tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-276684542024-03-23T10:56:47.259-07:00Plodding Taurus [ My Poetry]DEDICATIONS, PLEDGES, COMMITMENTS. For the past. For my own path. For surprises. For mistakes that worked so well. For tomorrow if I'm there. For the next real thing. Then for carrying it all through whatever is necessary. For following the little god who speaks only to me.
--William StaffordJoyce Ellen Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494251587598676788noreply@blogger.comBlogger140125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27668454.post-85026915570291926192019-04-25T16:45:00.001-07:002019-04-25T16:45:52.742-07:00<h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: "EB Garamond"; font-size: 24px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; position: relative;">
One child (for Motlatsi), a poem by Joyce Ellen Davis</h3>
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<i style="padding-left: 45px;">The beauty of a child can become lost</i><br /><i style="padding-left: 45px;">In the beauty of all those children.</i><br /><i style="padding-left: 45px;">—Tj Pfau</i><br /><br />This is the story of Motlatsi<br />In another Africa, perhaps in an alternate universe.<br />Lives a beautiful dark child<br />With skin like smooth chocolate.<br />Each morning he rises from his bed<br />And eats the mealie pap his grandmother<br />Prepares as she does every day.<br />Today is like all the other days. She stirs,<br />The corn meal in the pot goes around,<br />And bubbles and thickens. Afterward,<br />His grandmother takes his small soft hand<br />In her large hand, and together they scatter<br />Corn to the chickens in the yard.<br /><br />This is the story of Motlatsi.<br />In another Africa, perhaps in an alternate<br />Universe, lives this beautiful dark child<br />With skin like smooth chocolate.<br />He chases the chickens in the yard on his<br />Tricycle. The bell on the trike sings<br />A warning: I am coming! Watch out!<br />I come! A pin-tailed Whydah<br />cries from the broad leaves<br />And green thorns of the Kahretsana.<br />This is another part of the story<br /><br />Of Motlatsi, in another Africa, in<br />An alternate universe, perhaps,<br />Where his grandmother sleeps in her<br />Wrinkled night dress. The window,<br />Moon-lit in the room where she sleeps<br />Shows her dusty shoes placed neatly<br />Side by side. In his bed, Motlatsi dreams<br />Of the little bird that flies from the kharetsana’s<br />Broad leaves and green thorns.<br />No bells sing a warning, no angels sing<br />A lullaby. A bullet shatters the glass, and<br />The sound of it interrupts Motlatsi’s dream<br />Sending the dream-bird to sudden flight into<br />Eternal darkess. He did not hear the crack<br />Of the bullet that took his dream.<br /><br />This is the story of Motlatsi. In another Africa,<br />In an alternate universe, this beautiful child<br />Will rise to eat his grandmother’s mealie pap.<br />In this Africa, in this universe the broad leavesP<br />And green thorns must be used to wash one’s hands<br />After a burial. In this universe, Death is not<br />Embarrassed, Death is not ashamed<br />To take a sleeping baby.<br /><br />His grandmother’s porridge remains uneaten.<br />His tricycle rusts in the yard</div>
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Joyce Ellen Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494251587598676788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27668454.post-55312373207154312382014-08-09T18:22:00.000-07:002014-08-09T18:22:08.185-07:00THINGS BETWEEN INHALING AND EXHALINGTake this moment.<br />
Take what you see.<br />
Expect the unexpected.<br />
This changes everything.<br />
It's just some place you haven't been.<br />
What are you supposed to do?<br />
The loneliness of a foreign land<br />
is a remarkable tale you've yet to write<br />
and <i>please</i> is the only word you know.<br />
In a moment of weakness you may<br />
magnify the sounds of animals,<br />
deer in the field, little sharp hooves,<br />
round bellies, ears unfolding<br />
the way irises in your garden unfold.<br />
Be familiar with your surroundings.<br />
Be excited -- single knots<br />
tied along a nerve cast out<br />
like a fishing line.<br />
Count each knot like stars.<br />
Words do not matter when you are<br />
this close to home.<br />
That photo on your desk.<br />
