Five Poems by Thomas Davis

 

Carver of Birds

 

He sank into the raven’s eyes.

Their surface sheen reflected snow

Back at the whiteness of the skies.

A concave warp of vertigo

 

Uncovered mice in tunnels cached

From clawing eyes that beaked black wings

Above the scurrying that snatched

Blood past the raven’s ravenings.

 

Inside his heart black feathers stirred

Into his hands, his human life.

A crucible croaked from the bird,

Its blood inside his blood a knife

 

That tunnelled black rimmed raven eyes

Into a cedar block that pulsed with wings

And raucous swells of clawing cries

That made the forest’s stillness sing.

 

He shrugged his spirit from the bird

And left it listening to snow.

He walked through darkness, undeterred

By failing light, the silver glow

 

Of moonlight through the limbs of trees.

Outside the house he stopped and stared

At birds he’d carved into the eaves.

In rooms, on fence posts, wings were flared.

 

As birdsong choired cacophony

Into the silence of the night,

The house moved, spirit-fantasy

Of birds eternally in flight.

 

A Poet’s Age

 

An octave in eight stanzas

 

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.

 

Woman, Wolf, and Bear

 

As cold as morning mist upon a hill

Above the lake that danced light from the sun,

The woman stood and felt a warning chill

That screamed at her and made her want to run,

But, frozen, scared, she turned toward the wood

And shadows where a massive white wolf stood.

 

She did not move.  The wolf’s wild, pale green eyes

Stared balefully at her, its body tense

With energies she somehow felt, the skies

Above them darkening with clouds so dense

A twilight lengthened shadows, made her feel

A rush of fear she thought she should conceal.

 

Eyes fixed on her, the wolf stepped from the trees

So slowly that she barely saw him move.

She could not make her rigid legs unfreeze,

But stared back at the wolf as if to prove

The fear she felt was courage free of fear

Though pale green eyes, half closed, made death seem near.

 

The wolf crouched down as if to spring at her,

But then its head jerked north toward a stand

Of young white pine, eyes concentrated, fur

Around its neck alive.  The woman’s hand

Moved, broke paralysis.  A great gray bear

Rose up inside the pines, the wolf’s cold glare.

 

The bear glanced at the woman as she backed

Away from wolf and bear, then, anthracite

Inside its eyes, glared at the wolf, strength stacked

Against a spirit brimming with a light

That darkened morning skies and choked the day

With time suspended as it stalked its prey.

 

The great bear roared.  The white wolf bared its teeth

And growled, its spirit kicking up a breeze

That blew into the bear’s black eyes beneath

A dead still canopy, the forest’s trees

Now covered with a brooding, bristling night

Contrasting with the wolf’s bright, shining white—

 

And then the wolf was gone, the bear alone.

It stared at where the wolf had stood and felt

The emptiness beneath the trees, the drone

Of singing wind as rain began to pelt

The ground and run in muddy rivulets

That clouded in the bear’s stirring spirit.

 

At last the bear fell down and stuck his claws

In earth, the human woman haunting him:

The fear inside her eyes, the wolf’s white paws

Prepared to spring into the stunning hymn

Of beauty circling her, the way she held her head

As wolf’s eyes counted her as prey soon dead.

 

The bear sniffed stormy air and found the path

She’d used to flee the wolf and him and stalked

Toward impossibility, an aftermath

That could not be, that mocked him as he walked

In air perfumed with beauty’s human scent,

A woman’s song of being, heaven sent.

 

Four Black Cormorants

 

A Spenserian Sonnet

 

Four cormorants, crow-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

Swifts 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 thirteen 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 cormorants fly in the spell-bound night.

 

 

The Cougar

 

The cougar, tawny shadow in the rocks,

Moved stealthily toward the maple grove.

Lake water glinted as the noisy flocks

Of geese stormed from the shelter of the cove.

The blinding sunlight still allowed the moon

To sail, ghost-white, into the dying afternoon.

 

Far out, a dozen miles from land, the swells

Of rocking waves beneath the tiny boat,

A man begins to celebrate and yells,

Emotions unaware of how remote

He is from land, the glistening chinook

Caught by the white bone of his hand-carved hook.

 

The winter’s done, he thought.  At last it’s done!

He reached down for his paddle as a haze

Crept from the north and dimmed the western sun.

He felt a change inside the rolling waves

And saw how far he’d travelled from the trees

That shivered from a sudden, chilling breeze.

 

The cougar tensed its body on a ledge

Above a trail deer followed to the lake.

All day it fixed its eyes upon a hedge

The deer would file around, the bloody rake

Of claws in deer flesh promised in the way

It waited patiently throughout the day.

 

Clouds scudded black into the evening skies

As choppy waves began to spray the wind

Into the man’s cold face and reddened eyes.

At last his mind began to apprehend

The danger in the darkness of a night

Directionless without a hint of light.

 

A doe and fawn came through the hedge and stopped.

The cougar did not move.  Time froze.  The doe

Kept staring at the ledge.  At last ears dropped.

The cougar watched the fawn, its cautious, slow,

Small movement made toward the cougar’s claws

Retracted, still, inside its twitching paws.

 

The mother snorted at the fawn.  It flinched

Toward a maple trunk.  The cougar sprang,

Its body twisting in the air, jaws clinched

As doe and fawn leapt through an overhang

Of cedars as the cougar hit the ground

And filled the silent woods with snarling sound.

 

Inside the rhythm of his paddling

The man began to dream of children’s eyes.

Outside the wind was constant, rattling

The thick bark walls he’d built, the haunting cries

Of winter deprivation in the breath

Of little ones too young to face their death.

 

Hours passed.  He fought the waves.  The shore

Somewhere inside the darkness beckoned him.

He dug into his tiredness, past the core

Of who he was, his perseverance grim

Enough the face the dance of spirits howled

Across awareness where disaster prowled.

 

Then, suddenly, the boat hit land.  It threw

Him backwards.  Lying still he felt life surge

Its song into his beating heart, the brew

Of wind and waves no longer like a dirge

Of doom, the willow basket full of fish—

Fulfilment of his family’s anxious wish.

 

The cougar’s eyes were fire.  The man had placed

The basket on the pebble beach and pulled

The boat above the water when he faced

The cat, its eyes and crouching body bold

Beside the basket with the fish, it’s ears

Laid back, it’s growling stirring ancient fears

 

Of children, grieving with their mother, left

Alone inside a wilderness, the man’s

Life gone, their futures suddenly bereft

Of all the dreams he’d fashioned from his plans.

The cougar’s eyes were suns, a universe.

The man waved arms and shouted out a curse.

 

The cougar turned and grabbed a fish, the night

A darkness swallowing a shadow bled

Into an emptiness devoid of light.

The man stood frozen as the cougar fled.

At last he got the basket, climbed the hill,

The cougar in his life-force, tense and still.

Thomas Davis won the Edna Ferber Fiction Award for his novel, In the Unsettled Homeland of Dreams.  He is the author of two epic poems, one book of poetry, five novels, and one non-fiction book, the publishers ranging from State University of New York (SUNY) Press to Bennison Books, a British publisher, to Tribal College Press to All Things That Matter Press.  He has edited three small literary journals and two poetry anthologies.

As an educator he helped found the College of the Menominee Nation in northern Wisconsin and served as the President or Chief Academic Officer of three other tribal colleges.  He retired as Provost of Navajo Technical University that has campuses in the Navajo Nation New Mexico and Arizona.

Considered one of the pioneers of the tribal college movement in the United States and one of the founders of the World Indigenous Nations Higher Education Consortium, he currently lives in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin with his wife, the poet/artist Ethel Mortenson Davis.