Almanac of Faithful Negotiations
–Todd Davis

Here, at the edge of heaven,
I inhabit my absence.
Tu Fu

On the first day, we find evidence of elk but not the elk themselves.

On the second, we see the charred and blackened sleeves fire leaves but not a single flame.

By the third day, the oldest trees have already ascended but the microbial mouths buried in the dirt remain.

After four days, our minds flood with rivers and creeks, and we find it hard to speak, except in mud and stone.

On the fifth, ravens decorate a white-oak snag, croaking in the voices of our drunk uncles, reminding us whose house we live in.

Six days gone, a fisher stands on hind legs, stares across the meadow’s expanse, dares us to approach the porcupine-corpse, muzzle red with the body’s sugar.

When the last day comes, only minutes before dawn, susurration of wind, stars moving back into the invisible, all of us wondering when we will join them.

 

Photo by Sergio Ibannez on Unsplash

Lost Country of Light
–Todd Davis

But I am not trying to get to heaven.
I am trying to get to earth.
– Christopher Camuto

June sun, so longed for in December,
paints a burning light upon my neck
as I hoe the garden or pick raspberries
along the ditches. By early afternoon
I’ve had enough and retreat to the trees,
into broken shadows dim as the back
of the closet where I put things
that shouldn’t be forgotten: the field
where my grandfather planted beans;
the last cow my family owned;
the hay rake that turned the cut grass
into windows; the bell on the back porch
my grandmother rang when she heard
her son had died in the war.

Photo by Ian Keefe on Unsplash

What Came Before
–Todd Davis
The warmth of a blood-filled sky.
A westerly wind. Half-moon, smooth
as melon rind, floating above
father’s head. A boatyard
with a sea beyond. My sister,
who worked for a shipwright,
lathering varnish onto a keel.
A pod of dolphins surfacing
beyond the harbor’s mouth.
And a fig tree with ripe figs falling,
seeds mashed beneath
grandmother’s bare feet,
her way of planting
a memory that would leaf
in my tenth summer,
years after her death,
when I peeled the fruit’s skin
with my teeth, tasted
part of her flesh.

Photo by Amber Engle on Unsplash

Generosity
–Todd Davis
The sun hits the ice-coated snow at 186,282 miles per second,
then slides across the greased surface of the earth.

I woke our sons this morning with the smell of bacon
spitting in an iron skillet.

An hour earlier, the smell of your sex stirred me,
and we held each other in dim light

as a garbage truck rumbled through the neighborhood.
I crack eggs in the brown the bacon bequeaths,

whisk them until the yellow and white congeal.
This time of year I have to squint to make out the heads

of laurel leaves as they strain their necks
to stay above the snowline. With so much radiance

it’s hard to hide my love for the pleasures of the earth.
When I was ten, a maple tree, split at its crotch by lightning,

went sap, freezing and thawing in an amber slick.
Night turned over in an unmade bed, and I licked

the sweet until my tongue was raw. What compares
to a cheek on the breast, a hand gently cradling

a lover’s bottom? Near the middle of the river
frazil ice swirls and bucks, kicking water into the air

where it freezes. You love dark chocolate and sea salt,
anything that melts with the body’s temperature.

I love building a fire in the snow, watching the russet
soil appear beneath the kettle as it begins to boil.

Photo by Jonathan Cooper on Unsplash

After Twenty-Seven Years of Marriage
–Todd Davis
I imagine your soul is the texture of cantaloupe
as you bend over the tub to wash your hair.

100 million years is a long time to migrate, but
the warblers flying through the black gum trees

outside our window navigate the same space
as their ancestors. The cat, descended from Egypt,

sleeps in the crook of your legs
with the expectation that we will rub her

under the chin and down the bridge of her nose.
In the morning a storm sacrifices more than six

inches of rain, and now a cow bobs down the river,
rolling from side to side. You collected toy horses

as a child because your father was poor and drank away
the hay, the stall doors, the paddock fencing.

After correcting me about how your soul feels,
you feed me pink slices of watermelon.

I drown happily in the sweetness
of your company.

Photo by Isaac N.C. on Unsplash