Tell me: what did you <i>love</i>?Joyce Ellen Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494251587598676788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27668454.post-36364220429290859212013-12-28T08:20:00.001-08:002013-12-28T08:20:28.905-08:00Botticelli - detail Venus<div style="margin: 0 0 10px 0; padding: 0; font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.6em;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/28433765@N07/6740921165/" title="Botticelli - detail Venus"><img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7011/6740921165_ffe5e08086.jpg" alt="Botticelli - detail Venus by petrus.agricola" /></a><br/><span style="margin: 0;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/28433765@N07/6740921165/">Botticelli - detail Venus</a>, a photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/28433765@N07/">petrus.agricola</a> on Flickr.</span></div><p>Birth of Venus</p>Joyce Ellen Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494251587598676788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27668454.post-11537112353430365622013-03-12T12:31:00.001-07:002013-03-12T12:31:57.299-07:00The Next Day<br />
The Next Day<br />
<br />
<i>For Herbert George Wells, Time Lord</i> <br />
<br />
<br />
Everything that you think is <i>here, </i>is <i>out there</i>. You live<br />
surrounded by The Past., waiting for The Future,<br />
for the events stored as holograms on the edges<br />
of the universe to flow from your lives<br />
on a continuous beam of light,<br />
<br />
waiting endlessly for Forever, for Godot,<br />
for the Right Man, for Superman, for the <i>signs </i><br />
that will keep the <i>Terrible Silence</i> at bay, for the<br />
Right Moment, for Jesus to return, for the bus,<br />
for the elastic wormhole that will tear down the walls<br />
and take you from Now to Then,<br />
<br />
you wait, knowing you are, and are not part of it.<br />
It is in no rush, although you think it is. It passes<br />
or it does not pass, slowly, or quickly. You wear it<br />
on your wrist or in your pocket, and in the lines<br />
and wrinkles on your face. It beats in your heart<br />
like a drumline.<br />
<br />
They tell you everything happens at once.<br />
You know that <i>Tomorrow</i> is relative<br />
to where you are <i>Now </i>and to how fast<br />
you are moving. You step across a threshold<br />
and marvel at the way it all holds together.<br />
<br />
So. What will you make of it, if after the rain<br />
the curtain is never drawn, and like a Time Lord,<br />
you find you have endless expectations?<br />
<br />
<br />Joyce Ellen Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494251587598676788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27668454.post-13804369463576379322013-03-06T11:25:00.002-08:002019-04-25T16:46:50.366-07:00Happy Birthday Mikolaj Kopernik<br />
<br />
Happy Birthday Mikolaj Kopernik<br />
19 February 1473<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>"To know that we know what we know,</i><br />
<i>and to know that we do not know what we do not know,</i><br />
<i>that is true knowledge." ~ Nicolaus Copernicus</i> <br />
<i> </i><br />
<i> </i><br />
<i></i>Since your birth the earth has orbited the sun<br />
five hundred thirty-seven times. I am sorry<br />
Mikolaj Kopernik, that I still cannot understand<br />
the heliocentric calculations of the cosmos.<br />
Arcseconds. Stellar parallax motion.<br />
<br />
But the real story here begins with dreams,<br />
your dreams and mine. In mine,<br />
the Arcade burns again. And again. Night after night,<br />
it sends up sparks smaller than pinpricks,<br />
the smoke of penny postcards flying like pages<br />
of an animated flip book. An optical illusion<br />
into the movement of celestial bodies.<br />
Charred walls cave in upon the pinball machines.<br />
The photo booth. The autographed pictures<br />
of fabulous Sally Rand and Clark Gable. Nudes<br />
and Midgets. Bagatelles and Peep Shows.<br />
<br />
I am five. It is night and the Milky Way is hung<br />
like an illustrated map. Every blooming star is a marker.<br />
An affirmation. In this dream I stand and watch it burn,<br />
holding my breath. The child in me returns. And returns.<br />
Forever dreaming of these visible and invisible delights<br />
and mysteries blazing upward in the sky. A holocaust<br />
with no survivors. The earth, racing around the sun,<br />
the fires of earth so like the fires of space. A tapestry.<br />
A brocade of soot and cinders.<br />
<br />
If I could bring you back, I would. I would bring back<br />
Sally Rand and Clark Gable. Cain and Mable.<br />
I would resurrect the Nudes and Midgets,<br />
untie their ashes from Orion and Saggitarius.<br />
Bring them back on blu-ray, believing in themselves<br />
<br />
I was five. They thought a child would not remember,<br />
Mikolaj Kopernik. Now that I am seventy-five<br />
my dreams are filled. Still. With starscapes<br />
outside of this world. <i>I remember. I remember everything.</i><br />
<i>And it is not like anything I have ever seen before. </i> <br />
