. . . I have been following Thomas Davis’ blog since 2012, and feel so fortunate to have found his blog. “With billions of humans on this earth, it’s not easy to connect with poets who express the human experience so worthy of being a poet’s poet. Thomas can open the door to why we exist!”
Meditation on Ceremonies of Beginnings — The Tribal College and World Indigenous Nations Higher Education Consortium Poems was recently by Tribal College Press. Davis sees the book of poems as “an introduction to the tribal college movement and the world of Indigenous nations.”
These poems tell the story of the tribal college movement. Davis writes, “They record history in a different way. History is not just made up of facts and events, as momentous as those events may be, but also of emotions, dreams, striving, failing, tragedy, struggling against long odds, laughter, joy, and personalities that make significant differences even as those contributions are lost when historians begin to shuffle through dust bins of primary sources.“
In March, 2003, Robert Martin invited Davis to Tohono O’odham in southern Arizona. While there, he wrote “A Visit to Tohono O’odham Community College as It is Being Born, 2/6/03.”
Thomas Davis Source: Green Bay Press-Gazette
The poem begins:
Perry Horse said, looking out to saguaro cactus, palo verde trees, bone- white trunk of an eucalyptus tree, brown dryness of desert, steep dirt sides of an arroyo, “can you smell this place? It smells different from your country with its trees, big water, and winter’s deep cold.” The arroyo channeled toward large skirts of a mountain that raised brown earth, dark rock into rare clouds that looked as if they might hold rain. Green smells of Tohono O’odham Nation were as pale as trunks of the palo verde trees.
The last paragraph in the poem reads:
American has always been a nation of peoples, of nations. In desert air at night stars hover bright and close to dark mountains that shine and breathe as we sing into another time.
Davis, 74, lives in Sturgeon Bay and is the author of the award-winning novel “In the Unsettled Homeland of Dreams,” and other works. He still serves in leadership roles at several tribal colleges.
Hunters in the Snow– painting by Pieter Bruegel the Eider
As we experience the shortest day of the year, Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s painting, “Hunters in the Snow,” is an almost perfect picture of the contrasting scenes we experience this time of year, depicting isolation and melancholy producing a sense that we are being pulled into a silent landscape where the deep drifts of snow where you can “feel the cold and sense the audible dullness as the landscape sucks the sound from every little human vignette.”
His paintings are beautiful because his compositions make one of the opposites, based on Eli Siegel’s principle of aesthetic realism: “All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making of one of the opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.”
Lake Woodlands Sea Serpent (1996) — Image by kenne
Right Place At The Right Time
Dressed for work, I open the front door to a sun masked in a morning fog. Immediately, an image came to mind of the Lake Woodlands sea serpent five miles to the east. Quickly, I grab a camera and a tripod knowing the image I was seeking could be gone by the time I got to the lake. My camera, loaded with a roll of twenty-four exposures I carefully mount it onto the tripod near the lakeshore. Camera settings for shooting in fog can be challenging, so I decided to take eight shots, bracketing each allowing for three exposures for each shot I would take. Days later, after the film was developed, I get the result I wanted — eight great photographs three of which remain mounted in a grouping on our living room wall. I still have the original negatives for being in the right place at the right time.
I am the woman your mother warned you about (let’s face it she was envious) I have long since lost my place that musty corner to which I was relegated where nice girls sit quietly legs crossed and demure.
(what point is there in that?)
I turn heads with my stride I watch the eyes track my steps though I pause not in my progress.
do they tremble at my purpose? or pause at my vibrant colored sheath?
I will not wait until you deem me old to wear red with purple as I rock bold iconoclasm. I am that version of herself where holds are not barred by convention or whalebone stays
crash those barriers my friend be they concrete or glass.
I AM that woman you were warned about who will challenge your ass*umptions
prove each wrong geometrically, logically
I speak without being spoken to (Imagine the gall!) I have opinions Well thought and articulated I will speak them Still
When everything blossoming is blossoming and everything dead is dead and everything wants to be fucked is fucked it’s nature maintaining the way life was and will continue to be as a bird calls from the tree with new green leaves.
For many years I have used Photoshop to create electronic Christmas cards. This year I am collaborating with our five-year-old kindergarten grandson, Jaxon.
Maybe I’ve started a tradition!
In the paper in the scissors in the lines in the colors in the string of lights in the wonder of his eyes — JAXON — in the star.
a poem is a dragonfly darting near water looking for a place to rest upon filled with freshness. a poem is of flight down by the creekside — standing water. a poem is. . . a poem is
wired.
Desert Wildflowers — Image by kenne
Spring, 2018 — art by kenne
Artwork by Kenne Jaxon Bailey (December 2017)
Image by kenne
Scarlet Skimmer Dragonfly — Computer Art by kenne
“Wired” — Computer Painting by kenne
Magic Mushroom On Mt. Lemmon — Computer Art by kenne
