Glimmers of Light in the Dark of Night

12 POEMS BY KAREN DAVIS, PhD

There was a time when I wrote many poems, hundreds, then threw them all away. A few appeared in small poetry magazines, and I once gave a well-attended poetry reading at the First Congregational Church in San Francisco, where I sang in the church choir’s special concerts. Here are the poems I remember from that time, together with a few I have written since. The final poem, Boris, is by Terry Kleeman and Marie Gleason, speaking for the turkey they rescued from killing and brought to our sanctuary. – Karen Davis, 2023

TIME

(When a fault line appears on your face in the mirror that wasn’t there before)

Time moves quiet hands over all the faces of the earth
Presses down with deft and delicate fingers
Into her most high and holy places.
Forces them to fall
Delivers them to ashes. He fashions
New faces as he creeps along the traces
Of the rough-hewn stone, moves noiseless
In and out and over the bone
Altering, revealing, earth’s body and her countenance.

Time’s hand touches the stone of flesh
Traces an image there.
Carefully he cuts away the stone
To lay that image bare.
He holds a graven mirror
To show us the face we’ll wear.

PAIN

(Contemplating the Universe of pain and suffering)

I’ve felt the heaviness of things in a sorrowful mood.
When things are sad, all things weigh the same.
Sorrow is the greatest leveler.
Better than death or democracy
It destroys distinctions like water.
Tears may be heavier than giant boulders
And the planet Jupiter is a feather
Compared with the mass of pain.

LEAVING

(From San Francisco to Shippensburg, Pennsylvania)

There is the pang
Already starting
Already foretelling
The pain which the future’s bringing.
Nothing hurts like leaving
So far as the heart’s concerned,
And though my plans are filled with singing
In the blithest regions of sound,
The bow mourns over the string
In the deeper layers of the song.

WINTER

(A December day in Altoona, Pennsylvania)

Outside a wet snow falling.
Inside, I am looking out, watching.
I see old limbs accept the soft assault
And gather white.
It is almost dark.
The afternoon stands absolutely still.

A CONFESSION OF ULTIMATE NIGHT

(To my friend Greg Hartley before he became a priest and died)

I will let you down.
I will make you sorry
And you will say what
You never thought you would
That “I wish I’d never met her.
I thought she descended from the sun
In a moment of solar self-forgetfulness.
But now I see she is the sun’s own dark shadow
Remembering the day not come
But coming, when sun
Will shine no more
Nor I, nor she, nor anyone at all
Anyway, not here.”

Only, do not fail to notice
The penumbra of my sadness.
For it will speak for me when I must be
Silent and dark, and just as cold for you.

For I am composed of countless unlighted places
That never will know the warmth
Of any summer sun, nor feel
How light can melt
Even a dark and weighted space
Of lead and iron, and Age
That began to be Old
On the very First Day.

ADRIFT

(With Will Grant-Alexander in Ocean City, Maryland)

It was a day in mid-September.
The sun streamed down upon our heads
As we walked up and down
The hot grained yellow sands.
As we walked, we read.
We took turns reading aloud to one another
As tiny yellow beetles
Lay dying in great numbers
Where the water washed and left them.

We wanted to understand these things
And so all day we read, still watching
The beetles and wondering
Was there anything more we should do
As into the waves, we gently threw a few.

The day grew dark
The sand grew cold.
We wondered what we knew.
Einstein provided no clue.

PET STORE

(A pet shop in Silver Spring, Maryland once owned by two friends)

She watches through bars no bird
Ever heard of until a Man
Invented one, and then another
And another, and lined them up in a row.
“These are to look through,” he said.

Soft feathers, plucked but not preened.
Bright wings with nowhere
To fly.
She closes her eyes. Just another
Pet shopper passing her by,
Out looking for
Something better.