<br />Joyce Ellen Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494251587598676788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27668454.post-80021804246064463242012-11-23T10:48:00.003-08:002012-11-23T10:48:56.629-08:00The GullThe Gull <br />
<br />
<br />
Light and lacking focus<br />
but committed to air<br />
<br />
the gull<br />
is blown south,<br />
steered by a north wind away<br />
from whatever is fixed.<br />
<br />
Who can understand<br />
the truth of it<br />
but someone arbitrarily reborn<br />
in a stranger's nest?<br />
<br />
Who can understand<br />
the exhilaration of feathers<br />
above all the graffiti <br />
of civilation,<br />
<br />
like a soul glimpsed,<br />
leaving the body done?Joyce Ellen Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494251587598676788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27668454.post-21656953393876716102012-11-09T14:38:00.000-08:002012-11-09T14:41:35.733-08:00For the Holy Spirit Loves the RatFor the Holy Spirit Loves the Rat<br />
<br />
<br />
Praise be to the rat at her birth<br />
in the dim rain of the sewer, her lungs filled<br />
at the first roll of the dice, with the Good Wind<br />
of God, the Holy Spirit.<br />
<br />
Jubilate, from Him will she learn<br />
to run for her life from the cat's long teeth<br />
and the owl's claws. Jubilate, she will await<br />
the Good News of her own small teeth.<br />
<br />
And her own small eye beholds<br />
what she cannot say, and her small ear<br />
makes music of noise. In the everlasting<br />
geometric light of winter, or<br />
<br />
in the slow, flawless light of summer,<br />
the Holy Word of the God who loves her<br />
leads her on the path of crumbs<br />
into the pastures of garbage,<br />
<br />
where she becomes Vermin,<br />
who, if she cannot live, in His absence<br />
can always die. Beseiged, she will venture<br />
onto the decks of capsized ships, will flee<br />
<br />
with no notion of the dark water downstairs,<br />
nor of the wire cages upstairs, where she lends<br />
her precious flesh to the microbes and vaccines<br />
of Science.<br />
<br />
At Judgement she will be blameless,<br />
for her sweet trust in the Promise<br />
that if any of us do,<br />
she will live forever.Joyce Ellen Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494251587598676788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27668454.post-53180779011529036322012-11-08T14:17:00.002-08:002012-11-08T14:17:28.941-08:00To a fisherman in a small boat:To a fisherman in a small boat:<br />
<br />
<i>Old French fisherman's prayer: O God, Thy sea is so great,</i><br />
<i> and my boat is so small.</i> <br />
<i> </i><br />
<i> </i><br />
Cast<br />
no wayward nets<br />
<i> </i>where sea-gulled winds sing<br />
darkling in the glassed-off sky,<br />
where muffled oar-blades pull and wane<br />
across ice-netted waters<br />
<br />
Out<br />
of familiar sun<br />
the shadows grow<br />
in silence from damp-caved dooms<br />
that cannot feel the dripping cold<br />
nor hear the sodden safety<br />
<br />
of the bells. <br />
<br />
<br />Joyce Ellen Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494251587598676788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27668454.post-48910972224007161472012-11-08T14:05:00.002-08:002012-11-08T14:05:59.482-08:00In Mary's WebIn Mary's Web<br />
<br />
<br />
The spout of every tide<br />
garrisoned<br />
from green weathers<br />
speaks of shafts of ships<br />
cloistered<br />
with lost sailors<br />
where the sea rings<br />
in the spinning stars<br />
in Mary's Web<br />
<br />
And voices unbidden<br />
of ghosts under capes<br />
suck water<br />
and bubble<br />
and echo again<br />
<br />
O receiver<br />
of sailor's bones<br />
run down lost shores<br />
and weather in the shell<br />
until this myth<br />
of silver seabirds<br />
tilt's the Oracle's<br />
spent hammerJoyce Ellen Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494251587598676788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27668454.post-43251528587669002992012-11-08T13:44:00.001-08:002012-11-08T14:53:44.532-08:00After the Close Woven TouchAfter the Close Woven Touch<br />
<br />
After the close woven touch,<br />
thorn and velvet tongue-tapping<br />
spindrift night,<br />
after the firm dove-tailing of nerves,<br />
gunner, crack-shot, shell and ball<br />
bridging the half-way halves,<br />
the seeded flesh finds<br />
the inhaling womb.<br />
<br />
<i>Bienvenue</i>,<br />
galleries of man-shaped boys<br />
kicking a bellyful of heels.<br />
roll, grasp, leap toward the burst light,<br />
tear through thickets of bent bone<br />
and drowned dark, crush<br />
and wane in the cruel, sweet and endless<br />
forever, and empty<br />
in the capsized bed.<br />
<br />
<i>Bienvenue</i><br />
the salt and watery boys,<br />
