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~ Linda R Davis, Raven of Peace & Poetry

Bits of Poetry

Tag Archives: Fear

Ashes to Ashes (Song)

01 Wednesday Mar 2023

Posted by Linda R Davis Poetry in Poetry

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Tags

Addiction, Children, Death, Death Poems, Dying, Family, Fear, Loss, Love, Mothers, Poem, Poems, Poetry, song, Song of Sorrow and Joy, Souls

Ashes to ashes

She wrote with a brush,

A tattoo needle,

And dust to dust.

From this life to that

We pass,

We’re crushed,

Ashes to ashes,

And dust to dust

—

Heart to heart,

When we were young,

Living to music,

Song to song,

Love to love,

Our mutual need,

To cling together

And never leave.

—

Chorus:

Cuz we’re ashes to to ashes,

And dust to dust,

From this life to that

We pass, we’re crushed,

We burn, we rage,

We laugh, we trust,

Then we’re ashes to ashes,

And dust to dust.

—-

The limits of us

Were all too near;

The fire it burned,

But the end was clear.

The mistakes I made

Still bring me to tears:

The words unsaid,

And the realized fears—

—

Chorus:

Cuz we’re ashes to to ashes

And dust to dust,

From this life to that

We pass, we’re crushed,

We burn, we rage,

We laugh, we trust,

Then we’re ashes to ashes,

And dust to dust.

—

The needle it tore,

It bled, it ripped;

But the dye was cast,

And the words inscrib’d,

And my arm it burned

With the words I asked:

The dye, the needle,

All, mixed with his ash.

—

Chorus:

Yes, we’re ashes to to ashes,

And dust to dust,

From this life to that,

We pass, we’re crushed,

We burn, we rage,

We laugh, we trust,

Then we’re ashes to ashes,

And dust to dust.

What the Fledglings Know

12 Tuesday Jul 2022

Posted by Linda R Davis Poetry in Poetry

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Tags

Danger, Death, Dying, Fear, Life, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Robins, Souls, Survival, world, Yearning

July, is a different world

In the trees, robins

Coax their fledglings

To fly from the nest—

One, or two, hesitate,

As if they know

how hard this life can be;

How dangerous.

Skunk Cabbage

19 Thursday May 2022

Posted by Linda R Davis Poetry in Poetry

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Tags

Death, Fear, Fear of Death, Hope, Life, Love, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Promise, Quartzite Mt, Skunk Cabbage, Spirit, Spirits, spring poem, Survival, Truth, Yearning

No, I did not bend down too near

To smell the yellow flower

Which grew in weaving lines through

The swampy crack, the scraggly creek,

Creeping amid mid-high, mid-spring grass.

We were at the base of Quartzite Mountain,

Nestled behind a tiny ski town, ghost town,

When the skiers don’t ski, or snowboard,

Or venture icy roads to snow-topped peaks.

You said the clicking was cicada,

I said, cougar, because I’d seen a video

Of a cougar making a clicking-ticking sound,

And decided the next clicking-ticking

Behind a bush, or tree, or grassy knoll,

Would be a mountain lion. You see,

We will never know who was right,

Because we passed safely the miles up,

The miles back down the hill, to the creek,

With those most beautiful, yellow flowers;

You could see them recede into the woods,

Like mystery, like scattered crumbs,

Showing us the way to an unknown truth.

I followed them for awhile, alone,

While you stayed back, and packed the dog;

Those irresistible, extra steps along their path,

Like blazing torches, luminous, yes.

Waiting On Miracles

13 Sunday Jun 2021

Posted by Linda R Davis Poetry in Poetry

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Tags

Death, Death Poems, Dying, Fear, Fear of Death, Hope, Horses, Life, Loss, Love, Miracles, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Prayer, Souls, Survival, Yearning

When death gets a foothold,

You don’t know who it will take.

Souls grow heavy with guilt,

And the weight of silence.

Hope, a fragile light;

It fuels us.

Small, but mighty.

We wait for miracles;

They are fickle things,

Miracles.

Smoke Taint: 2020 Vintage

09 Friday Oct 2020

Posted by Linda R Davis Poetry in Poetry

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Tags

Anger, Chaos, Civil War, CoronaVirus, Covid19, Death, Death Poems, Division, Fear, Fighting, Hate, Hope, hopelessness, Life, Longing, Loss, Memory, Napa, normal, Poem, Poems, Poetry, politics, Smoke Taint, Sonoma, Survival, Wine, Yearning

What does fire taste like in the glass,

Our fear, red with hate, the flames

of civil war? The skin, and the smoke,

cannot be divided; they say

it tastes like ash, what is left

when the smoke clears.

We can see the devastation.

Remnants of a vineyard;

what was there, before tragedy

made our eyes cry with anger.

The tree and native grasses

are poured out, consumed together,

while the vine exists in water it stored,

but cannot save its fruit.