MOTH

(Watching a moth, many moths)

A moth is a sad natural thing.
A baffle beating the window, hitting the ceiling
Singeing a wing.
I wonder if it’s wounded,
And is fluttering in pain,
Or did it lose its aim, before stopping
On the window sill
Never to rise again.

DUSTBATH

(A hen recovers herself in our sanctuary)

First claws then beak, then
Little bursts of earth – our hen
Is taking a dustbath, her first
Since rescued in a ravaged state
Now safe at our place.

This spectral ballerina with
Pendulous pale comb, blurred eyes,
Spiny shafts, long thin nails
Diaphanous almost.
A sight to behold as hesitantly, then vigorously she
Washes her body and soul clean in the soil
Of the manmade filth
That never was herself.

Photo of UPC Sanctuary Hens Dustbathing by Davida G. Breier

CHICKEN DREAMING

(Ancestral memories in a metal chicken shed)

He sits in this house of feces and pain
With thousands of others
All the same, call it a triumph or
Call it insane.
His eyes are burning.
His liver is leaking.
His legs are aching and lame.
But he will be
Eaten with pleasure
All the same.

His nerves, bones and tendons will be nuggets in a bucket
Chewed by a fan
At a game.
His “wings” (don’t ask) will prove
What it means
To be a Man
Like every other
Man and his brother,
Inane.

His breast will water
The mouth of a lady trying
To lose weight with this
Lump on her plate.
For this he was made
For supper.

Meanwhile he dreams his
Impossible dream:
Ancestral memories
Of family and friends
Of tropical forest all rainy and green
From which he came
To suffer like this
For a foul mouth of chicken bliss.

Modern chicken house in the United States, Photo by: David Harp

THE BABY CHICKEN SONG

(To the tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”)

Chicken, chicken, why aren’t you
With your mother hen so true?
Pecking, playing, running around,
Taking sunbaths on the ground.
Chicken, chicken, why aren’t you
With your mother hen so true?

Chicken, chicken, why aren’t you
With your sisters and brothers, too?
Scratching, peeping, having fun,
Taking dustbaths in the sun.
Chicken, chicken, why aren’t you
With your sisters and brothers, too?

Chicken, chicken, where’s your dad?
Your rooster father, calling like mad.
Finding goodies, calling you all,
“Chook, Chook, CHOOK,
Come have a ball!”

Chicken, chicken, baby bird,
May your cheeping cries be heard,
Hushed and soothed by those who see
We are all one family.
Chicken, chicken, why aren’t you
With your mother hen so true?

SOUND OF A BATTERY HEN

(Adapted from anonymous)

You can tell me if you come by the
North door. I am in the twelfth cage
On the left-hand side of the third row
From the floor; and in that cage
I am usually the middle one of eight or six or three.
But even without directions, you’d
Discover me. We have the same pale
Comb, clipped yellow beak and white or auburn
Feathers, but as the door opens and you
Hear above the electric fan a kind of
One-word wail, I am the one
Who sounds loudest in my head.

Illustration by Nigel Burroughs

On February 14, 2001, we had our veterinarian come to the sanctuary and put Boris to sleep due to his inability to walk anymore. He was not more than 2 years old, but as a male turkey rescued from the meat industry, he became too heavy for his legs to support him, and he suffered. We loved him very much and would like to share with our members the poem that his rescuers and sponsors, Marie Gleason and Terry Kleeman, wrote on his behalf in his memory.

BORIS

You never really got to see
The real turkey inside of me.
The one with a body my frame could have supported
The one with feet where my toes weren’t aborted.
The one who could eat his food with a beak
Like a real bird and not a geek.
The one who wanted to have a mate
But was too large to propagate.
My life had one saving grace
And it was Karen Davis’s place.
Yes, a human too was she
But one who took care of me.
I only knew fear and pain
Now happiness did remain.
Thank you Karen for giving me the chance
To spread my feathers and do a turkey prance.
In my last year, I almost got to be
The real turkey inside of me.

–Love Boris

Summer 2024 Poultry Press