riding the shipwrecked waves<br />
home. <br />
<br />Joyce Ellen Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494251587598676788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27668454.post-34822816815946605562012-11-08T13:41:00.000-08:002012-11-08T13:41:13.625-08:00Candle Behind the EyesCandle Behind the Eyes<br />
<br />
<br />
The candle behind the eyes<br />
lights, hanging fire bright as tears<br />
that spin of waters where the salt gushes wide<br />
down in their sunny tracks,<br />
down in their seas.<br />
<br />
The starved candle burns the bolts,<br />
the fire at the lock consumes<br />
the anchored, frozen, stone-set stare.<br />
Alone and naked in strange waters,<br />
summon out of the sea a lantern, a bell,<br />
<br />
and a high, wild harbor.Joyce Ellen Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494251587598676788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27668454.post-89649031908854550222012-11-06T11:55:00.000-08:002012-11-14T12:36:04.605-08:00AtonementAtonement<br />
<br />
<br />
This morning<br />
the defenseless eye of a calf<br />
catches my eye<br />
through the bars of<br />
the slaughtering pen:<br />
<i>Help me. </i><br />
<br />
At noon<br />
the bruised doe floats dreamlike<br />
across the Honda's hood <br />
like a constellation floats<br />
across the sky at midnight. Her eye<br />
looking grievously<br />
into mine<i> </i> is the eye of<br />
the Archer looking into the<br />
dark heart of the galaxy, seeing<br />
the End of Time. <i>Help me. </i><br />
<br />
In our bed<br />
my old cat purrs softly<br />
in the bend of my body,<br />
the sound coming<br />
from some plaintive internal tunnel.<br />
Her eyes are cancers.<br />
They have shaved her to the skin.<br />
Her sad pink body gives off<br />
a kind of light.<br />
She shudders with the explosions<br />
of her own sound, claws working,<br />
heart beating. The wave of it<br />
climbs and then plunges her<br />
into cat dreams. She sleeps.<br />
<br />
In the dark of night, we sleep<br />
my cat and I, our heads together,<br />
filled with winged things:<br />
<br />
<i>angels and archangels,</i><br />
<i>white cabbage moths,</i><br />
<i> and slow, incautious sparrows. </i><br />
<br />
This is another story.<br />
<i><br /></i>
Although the moon<br />
shows no trace of them,<br />
they still exist somewhere in<br />
the memory<br />
of the universe.Joyce Ellen Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494251587598676788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27668454.post-52887003503649633822012-11-02T14:45:00.003-07:002012-11-02T14:45:50.853-07:00Blueprint of a SwimmerBlueprint of a Swimmer<br />
<br />
<br />
Divers and keepers of lights and swimmers in solitary waters<br />
are lonely folks, I think,<br />
familiar with crabs, anemones, and annelids.<br />
<br />
They do not fear the inky Kraken,<br />
nor lumpish dead-men's-fingers,<br />
nor the stings of the ballooning man-of-war,<br />
remembering, perhaps how <i>they</i><br />
<i> </i>snuggled<i> </i>in liquid shelters<br />
of underwater cradles far from shore:<br />
<br />
<i>up from curved secluded beaches,</i><br />
<i> loosening minute grains of sand,</i><br />
<i> alive and water-borne,</i><br />
<i> carried on a swell</i><br />
<i> that never touched Gibraltar</i><br />
<i> or the shores of Labrador,</i><br />
<i> penetrating whiplike the single spilling shell </i><br />
<i> of a solitary swimmer</i><br />
<i> charting currents,</i><br />
<i> mapping flows </i><br />
<i> fringing gulfs of smaller seas</i><br />
<i> (of brain and blood, of mouth and tongue)</i><br />
<i> that never touched Nantucket </i><br />
<i> nor the Gulf of Mexico.</i><br />
<br />
Divers and keepers of lights and swimmers in solitary waters<br />
are curious folks, I think,<br />
familiar with urchins, drifting jellyfish, and foam.<br />
<br />
They measure origins beyond the quay:<br />
the primal swimmer's tumbling rush<br />
as on the crest of some great wave,<br />
like otter, and like lion, out to sea.<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i> </i><br />
<br />
<i> </i><br />
<i> </i>Joyce Ellen Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494251587598676788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27668454.post-12739475786861737002012-10-23T13:05:00.000-07:002012-10-24T08:49:02.343-07:00The PrizeThe Prize<br />
<br />
<i>"But life, life</i><br />
<i>the living think,</i><br />
<i>is the prize." </i><br />
<br />
<i> --Maryan Paxton</i><br />
<br />
Groucho knew the secret word. It came<br />
dangling from the rafters on the tail<br />
of a rubber chicken. And God knows<br />
the Word, made gooseflesh, when He said:<br />
<i>Let there be light</i>, that astounding spark<br />
