Grandmother

a pastel by Ethel Mortenson Davis

Honoring

by Ethel Mortenson Davis

She had to take her nursing infant 
with her to her final exam
because the babysitter hadn’t shown up.

The professor threw her out,
but she completed her degree 
and has been teaching for thirty years.

Now she is facing another exam, 
one called cancer.

We, as mothers, daughters, and grandmothers,
are connected through our wombs.
We will stand with her, all of us together.
No one will throw her out.

Juniper’s Dragon in the Year of the Dragon is now available

Dragons in the deep earth beneath the wild landscape of New Mexico’s El Malpais wilderness, a thought-provoking adventure, stories of young love and madness and the undying love between a man and his troubled wife, the strange and beautiful witch of the El Malpais, and the violence inherent in our troubled 21st century are all present in a tale as powerful as one of Ursula LeGuin’s fantasy novels. A companion novel to the epic poem, The Weirding Storm, a Dragon Epic published by Bennison Books.

Juniper’s Dragon is almost here — Year of the Dragon

My newest novel, Juniper’s Dragon, arrived as a physical proof this afternoon! I’m excited.

Dragons in the 21st century? In the caverns below the El Malpais wilderness in New Mexico? Juniper, fleeing the beautiful and terrifying witch of the El Malpais scrambles into a blowhole in the wilderness where he lives with his father. There he discovers dragons, and his life begins to change.

Part wild adventure, part love story, part coming of age story in the land where Navajo and Anglos live, dragons suddenly discover they are creature of the earth and sky and not just of deep caverns and an underground river.

Humming pitched into a tornado of sound. Juniper put hands over his ears and pressed as hard as he could, but sound vibrated his bones. He started sweating even though the cavern was cold. Simalucroix twisted and stood on his hind legs, stretching his long neck, breathing flame into the darkness.

Small puffs of flame emitted from dragon nostrils all over the cavern, glittering the ceiling alight with orange, yellow, white, and green colors from minerals never touched by light.

Simalucroix twisted again. Skin from his back parted. Wings unfolded and gushed wind toward Juniper.

“We are dragons again!” Simalucroix roared triumphantly. “Great dragons!”

The humming became a sound of joy not heard for millennia. A thousand dragon voices rumbled, chortled, and buffeted Juniper. He felt sick deep inside his heart and fell to the ground. He felt small, insignificant, a firefly’s flicker in the universe’s immensity.

“Enough!” Simalucroix roared.

Silence was immediate.

Simalucroix, looking like a dragon from the times when St. George had hunted them in silver armor and a black and red head metal visor, walked slowly to the fallen man-child. He bent his long neck toward the ground and wrinkled his great nostrils.

“We forget ourselves. We have a guest. He has had to find courage to be here to see ancient ways become new again. Juniper?” he asked.

Juniper looked up into the glittering eye of a great, winged dragon.

Kevin Michael Davis, In Memoriam

2/16/1982 – 7/23/2010

Christmas

by Ethel Mortenson Davis

We are in need of the Archangel to come down
and tell us we have lost paradise,

to come down and tell us we have lost the wonderment
of the child as he looks into the face of the black and white warbler,

or the wonderment of multi-colored lichen 
on the facade of giant boulders.

We are in need of an Archangel to tell us we have lost heaven,
and there will be no Messiah to save us from ourselves.

Stellar’s Jay

by Ethel Mortenson Davis from her book, I Sleep Between the Moons of New Mexico

A prince stepped
out on our land
this morning
from some far away place.

He wore a spectacular black headdress
and was dressed
all in blue
with geometric checkers
across his shoulders.

I slipped an extra banquet
out to him
so he would stay
a bit longer.

But he wiggled his white eyebrows,
a fine prince of a fellow,
then hurried off
to catch a wind.

Dying and the Mystery of Absence

When Ethel Mortenson Davis and I created this site while we lived in New Mexico, we did so partially to make sure that we had a creative place to not only showcase some of the poetry and art we have both produced throughout our lifetimes but to also honor our son, Kevin Michael Davis. Kevin had died in Poughkeepsie New York where he was a web designer for Vassar College after a short struggled against aggressive cancer. While we put this blog together, we were both still in the throes of grieving and trying to deal with Kevin’s loss.

Now, Bennison Books, a publisher in Great Britain, has come out with a new anthology, Leaving, an anthology of poetry about dying, grief, and the mystery of absence. The anthology features poems by both Ethel and I as well as some of the finest poets writing anywhere, Cynthia Jobin, John Looker, and A. Carder. As the forward to this magnificent volume says,

Both the grueling reality of dying and its indefinable mystery are revealed in this diverse collection. Grief is tranformative; we are profoundly changed by it. It is also prismatic, imposing new insights, a wider breadth of vision.

The new anthology is available at https://www.amazon.com/Leaving-anthology-poetry-mystery-absence/dp/1999740831/ref=sr_1_1?crid=S3YX5MBBHIVN&keywords=Leaving+Bennison+Books&qid=1699623562&s=books&sprefix=leaving+bennison+books%2Cstripbooks%2C104&sr=1-1

Running Free

a pastel by Ethel Mortenson Davis

To the Innocent

For Troy Davis

I hope you are
in a place 
where there is justice,

where there is love
unconditionally,
the end,

where young men
no longer are lynched
by ropes,
or the machinations of killers,

where there is light
and not the suffocating,
ethered mud,

a place where you will
rise above humanness.

I hope you are in a place
called Justice,
a place that will never be named
Georgia.