Its creation, aging in the hot fog

of dreams. Life was supposed to be

the taste of flowers, plums, currants,

and only hints of tobacco,

swirled in our glass.

Our Once Shared Existence of Earth, and How the Virus Undid Us

02 Sunday Aug 2020

Posted by Linda R Davis Poetry in Poetry

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Tags

Alone, Chaos, CoronaVirus, Covid19, Death, Divorce, Dying, Fear, Forgiveness, Hate, Healing, Hope, Horses, Life, Loneliness, Longing, Loss, Love, Poem, Poems, Poetry, politics, Self, Soul, Soul Poetry, Souls, Spokane, Women's Poems, Yearning

In this season, of triple digit days,

Anger gives way. It withers.

I said, I’m argued out about living,

What it means to be free, and human.

She is right, after all, I’m not an expert.

What do I know about a virus,

Which isn’t informed by the trees,

or clouds, or the way a horse sounds

when it calls to me in the dark?

I can only speak of the heart,

and even that, with authority of one,

my own heart, and how it breaks

To see the growing cries for help. Hate,

A distant thrum, beating, what it means

To be hurt, and hurt back harder.

Is any of this new? Or unique?

But we sought each other anyway,

To stake claim on our opinions;

The lost way, of friendship and loving,

Something which came easy to us, once,

When we valued living over living,

A life we could touch with our hands,

sending our fingers deep into the dark soil;

To be truly clean meant dirt under our nails,

For weeks, for months, dirt under our nails.

Fuck the New Normal

30 Tuesday Jun 2020

Posted by Linda R Davis Poetry in Poetry

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Tags

Chaos, CoronaVirus, Courage, Covid19, Death, Dying, Emptiness, Fear, Fear of Death, Freedom, Life, Loneliness, Longing, Loss, Masks, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Soul, Souls, Survival, Women's Poems, Yearning


The Clerk

Imagine being nineteen again,
still pimply and awkward,
parroting a script
from behind a plexiglass wall:
Phone number, please, you say,
and imagine her fingers,
typing one in. You hear the click,
clicking of keys on the keypad,
sickening,
music of the dead,
you think, you’re dying.

The Enforcer

You’re maybe a hundred pounds,
just a little thing, whose mask
covers two thirds your fragile face,
and they buried you at the door,
the enforcer, instructed to say—
This door, not that, and arrows,
follow them, follow them,
do like I do, with this cover,
my voice smothered, my soul—

Wrong Way

I’m sure I was just standing there,
leaning over my cart, watching
my daughter shop for cards,
when I heard her voice—
not the enforcer,
but a fellow peruser, like me,
another blank face, masked,
breathless, breathlessly,
you’re going the wrong way,
she said, you’re not following
the arrows, she said,
and her bony, dead finger
pointed down along the ground.
I followed it, and sure enough,
she was right about me:
Rule breaker, careless
spreader of germs.
The shame, the shame,
she would have me feel,
for facing the wrong way,
disobeying.

New Normal

Fuck that. My latest mantra. Fuck that
and fuck that, too.
Even as I do it.
Where’s the humanity in this?
I want to scream.
But who would hear me?
We’re too busy saving lives
by not living, buttressed
as we are behind masks,
She doesn’t even realize I’m not smiling,
Or, does she? Maybe there’s something
of, fuck this shit, in my eyes,
the only part of me she can see,
if she tries to see, but she doesn’t.

The mask isn’t merely the covering
for a mouth, a nose, —
it’s blanket, too, as in a morgue.
Covering the dead. And I know,
my time is coming soon enough,
but I’m not dead yet, covered as I am,
prepared for burial.
Yet, still pounding on coffins,
trying to pull back the heavy veil,
cursing my heart away,

fuck! Someone help us!

–into the emptiness.

This Pendant World: Passover

09 Thursday Apr 2020

Posted by Linda R Davis Poetry in Poetry

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Tags

CoronaVirus, Courage, Covid19, Death, Death Poems, Dying, Fear, Fear of Death, Freedom, Hope, Infinite, Life, Loneliness, Loss, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Survival, The Universe, This Pendant World

Wasn’t everyone born

thinking

they belong

here forever,

even death,

we hide

behind closed doors

praying it will passover

us,

the ones we love,

cling to,

this earth,

how it swings

on its chain,

from cold days,

to warm—our lives,

like seasons,

which go on and on;

how can it go on

without us?

A Final Severance

18 Tuesday Jun 2019

Posted by Linda R Davis Poetry in Poetry

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Tags

Death, Deer, Fear, Fear of Death, Loneliness, Poem, Poems, Poetry

Sentient soul, to sentient soul,
he realized her panic
when he came barreling
around the corner; sundown,
and their eyes met
for just that second,
she decided to run.
He’d forgot to honk his horn,
thought she’d made it,
then the thud,
like the snap of twig,
a broken limb,
the doe, three-legged,
ran down the ravine.
He was amazed at her speed,
dismayed by his deed,
that couldn’t be undone,
or lightened,
or made right.
In fact, he knew
there was nothing left
except she would die.
He wondered at that,
and how death arrives
when we least expect,
and then, the frantic,
lonesome search for a quiet place
to lay your broken body down,
and the terrible waiting:
last fear, last tight breath,
a final severance from this world
on what had been a beautiful night.