continually challenged by darkness.<br />
It is hidden in the whisper of saltwaves<br />
licking the edges of seashores the world over,<br />
inhabited by protozoa, all fringe and propellers<br />
spinning, and in the whimper of the dog<br />
<br />
that stays by his master's grave.<br />
It is audible in every note of Mozart, and on<br />
the heavymetal strings of Iron Maiden.<br />
Every bailed-out Wall Street billionaire<br />
carries it home folded in the pages<br />
of his Late Edition. It is known to every bum<br />
waiting in the soup lines in Detroit and LA,<br />
by the slowest and the least alert, and by the quickest<br />
and the most vigilant, by the seed triumphant<br />
in the loam of every species, and it is indeed<br />
<br />
the prize.<br />
<br />
<br />Joyce Ellen Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494251587598676788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27668454.post-50056704887926141002012-10-10T15:19:00.000-07:002012-11-08T14:59:16.571-08:00I Deliver a Sermon to MyselfI Deliver a Sermon to Myself<br />
<br />
<br />
Beloved: Sit here. Have a cuppa. Throw off your shoes <br />
and be comfortable. Be still, and I will tell you<br />
secrets. In God's house are many mansions,<br />
and many closets wherein our souls are hung<br />
like greatcoats, female and male, spotted, striped, <br />
<br />
or feathered. In them, our many pockets store miracles, <br />
spill answers stitched with strings of light.<br />
In this pocket, find the advice your mother gave you.<br />
You cannot look upon it without hearing<br />
her voice. This is where lost things are found:<br />
<br />
your father's eyeglasses, your brother's hair,<br />
and all dropped stitches are gathered.<br />
In this pocket, find a handful of earth.<br />
In this, miracles, where cancers are turned<br />
into roses, and lesions become pearls.<br />
<br />
These are the things that connect us, one miracle<br />
threaded through the keyhole at a time.<br />
In God's kitchens are endless cupboards<br />
filled with loaves and fishes for your delight, and<br />
His table is spread with manna enough<br />
<br />
to feed all things, both men and beasts. Come <br />
and dine! Come trade your curses for blessings!<br />
Did you not know that there are rams<br />
in every thicket? Did you think<br />
you are not loved?<br />
<br />
<br />
10-10-12 <br />
<br />Joyce Ellen Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494251587598676788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27668454.post-7993725909661178732012-09-28T18:13:00.001-07:002015-03-14T09:33:47.822-07:00The Departed and the UnbornThe Departed and the Unborn<br />
<br />
<br />
Beautiful, in their cloaks of light,<br />
their hair a gauzy filament of<br />
spider webs, they pull me out<br />
of this room by my hand to that place<br />
where the holy becomes art, and knowing God<br />
is eternal life.<br />
<br />
They cover my shut eyes with coins.<br />
They make a necklace of my teeth,<br />
and like the Bathers at Asnieres, made only<br />
of dots of pure grace, like points<br />
in a Seurat, they oblige the eye and mind<br />
of the beholder into a lexicon of wholeness.<br />
<br />
They are wise as serpents, harmless as doves<br />
Do they have ears? Yes, but they are stopped<br />
with clouds. Their lips move. They say<br />
nothing to me. Their eyes are sewn shut.<br />
Oh, you departed, you unborn, tell me<br />
your names again, for I have forgotten.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
JED 9-29-12<br />
<br />
<br />Joyce Ellen Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494251587598676788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27668454.post-80580839370164563752012-08-31T11:07:00.002-07:002012-09-05T10:35:33.528-07:00Tinnitis<i>The moon, of course, is always</i><br />
<i> there -- day moon, but it's still there; behind the clouds but</i><br />
<i>it's still there. </i><br />
--Richard Siken<br />
<br />
She is going deaf,<br />
one part of growing old,<br />
heavy as a sigh.<br />
It's always there, a dim figure<br />
like the moon, absent at noon<br />
but nevertheless, always there.<br />
At night it lays itself down with her,<br />
runs into the pillowed darkness<br />
under her ear, a ringing of bells<br />
that fills an absence of sound.<br />
It is something from her aging brain, filling<br />
the enormous void, woven like a bright thread<br />
through her sleep, like ripples from<br />
a thrown rock in a pool of water.<br />
Some part of it is music, sometimes<br />
a string quartet playing a high c-sharp,<br />
other times the reedy whine of a clarinet.<br />
Quieted by day, it sinks like the stone ghost<br />
of the moon, meandering at the edges<br />
of light, but still there,<br />
always there.<br />
