The House of Tomato website, developed by Tori Grant Welhouse, one of Wisconsin’s most important poets, a graduate of Antioch University London, and the Vice President for the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets in northeast Wisconsin, has posted a podcast from the poetry reading Ethel and I did in Green Bay on Thursday at the Reader’s Loft Bookstore. The website address is http://www.houseofthetomato.com/march for those who might be interested.
Tag Archives: Thomas Davis
House of Tomato Post of Thomas and Ethel Mortenson Davis’s Green Bay Reading
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry, Thomas Davis, Uncategorized
Incident on Washington Island
After the Civil War
a Miltonian Sonnet with a Double Coda
by Thomas Davis
As Ambrose Betts gulped down the whiskey shot
That Gullickson had given him, his face
Was flushed, the muscles in his neck a knot
So tight he winced, his outrage out of place
Inside the cabin’s half lit single room.
“A Winnebago brave! I tell you Gullickson,”
He said. “As large as life inside the gloom
Of Miner’s kitchen, Bullock looking drawn,
As if he’d seen a ghost, as black as coal.
I’ve never seen the like before!” he yelled.
“An Indian, white man, black man like a shoal
Of pebbles on a beach. The Indian held
His hand up, said, I swear, to Bullock, “You,”
He said. “The first white man I ever knew.”
“Old Bullock, black as night,
Smiled with those teeth of his
So dazzlingly bright white
My head began to fizz.
“And Miner looked like God
About to haul back, smack
The Indian into sod.
A white man that is black!”
Filed under poems, Poetry, Thomas Davis
“By God, They’re Protecting Salamanders Rather Than Human Beings!”
comment heard in a restaurant in Sturgeon Bay Wisconsin
by Thomas Davis
An Italian Sonnet
When Darwin saw gradation in a finch
That flits about Galapagous[1], he saw
One species modified in beak and claw
By choices made adapting to the flinch
Of circumstances born out of the wrench
Of geologic time, the pitch and yaw
Of land and ocean, weather systems raw
With winds that shape the land that rainstorms drench.
But in his old age earthworms sang the song
That sirened through the studies that he did[2],
The deaf and blind regurgitator dug
Into plain ground turned soil, the endless round
Of earth built by the living plows that slid
Fecundity out of the realm of slugs.
[1] Darwin traveled to the Galapagos Islands on a ship named Beagle where he developed the theory of evolution out of his observations of the gradations between a number of species, including a finch.
[2] Earthworms was Darwin’s last book, published on 10 October 1881, just six months before he died.
Filed under poems, Poetry, Thomas Davis
Four Black Swans
a Spenserian Sonnet
by Thomas Davis
Four swans, crow-feather black, fly low above
The lake’s ice, white with tints of apple green.
Upon a red roof ravens, croaking of
The way the blue-black of their feather’s sheen
Swift shadows on the snow’s white shining, preen
Into a circle, stirring whispering winds
That cause white wisps to pirouette, careen
Across the fields as daylight slowly ends.
A black cat tops a hill and then descends
Into a field where fourteen cats have made
A ring beneath a full moon; each pretends
The others aren’t as eyes glow green as jade —
The wind blows cold; the silver moon is bright
As black swans fly into the spell-bound night.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
A Lover’s Song
by Thomas Davis
We strung along a priceless string of stars
And made the moon a pendant just to show.
I cut the night into a dress, the bars
Of moonlight setting stars and dress aglow.
You laughed with love deep in your doe-brown eyes.
You swirled the universe upon your hem.
As dizzy as a lover filled with love’s first lies,
I watched your eyes grow dazzled by your gems.
Then, with a shrug, your dress fell to the ground.
The night became a puddle at your feet.
Stars glistened in a heap, their skies cut down.
The moon gleamed silver-cold without your heat.
We swirled together deep into the night,
Our years illuminated, blazing light.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
2
by Thomas Davis
2
He talked about the mirror of the lake,
reflected trees and cloud and sky, the still
so absolute, the waters dark, opaque,
no wind, no breath, no birds, no human will
to mar the moment made for memory
entangled in the webs of days and hours
that jumble, jangle, pounce, drone, laugh, and flee
across and through the fields of flowers
surrounding us and all the love we miss
but know inside our livers, gall stones, hearts
as hours blend into hours and all our bliss
becomes a mirror that is but a part
of floating on a lake of trees and sky.
As rain begins to fall, a loon begins to cry.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
14
by Thomas Davis
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.
Note: This sonnet was published earlier on fourwindowspress.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
The Rhyming of Love
by Thomas Davis
Our fathers died, and then your mother left
And took a train ride to her resting place.
There are no words for senses left bereft
The moment living left our son’s good face.
Our love was glory when it first began to bloom.
We walked brown hills and felt the sky breathe light—
You took your hesitant, unlikely groom
And gave him more of life than was his right.
The days of work and turmoil, gladness, stress,
Have slowed us down and made us feel our years
As separateness has ground against the press
Of love through joyous days and bitter tears.
From gnarling roots of memories and time,
Love forges symphonies of changing rhyme.
Filed under Poetry, Thomas Davis
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