Christchurch

17 Sunday Mar 2019

Posted by Linda R Davis Poetry in Poetry

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Afterlife, Beauty, Chaos, Courage, Death, Death Poems, Division, Dying, Fear, Freedom, Hate, Loss, Poem, Poems, Poetry, politics, Sadness. Sorrow, Soul, Spirit, Suffering

Can you be in awe

of how much some

are expected to suffer

in this lifetime—

we are often given

more than we can—

I saw a moth

with a broken wing,

and though it struggled,

I could not crush it—

but placed him, instead,

among the leaves of jasmine,

and walked away.

WMD, and Other Pretend Enemies and Friends

18 Friday Jan 2019

Posted by Linda R Davis Poetry in Poetry

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Tags

Afghanistan, Division, Fear, Iraq, Poem, Poems, Poetry, politics, Syria, USA, War, WMD

Digging up some of my oldies about war. My thoughts and feelings have not changed.

O, Beautiful,
January 13, 2007

Does the sand, there,
pile up like snow, here
Do grains of it rise like sun
floating crystals in a fickle breeze
Is its heat as unbearable
as our winter freeze
which makes a trickle stream,
thickens the water in the trough
I ask you, is the desert there
as beautiful as our plains,
as beautiful as winter wheat
snow covered, before amber waves,
as wide-open to life, as willing
when we lay down and die


These poems were based on news clippings from the time.

Sela-hammahlekoth (gorge of divisions)

We stand at the sela-hammahlekoth,
great gorge of division,
and we will not be sacrificed;
It will grow wider and deeper,
we’ll each back from the precipice,
further and further from one another
until, finally, we cannot see,
reach out to, or remember
we loved. My Lord, My Lord:
why have we have forsaken
each other, our sisters, our brothers?

WMD

This morning, over coffee, we argued about the war,
All this after the bed and what happened there,
When he loved me and said so.
Yesterday we worked together
Cleaned ovens, sprayed the deck,
Installed lights and tore down the bedroom wall.
We laughed over a movie and popcorn,
Surveyed our lives together and said,
This is good.
But this morning,
over coffee,
we argued—
We argued about the war and WMD
And now I’m here at my computer
And he’s off
on his own,
Fixing the furnace.

Conversations With Maggie 6

29 Wednesday Aug 2018

Posted by Linda R Davis Poetry in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Anxiety, Compassion, Conversations With Maggie, Faith, Fear, Healing, Love, Love Poems, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Sacrifice, Sacrificial Love

Fear rises up inside us, she said,

But love can go clear to the bone;

Take it as close as you can, without breaking. 

Maybe it’s okay to break, I said,

After all, a bone will always yearn to heal.

Unity: Horse and Human Together

05 Thursday Apr 2018

Posted by Linda R Davis Poetry in Uncategorized

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Tags

Death, Fear, Freedom, Happiness, Heaven, Horses, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Togetherness, Tom Dorrance, Unity

“Try to figure out some way to understand this thing the horse is so full of, and that he has such a strong desire to get from the person in return. It has to be togetherness. Mind, Body and Spirit is what we’re talking about here.” Tom Dorrance, True Unity

Our shared emotion,

Seventeen of twenty-seven:

Happiness, worry, fear.

What is it, rising up

Like spirit, from your eyes,

Like heaven. An open field,

Where all that matters is love

And connection, knowing

We are safe from what chases,

Knowing we are strong,

mistakes forgotten, and free.

Fear

22 Thursday Mar 2018

Posted by Linda R Davis Poetry in Uncategorized

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Tags

aspen, Brook, Chimes, Death, Early Spring, Fear, Night Terror, Nightmares, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Roses, Spring, spring poem, Unknown, Willow, Wind

I’ll describe early spring,

because it’s easier

than describing fear:

waking at one a.m.

in a terrible dream.

Where are you?

Why don’t you answer?

It’s forty degrees,

and the wind is rattling

the darkness and the chimes.

Everything is touched:

the willow, the aspen, and the roses

just beginning to break

into the tiniest buds.

Yet, still bare, still silent,

still waving their branches,

like I see you, waving your arms.

Dare To Get Wet

30 Tuesday Sep 2014

Posted by Linda R Davis Poetry in Uncategorized

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Tags

Authenticity, Belief, Courage, Death, Fear, God, Infinite, Life, Nature, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Rain

there is a reason

being in nature

makes us healthy

we find the infinite

under trees and clouds and sun

the rain wetting our skin

in that moment we don’t worry

about getting wet

belief is found

courage is found

Recent Posts

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