<br />Joyce Ellen Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494251587598676788noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27668454.post-19696485219684348072012-08-16T15:17:00.001-07:002012-09-25T12:08:48.894-07:00God Can WeepGod Can Weep<br />
<br />
<br />
Because <i>we have opened our mouths</i> <br />
<i>and they are not filled</i>, and we have, from<br />
Grandpa's Dentist, a gorgeous smile, and did not<br />
have to pay twenty thousand dollars for it, and because<br />
we can't afford not to hear, <i>yet our ears</i><br />
<i>are dull of hearing </i> <br />
<br />
<i>we have foresworn ourselves, and by our oaths</i><br />
<i>have brought death</i><br />
<br />
and because Syrian warplanes leveled<br />
a poor neighborhood, burying scores of people,<br />
among them women and children, under piles<br />
of rubble, a hell was prepared for them,<br />
and the killings took place under a late spring sun,<br />
and the people who tried to remove the bodies<br />
were shot,<br />
<br />
<i>all flesh is in his hands, and he will do</i><br />
<i>as seemeth him good.</i><i> </i><br />
<br />
And in Mexico, students pondered<br />
their next step, to build<br />
a human fence.<br />
<br />
<i>The mountains did not flee before them,</i><br />
<i>and the rivers turned not from their course,</i><br />
<br />
and the economic recovery<i> </i>is the weakest<br />
since WWII, the consumers are feeble and exhausted,<br />
and their pay checks are shrinking, and they are broke<br />
and nearly homeless, and<br />
<br />
<i>Enoch went forth among the people</i><br />
<i>and cried with a loud voice, and all men</i><br />
<i>were offended because of him, and said:</i><br />
<i>there is a strange thing in the land, a wild man</i><br />
<i>hath come among us</i><br />
<br />
and anti-nuclear critics are crying that executives<br />
on the board that regulates radioactive waste is akin<br />
to having the fox guard the henhouse,<br />
<br />
<i>(a wild man hath come among us)! And the Lord</i><br />
<i>has cursed the land with much heat, and the barrenness </i><br />
<i>shall go forth forever.</i><br />
<br />
Of course, there is Global Warming, the melting<br />
of icebergs, the rise of oceans, the withering of corn,<br />
and the price tag for wildfires has hit $50M.<br />
Does it matter? Does it matter? Does it matter?<br />
Does any of this matter? Do you have any<br />
of the following symptoms? No Woman<br />
Should Have To Suffer The Way You Do.<br />
Why haven't we been told, generation upon generation?<br />
<br />
<i>It came to pass that the God of heaven</i><br />
<i>looked upon the residue of the people, and</i><br />
<i>he wept; and shed forth tears as the rain</i><br />
<i>upon the mountains. Were it possible</i><br />
<i>to number the particles of the earth, yea,</i><br />
<i>millions of earths like this, it would not be</i><br />
<i>a beginning to the number of thy creations</i><br />
<i>from eternity to eternity. How is it</i><br />
<i>thou canst weep?</i><br />
<br />
In their son's room, they found a sandwich bag<br />
full of oxycodone and acetaminophen pills. The problem<br />
is now more deadly than car crashes. You can read<br />
all about it in the papers: Our beloved, our dearly beloved<br />
brother, uncle, friend, passed away at his home, died<br />
as a result of being stubborn and "stirring the pot"<br />
for six decades, died, and the garden's been watered,<br />
the lawns are mowed, and dad's gone fishing. His ashes<br />
will be placed in Wise River, Montana, at the flumes.<br />
I have passed life's greatest test and I'm home again,<br />
after a long and valiant struggle....<br />
<br />
<i>Enoch knew, and wept, and stretched forth</i><br />
<i>his arms, and his heart swelled wide</i><br />
<i>as eternity; and all eternity shook.</i><br />
<br />
There will be a viewing.<br />
<br />
<i>Teach your children. Amen.</i><br />
<br />
<br />
--Deseret News, August 15, 2012<br />
<i>Moses 6-7</i><br />
<br />
<i> </i> <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Joyce Ellen Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494251587598676788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27668454.post-33873477965958157872012-08-08T13:50:00.002-07:002012-08-17T09:58:59.284-07:00Be WaterBe Water<br />
<br />
<i>I teach my sighs to lengthen into songs,</i><br />
<i>Yet, like a tree, endure the shift of things.</i><br />
<i>--Theodore Roethke</i><br />
<br />
Look,<i> </i><br />
among things invisible<br />
yet seen, water<br />
is but one thing invisible,<br />
but real,<br />
taking the shape<br />
of everything it touches:<br />
cups and pools, barrels, throats,<br />
fishbowls, seabeds....<br />
<br />
Look,<br />
you cannot imagine it,<br />
even in sleep, when dreaming<br />
