Ed Davis

The Holy Poet Tree is a destination fromthe stone stairsleading down intothe glen is a telephone pole talltulip poplar slightly bentby the huge downed pine wedged between itand another so thatit looks like it’s leaning forwardto better hear your silent prayer is a place of restwhere I always writeand listen to creaturesI hear but seldom see is a place to take yourfriend whobestride the nearly barklesscarcass at the poet tree’s feetdisappears into that placewhere people feel no more separatethan the individual birdsinside a curtain of starlingsstartled alofteach breathingthe witnessof the one before it.

House of Breath If you can’t hear the silenceof these autumn woods,you’ll never know it anywhere.So let foot meet ground,lungs swell and release.Weep for love, not for allthat falls away endlessly.Live for what remainswhen all is lostbut abundant breath. Joy is this single green leafdotted with wateramong red berriesbirds left you to feaston with your eyes.Hoard images for winterwhen you’ll walk in snow,shrouded, heart surroundedby embracing cold,body’s breath cageyour hospitable house.

Walking Meditation I’m taking micro stepsless than the length of a breath.Mud, branch, moss, old fallleaves like pagesof an unseamed book.This walking takes mewhere mind is replacedby nothingwhich is essentially something. We are not our thoughts. Piney air thicker than thoughtis its own crystalline destination.Sky grumbles like an old sow’s belly.Faint shush of planet sighing.Why am I here?Because I am not someplace else.Because I am not someone else.Because wind calledBlood sangStone beckonedKingfisher heron hawk waited. Next week the robin chorusbegins before dawn.Will you listen?

Ed Davis has immersed himself in writing and contemplative practices since retiring from college teaching. Time of the Light, a poetry collection, was released by Main Street Rag Press in 2013. His latest novel, The Psalms of Israel Jones (West Virginia University Press 2014), won the Hackney Award for an unpublished novel in 2010. Many of his stories and poems have appeared in anthologies and journals such as Leaping Clear, Metafore, Hawaii Pacific Review, and Stoneboat. He lives with his wife in the bucolic village of Yellow Springs, Ohio, where he bikes, hikes, meditates and reads religiously.