A Book of Fours

By Joyce Ellen Davis

Divided into four sections: Four Seasons, Four Corners of Earth, Four Elements, and Quadrumvirate, each section having four subsections: Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall; North, South, East, and West; Earth, Air, Water, and Fire; and Lovers, Husbands, Sons, and Fathers. Each subset containing four poems, sixty-four in all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 31, 2011
• ISBN: 9781257303694

Book preview

FATHERS

FOUR SEASONS

1 WINTER

The Dreamers

The Great Bear slumbers

in a cave of stars,

the Little Bear, Cancer the Crab

The horned owl hangs

in chill air, feathers scarcely stirring.

He floats like a swimmer

above the white bones of jackrabbits,

over the winter burrows of field mice.

The wind is a still sea.

The mountains breathe

in the dark – a sleeping breath

of hawk and fox,

of wildcat and beaver.

The pond is bleak, the shallows are ice.

Under the hill

in a cave of granite and quartz-crystal

the black bear sleeps,

keeps sleeping,

patiently entombed in his deep

burial vault.

Let him sleep. Let them all sleep.

Let them savor the brown earth-smell

of their dreams.

Let them cling to the dim runes of dreams.

Let them range far, light years distant.

Let them dream of warm green spring,

of moving water, of light,

of the beautiful sons and daughters

of air-dwellers and tree-splitters

and cave-slumberers.

Let them dream.

From The Corridor

From the corridor, wanting to be hidden,

I wait for the woman in the bed

Half-dead already, though not yet through

With dying, to quiet.

All along the window ledge

Leaves blown across the yard

By a cold wet wind

Grip the glass with clarity

And precision of vein and broken edge.

She used to cry all the time,

Now she only whimpers and asks

With a voice that grasps, like hands,

Are the holidays here?

Not yet, I say. That seems to satisfy.

On Christmas day the sky clears

And the splash of wind against water sprawls ice

And sighs on sidewalks and doorsteps.

A boy brings the paper

Which has beside a picture of African

And American travelers getting out of

Their vehicle at Nkongsambe, West Cameroon,

A picture of the Branchini Madonna

In a gown of acorns and oak leaves

In punched gold, an altarpiece in gold brocade,

Most perfectly preserved

And rare.

She holds the standing Christ Child

The two of them

Upheld by seraphim,

White roses, cornflowers, and marigolds.

The glass glitters with frost

And the air is filled with smoke.

Meanwhile, not enticed by such glories

As frost on glass, fragrance of woodsmoke

Nor Madonnas,

She stirs, waits for the light to dim,

For the thudding of her heart to stop,

For the white-coated, whispering gathering.

Call Me Ishmael

Contemplating the razor’s edge

Throughout the winter,

My sense of alienation nourished by familiar

Sentimentality of velvet poinsettias

Inches itself out of dungeons

Deep as Olduvai’s gorge:

The Thing that haunts the tinseled corridors

And scratches in the closets, fearing sunlight,

Teeters uncertainly towards half-open doors

And listens for far traveling silences

That make dogs’ ears prick

But I use silence like a dowser’s stick,

And find the stick gropes