gives a shape and color,<br />
a weight to ghosts<br />
that have not color nor shape<br />
nor any measurable mass<br />
but a mind gone wild.<br />
<br />
Look,<br />
can you imagine: what becomes<br />
the field and the tree, yet is neither<br />
field nor tree? What fills the pot<br />
that boils the rice,<br />
yet is neither pot nor grain<br />
is a shape-shifter<br />
that might as easily<br />
<i>itself, </i>take on<br />
the body of the cup,<br />
the blood of the dreamer.<br />
<br />
Look,<br />
even science, in all its halls<br />
and universities, measuring velocity,<br />
weighing mass, discerning temperature<br />
(all things as invisible themselves<br />
but <i>real</i> as curiosity or love, as courage,<br />
wind, or breath)<br />
cannot tell how a thing invisible,<br />
of no describable boundaries, remains<br />
<i>itself</i>, unseen as a spirit<br />
in a mirror, assuming the face<br />
of everything.Joyce Ellen Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494251587598676788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27668454.post-49202751459543979862012-08-04T10:37:00.001-07:002012-09-13T19:50:29.335-07:00Sola Gratia,for I wrote it with disappearing ink,<br />
and afterwards<br />
I could not read what I had written.<br />
And it was as if a great cloud<br />
had drifted over the place<br />
where you laid me,<br />
and the skin from my body<br />
flew like flags<br />
from your fingertips,<br />
<br />
for this is what I remember<br />
as if it happened yesterday.<br />
This is what I remember:<br />
that gravity is a sad thing, a thing<br />
that is always holding other things down,<br />
<br />
is a cloud that drifts<br />
both inside and outside our brains<br />
like thoughts, that might be<br />
real, until you think to observe them,<br />
and they disappear at once,<br />
and at once the Word<br />
that is God begins to appear<br />
and disappear like something else<br />
that might be real.<br />
<i>Sola gratia.</i><br />
<br />
<i>Sola gratia.</i><br />
We bathe ourselves in Holy Water<br />
and it becomes our flesh, we drink of it<br />
and it becomes our blood.<br />
<br />
2<br />
Once we were sparks<br />
blown apart<br />
by a tornado, a solar cyclone<br />
of smoke and ashes,<br />
the stardust of our own creation,<br />
and every wave of every particle<br />
that we are remains in this world<br />
forever, and those electromagnetically<br />
charged particles, every vibration<br />
will go on forever<br />
<br />
(but which may, in fact,<br />
be as near to us as<br />
our own skin).<br />
We crave forgiveness as if it were a drug, we<br />
need to be fixed,<br />
like old bicycles or broken lawnmowers,<br />
<i>mi perdoni, mi perdoni, mi perdoni, </i><br />
<br />
all of us falling like dominoes,<i> </i> <br />
men, trees, and animals, all<br />
swallowed down the Black Throat<br />
at the center of every galaxy<br />
<br />
to become, ultimately, <i>angels</i>,<br />
each in our own light<br />
stored in tiny coded Planckian bits<br />
of precisely coded information<br />
waiting on the boundaries of grace<br />
to be reconstructed<br />
as stars, planets, and people.<br />
<br />
I think I remember now<br />
that what I wrote was a prayer,<br />
or something like a prayer:<br />
<i>mi benedicta, </i><br />
<br />
for we are risen, and rising,<br />
and whole again, risen from the abyssal<br />
plains and muddy sea beds<br />
like Phoenix, the salt of the earth<br />
clinging to our wet backs<br />
and shining.<br />
<br />Joyce Ellen Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494251587598676788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27668454.post-55646887311724997702012-07-31T13:18:00.000-07:002012-08-04T09:06:29.441-07:00Finding Grace at WaikikiMale and female,<br />
a rib, a little dust.<br />
I almost can not tell<br />
the sound of your sleeping breath<br />
from the sound the surf makes,<br />
wave upon wave, outside our door.<br />
<br />
A rib, a little dust, a lone gull on the beach,<br />
and I know again, as i have known before,<br />
that <i>this</i> bird and <i>every</i> bird<br />
will someday lay his feathers down<br />
in some secret place, as will<br />
the beachcomber who every morning<br />
greets the sun with thanks, lay down<br />
his rubber sandals, leaving<br />
his ephemeral footprints on the shore,<br />
as will the Ohio banker sipping coffee<br />
by the pool, and the little Japanese girls,<br />
who with joyful cries, chase the gull to flight:<br />
<br />
every single one of us now breathing<br />
in and out this fine salt air<br />
of early morning<br />
someday will lay ourselves down <br />
in our own secret place.<br />
<br />
7-2012<br />
