’ll walk my way,
but then she hesitates, he says. I sway
as if I’m in a storm that generates
emotions strong enough to make me flay
myself as who I am deteriorates.
Love isn’t what it really ought to be,
he said. The flower should accept the bee.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Written after hearing a Marine’s story
on British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) radio
The young marine tells his story.
In Falluja they struggled:
eye gouging
hair pulling
biting.
It would be a fight
to the finish.
The American noticed
the Iraqi was a very young man.
He could smell
the man’s breath,
taste his sweat,
feel the broken needle
in his shirt pocket.
The Marine wondered
why he had signed up.
He wasn’t prepared
to kill a man
with his bare hands.
Then the Iraqi bit
a chunk out of his hand.
The American reacted
with rage,
found his knife
in his pocket—
the same knife
he opened his ration bag with,
thrust it into the Iraqi
below his collar bone,
into the artery,
then pumped the man’s neck.
When life was almost out
of his eyes,
the Iraqi reached up
and gently touched
the American’s hair
and the side of his face.
originally published in I Sleep Between the Moons of New Mexico
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
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
I look upon his face, eyes closed, skin yellow.
His mother sits beside him in a chair,
her waiting silent, the currents in the ebb-flow
of illness mestasizing love and care
against malignancy, confusion, breath
that pauses much too long, then raggedly
resumes to indicate expected death
is not yet now, will be, God, hopefully,
another moment on another day.
His head slides to the side. His mother takes
a pillow, puts it by his head, her way
of caring, loving in the moves she makes.
I look upon his face and almost see
how mothers are, for sons, eternity.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
fourwindowspress 