Tag Archives: Thomas Davis

January 10, 2012 · 6:19 am

Sonnet 32

by Thomas Davis

They came to see him as his body failed,
the morphine shredding boundaries between
the world we know and dream worlds where the seam
of time and substance is at last unveiled
and all the phantoms that have ever sailed
into our consciousness become a stream
of concrete beings shed of cloaking dreams,
the boundaries that held them prisoners curtailed.
He asked us if we saw them in the room.
We didn’t look, but looked at him instead,
resisting how we felt inside the gloom
that haunted us inside our haunted heads.

When, at long last, he spent his days asleep,
his spirit was the one we wished to keep.

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December 28, 2011 · 6:47 am

Sonnet 16

by Thomas Davis

He found the Internet; a shaman chanted
along connections in his nervous system.
Computer screens became a world enchanted
with who he was, his universal wisdom.
He wove design into the mysticism
of art enabled by an engineering
that danced like sunlight in a crystal prism
that set the mythos of our spirits soaring.
He took us on a visual journeying
as life fizzed, popped inside an endless mind
that questioned, questioned, focused on creating
a self that, like his art, swirled, scintillated, shined.

There’s courage in a heart that finds a place
to sing a hymn of individual grace.

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December 24, 2011 · 4:47 pm

The Dragon Mages

by Thomas Davis
To John Stevens and Nick Moore

The dragon, deep inside the earth, the cave
Warmed by the bubbling natural pool,
Its scales half-moons that glistened blue
In light that emanated from the fires
That seemed refracted off a mirror’s shine,
Stared at the mages’ mumbling sing-song words.

Their incantations changed from spoken words
That echoed through the darkness of the cave
Into a rain of rainbows, dropping shine
Into the watered depths inside the pool.
The dragon’s eyes began to whirl with fires
Intense with cold and sparks of sapphire blue.

As light shot out from dragon eyes, a blue,
Dark luminescence glowed with rainbow words
That seemed as if they burned with endless fires
As timeless as the dark inside the cave.
The mage’s eyes, the dragon’s eyes began to pool
A meaning from the deep, dark water’s shine.

“Time is a watch,” the first mage said. “A shine
That lets a human get through heartaches blue
Enough to color universes, pool
Through generations into endless words
That forms an understanding of the cave
That makes of human minds great human fires.”

“Time is the earth,” the young mage said. “It fires
Up summers long with sun, then brings fall shine
To forests dancing red and gold as winter’s cave
Spreads fields of snow beneath skies’ frigid blue
Until the birds of spring begin to sing and words
From poets makes the world a spring fed pool.”

The blue-scaled dragon blinked its swirling pool
Of rainbow eyes and flicked its tongue at fires
Beyond the sight of mages, made its words
Into a stream of images, a shine
That showed the Book of Time as water, blue,
That bubbles warmth into a deep earth cave.

And time spun from the darkness of the cave
Into the world above and skies shined blue
As hearts lived lives inside time’s endless shine.

Note: A number of poets have been writing sestinas and publishing them on their blogs. There are different kinds of sestina, of course. The pattern used here is: 1. ABCDEF, 2. FAEBDC, 3. CFDABE, 4. ECBFAD, 5. DEACFB, and 6. BDFECA. The last three lines in an Italian sestina are used to summarize the poem. I have dedicated this poem to two masters using traditional forms: John Stevens and Nick Moore, who inspired me to write this after they published sestina masterpieces on their wordpress sites. I wish I could write with such mastery of craft and form.

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December 21, 2011 · 6:06 am

The Versatile Blogger Award and the Kreativ Blogger Award

At this point Ethel and I are overwhelmed with awards. When you are nominated for an award the honor is deeper than you really deserve. I try to spend part of most days looking for new poets and artists, and when Ethel and I find one our reaction is, Ahhh, so this is what the publishing world missed in its competitiveness! Just think about how many unsung geniuses have existed since humankind discovered painting, song, and literature. The blog world is wonderful because it shares the hearts, spirits, and trying of beginners, those beginning to find their skill, journeymen, and masters, and it does so, as it does with these awards, by passing praise on, building strengths rather than concentrating on weaknesses. A creative explosion is inevitable, and this explosion has led to the creation of a river of creativity larger than the great Mississippi, and the truth is that we are only a small raft on that river, but we thank those who have nominated us and rejoice in their work.

The Versatile Blogger:

1. You must give credit to the person that has nominated you and create a link to their blog in your post.
2. You must create a list of 15 blogs that you enjoy most and link to those as well. Then you must go and tell them you have nominated them. That means if you do not have 15, you cannot do this step. If you do not complete this step, then you cannot claim this award.
3. Finally, you must create a list of seven things about yourself.

Those who have nominated Four Windows Press: Caddo Veil, whose spirit shines through her writing like sunlight on new fallen snow and Heather Whitley Gibson, who is beyond versatile, writing poetry and songs, creating art, and taking photographs that can send you away from a winter storm into another place altogether.

The Kreativ Blogger Award:

For this award Ethel and I have to share 10 things that you may not know. Then we have to pass the award on to at least six (or more) other bloggers.