<br />Joyce Ellen Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494251587598676788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27668454.post-75771980340815001252012-06-24T16:20:00.001-07:002012-08-04T09:08:26.834-07:00Night TravelerNight Traveler<br />
<br />
<br />
Something happens that<br />
unravels me from myself, unties me,<br />
sets me free. I do not, in fact,<br />
sleep. I fly.<br />
<br />
REM is absent, my brain alert.<br />
My dream body lifts, and falls<br />
with each breath.<br />
<br />
<i>Inhale. Exhale. </i><br />
<br />
Beneath me in darkening pastures <br />
flatulent cows chew and belch and fart.<br />
Highways flow with automobile lights rushing<br />
like red and white cells through arteries.<br />
I fly over the rooftops of cities, I leave<br />
this world I love behind. I fly<br />
until there is nothing but air.<br />
<br />
<i>Inhale. Exhale. </i><br />
<br />
When the sun has set, stars appear<br />
on my left and on my right, above me,<br />
below me, and I pass a boundary.<br />
On the other side, I am the only thing moving,<br />
and the sun is just another star.<br />
<br />
<br />Joyce Ellen Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494251587598676788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27668454.post-23454641154518463692012-06-24T09:44:00.003-07:002012-06-25T18:20:20.377-07:00One StoryOne Story<br />
<br />
In our bed<br />
my old cat purrs softly<br />
in the bend of my body,<br />
the sound coming<br />
from some plaintive internal tunnel.<br />
Her eyes are cancers.<br />
They have shaved her to the skin.<br />
Her sad pink body gives off<br />
a kind of light.<br />
She shudders with the explosions<br />
of her own sound, claws working,<br />
heart beating. The wave of it<br />
climbs and then plunges her<br />
into cat-dreams.<br />
<br />
In the white shimmer<br />
of early morning we sleep,<br />
my cat and I,<br />
our heads together, filled<br />
with winged things:<br />
<br />
<i>slow, incautious sparrows,</i><br />
<i> cabbage white moths,</i><br />
<i> and archangels.</i><br />
<i> </i><br />
This is one story.<br />
I hate knowing the ending.Joyce Ellen Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494251587598676788noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27668454.post-11367392034826531362012-06-08T14:43:00.000-07:002012-06-13T11:33:06.218-07:00StoneStone<br />
<br />
<br />
My stone <br />
Sleeps in the cradle<br />
Of my hands<br />
Drinking my fire<br />
My stone grows hair<br />
In wonderful curls<br />
Down its mossy back<br />
It loves the ice<br />
That breaks me<br />
More than it loves me<br />
It sings of bare feet<br />
Of blackbirds dying<br />
Of the cracking of heaven<br />
My stone knows black and white<br />
Was there at the hour<br />
Of my birth<br />
My stone knows my name<br />
Understands cemeteries<br />
Knows grief<br />
Talks to God <br />
<br />Joyce Ellen Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494251587598676788noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27668454.post-29333340791322633422012-06-08T12:48:00.001-07:002012-06-29T11:22:39.782-07:00GenesisGenesis<br />
<br />
1<br />
I am from light, yes, a spark<br />
from the Great Intelligent Light<br />
that set the universe afire,<br />
from love, both spirit and matter, yes,<br />
and from the green living body<br />
of the earth: oceans and saltgrass,<br />
rain and roots. I am from amoeba,<br />
invertebrate to vertebrate,<br />
from Lucy.<br />
<br />
2<br />
I am from Ephraim, from ancient Celts<br />
breathing haze rising from peat bogs.<br />
I am from tassled cornfields in Cornwall.<br />
from the fires and peppered spices<br />
of Spain, from El Cid.<br />
I am from salt miners on salt barges of Cheshire,<br />
I am from their empty bellies, and of<br />
the porridge and buttermilk that filled them.<br />
<br />
3<br />
I am from sailing ships and steamboats.<br />
I am from children walking behind handcarts<br />
crossing the vast American prarie.<br />
I am from their frozen feet wrapped in<br />
gunnysacks, from weary feet dancing polkas or<br />
Fylde waltzes and Virginia reels. I am from<br />
fiddles and string bands. <br />
I am sego lily and lumpy dick and <br />
bread 'n with it, from white salamanders<br />
and the Three Nephites, and funeral potatoes.<br />
<br />
4 <br />
I am from gold miners and lumberjacks.<br />
I am from red-headed women.<br />
I am white beans and pot roast,<br />
macaroni and cheese. <br />
I am from books, from the undying omniscience<br />
of Wordsworth and Keats, from Burns and<br />
Steinbeck and Bradbury, I am from pleasure<br />
and pain. I am paper and ink, and a perfect<br />
brightness of hope. I am from wings.<br />
<br />Joyce Ellen Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13494251587598676788noreply@blogger.com0