March 2022
Thomas Davis
davisetheltom@gmail.com
Bio Note: One of the biggest challenges I pose to my wife, poet-artist Ethel Mortenson Davis, is when I bring home books from the bookstore. We have bookcases in nearly every room in the house, and they're overloaded with books that I have trouble agreeing to give to Goodwill or one of the regional used bookstores. What this means to my poetry is that a lot of what I write not only relates to my life, observations, emotions, or thoughts but also to the techniques and skills I have learned from studying the literature found in all those books on my bookshelves.

Living Wilderness

Green light surrounded a three-quarters, waxing moon.
The Milky Way flowed luminous away from moonlight
bordered by darkness and scattering of stars.

When shadows darkened grasses,
a coyote, reddish, tinged with gray, perked ears,
moved silently along the pygmy forest’s edge 
beyond the horse corral and brilliant gold of sunflowers.
It stopped near a juniper tree and sat,
moved back into tall grasses, disappeared behind another juniper, 
came back and crouched, 
	almost invisible, behind a bush.

The next evening a bobcat, dark gray head, white stripes,
slunk in long grasses close to where the coyote had been,
appearing and disappearing, walking and crouching.

Wilderness reached into comfort behind our front room window,
whispered softly about how close we were to where it lived.

The next night the waxing moon blazed silver so bright
wilderness and Zuni mountain darkness glittered.
Ground dancing shadows hid movements
of coyotes, bobcats, elk, deer, bear, jack rabbits, mice, mountain lions,
growth of pinyons, junipers, and tall grasses.

The only movement was a single black raven
flying black across the face of the silver moon.
©2022 Thomas Davis
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