Those who nominated for windows press: Scriptor Obscura, who deserves fame and fortune as a writer and poet and Slowmoto.Me, whose photographs stun you and poetry moves you the way poetry should move you.

Bloggers for the Versatile Blogger:

1. http://johnstevensjs.wordpress.com
2. gonecyclingagain.wordpress.com
3. fromaflower.wordpress.com
4. sfederle.wordpress.com
5. poeticlicensee.wordpress.com
6. skyraft.wordpress.com
7. ebbtide.wordpress.com
8. bardessdmdenton.wordpress.com
9. creativityaroused.wordpress.com
10. inaweblogisback.wordpress.com
11. erikamossgordon.wordpress.com
12. davidreidart.wordpress.com
13. bennaga.wordpress.com
14. tikarmavodicka.wordpress.com
15. southernmusings.wordpress.com

Bloggers for the Kreative Blogger Award:

1. raindancepoetry.wordpress.com
2. extrasimile.wordpress.com
3. belfastdavid.wordpress.com
4. thebackgroundstory.com
5. tasmith1122.wordpress.com
6. fewhitehead.wordpress.com

These are certainly not all the fine poets, artists, and photographers on wordpress we enjoy, but it is a good sample. Ten things about Ethel and I you may not know:

1. We raised three children and have four grandchildren
2. Ethel was raised on a dairy farm near Wausau, Wisconsin
3. Thomas (Tom) was born in Delta, Colorado and mostly grew up in Grand Junction, Colorado
4. Ethel is an artist as a cook as well as being a wonderful poet and artist
5. Tom is the Dean of Instruction at Navajo Technical College in New Mexico in the Navajo Nation and has been President of two tribal colleges, the co-founder of one, and the Dean and Acting President of another
6. Ethel loves animals with a deep and abiding passion and has been close to rattlesnakes, bears, both bald and golden eagles, and Minnesota wolves, among a long list of others, in the wild
7. Tom is well known in the world of high performance computing and technology and has written a scholarly book on sustainable development
8. We were married in Grand Junction on Christmas day because it was the only time both of us could get off at the time—44 years ago this Christmas day
9. Our house has books on shelves in every room, and we have read every one of the books in the house over the years
10. Ethel studied art at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Tom did his studies at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh and the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay in English, History, and Environmental Science and Policy

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December 19, 2011 · 7:13 am

Sonnet 31

by Thomas Davis

Outside winds howled with snow and bitter cold.
The phone rang: “Mrs. Davis?” asked a girl.
She sounded frightened. “Yes?” Her voice controlled,
too soft, the girl said, “Kevin…” Strong emotions swirled
into the howling of the storm, the cold, the snow.
“I’m scared,” she said at last. His mother caught her breath.
He’s hours away, she thought. It’s twenty-five below.
The roads are ice. This is a night for death.
“I’ll wait here with him, but you have to come.”
No cars were on the road that late at night.
She crawled across the miles, the constant drum
of howling winds accentuating fright

that made her fierce when, shaken, stunned,
she put her arms around her struggling son.

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December 4, 2011 · 7:08 am

Word Fest

by Thomas Davis

When I fell into a word
and saw a slime slug by
in a rainbow of trailing foam,
I tried to speak,
but all I could say
was that tripping into words
was a strange way to live a life,
even when rainbows fizzed and popped
all over the place,
and gold rained light
into blank corners of who you could be, but weren’t.

Then, struggling from one word trap into another,
like a hero from a great film
that reels on and on into forever,
as foaming rainbow tipped upside down,
I lost my head
and started dancing from invisible star to star
even though the word I was in
was so sticky it made dancing as jerky
as Frankenstein’s movement
in Mary Shelly’s head.

Looking for meaning in all this
I tripped again and fell upside down
into the rainbow’s arc
where tomorrow was no more
and the screaming present more real
than any mythology conjured up by images
made concrete by a poet’s out of control pen.

When I grabbed onto yet another word
bathed in rainbow light
and endowed with more fizz than pop,
I stopped falling
and herded into an elegant forest
where words fluted and piped
and created a strangeness in my head
that threatened sanity
and promised life was an ant hill
teeming with more than what could be said
by crawling around in words all day.

At that moment I swore off words forever
and became the poet of silence,
dancing with this babe
who wore words as a cloak
that revealed more than it ever hid.

No wonder poets chase after words
as if they are delightful–
even when meanings turn on them
and leave them gasping like butterflies
fluttering on the point of a pin.

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November 27, 2011 · 3:19 pm

Sonnet 19

by Thomas Davis

Where do the minutes that we cherished go?
Two little girls, small hands inside our hands
while four of us walk in a wonderland
of starting out, our faces, hearts aglow
with happiness unrecognized, the flow
of time suspended as its hourglass sands
erase the moment when our lives were grand.
What happens to the joys of long ago?

We never thought the love we two had made
would fly apart in anger, or be lost
to liver cells that turned, as renegades,
into a cancerous, dark, evil holocaust.
We never knew we’d face insidious shades
that leave us mourning all the times we’ve lost.

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November 20, 2011 · 7:19 am

Sonnet 12

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.

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November 12, 2011 · 8:20 am

Sonnet 7

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.

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November 6, 2011 · 6:49 am

Sonnet 5

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.

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