Tish Davis: Refrain

Dusk mutes green and all of green’s variations. Along the path, bare feet press the sheen out of damp clover. White blossoms of blackberries pop-out left and right. Even the oxeye daisies abandon their yellow.

candlelight
the bride’s father
steps back

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by Tish Davis
Dublin, Ohio

Tish Davis: Gesso

He's an artist, still asleep under the quilt. Last night's shoes and clothes are scattered, leaving a trail back to the kitchen. I've found his robe and with my coffee enter the studio just as the morning light slowly edges along the face of each canvas hanging on the wall.

Definitely talented. I study each painting—oils, abstract, subtle. There’s a common theme including this blank surface now drying on the easel. The staples—notched along the sides—are diagonal, haphazard.

dimming the lights
the bust of Caesar
back on the bookshelf

by Tish Davis
Dublin, Ohio
first published in Contemporary Haibun Online, V4, N1, March 2008

Tish Davis: The Family Vitaceae

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Clusters of grapes are stenciled on a periwinkle watering can in my aunt’s kitchen. Two rusted hand pruners and the old rosewood harvesting shears, tips in the tin, point down.

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“Do you remember your grandmother’s vineyard?”

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I remember the weekends . . . . Father took a cotton rag and wiped grease off of the old, red tractor while my uncles gathered tools and loaded everyone onto the trailer. Grandmother, always a few rows ahead of us, trimmed and composted in calico dress and barn boots. My aunts said she brought secrets with her—cuttings from the old country.

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Grapes, at harvest time, were packed in wooden crates, loaded onto flatbeds with wooden rails. We cousins played a game of chase alongside the procession. Berries jiggled in boxes. I stopped and pulled the beggar-ticks out of my socks.

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frozen on the vine

the grapes

my father grew

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by Tish Davis

Dublin, Ohio

first published in Presence #38, May 2009

Tish Davis: CHAMPAGNE MUSIC

I slip the Lawrence Welk DVD into the player and whisper, “Mom, our first sleep over.”

Black and whites change with the notes on his accordion, shadows crossing her toes exposed at the bottom of the bed. Now finished, the nurse returns the blanket charting the formalities under the watchful eye of the Franciscan cross hanging on the wall. An aide helps me move the recliner closer. A pajama party—I remembered to bring my own pillow.

light and bubbly
a respirator breathes
for both of us

by Tish Davis
Dublin, Ohio
first published in Ink, Sweat and Tears (March 5, 2008)

Tish Davis: PAPIERS COUPES

I find the amputee's room. The old woman is busy gluing an orange ring of florets onto the center of a giant sunflower cut from paper. Pinned to the white wall next to her bed, larger than life cutouts of tulips and daisies—reds and yellows flourishing alongside white chrysanthemums.

lingering

in the meadow

lavender

“Do you know the old proverb,” I ask, “when you can put your foot on seven daisies summer has come?”

Without looking up, she passes me a roll of tape, asks if I would please hang the sunflower on her door. Scissors in hand, she is already cutting another.

collage . . .

faces of the sun

facing east

by Tish Davis

Dublin, Ohio

Tish Davis: HIGH TEA

Every season my father changes the color of mom’s place mat, but our monthly dinners are always the same. We sit in the kitchen not far from her obituary still pinned to the board on the door; his eyes wander to the only colored square without a plate.

Today the mat on the table is gone. The tea is ready, but instead of pouring from the copper kettle, he is brewing it in my mother’s Aynsley pot—Cottage Garden. I carry it into the dining room where the sugar bowl and creamer are carefully arranged on white. For the first time I notice the delicate swirls in the pattern and when the doorbell rings, the third cup not far from his.

under a porch light
the first buds
of spring
.

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by Tish Davis
Dublin, Ohio
first published in Simply Haiku V6, N4 (Winter 2008)

Tish Davis: PORTFOLIO

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What's left of his art is scattered in the apartment as if too heavy to hang—water colors of a barn-red outbuilding beyond the fence post, a cabbage in the garden, a bluebird box at the end of winter and oils too, of flowers, orchids mainly.

His favorite medium was stained glass. He bent pieces in his workshop to make tulips and cut the colors so it would always be spring. Only one lamp remains, the others given away when he down-sized.

the short night—
a painter applies
the first coat of white

by Tish Davis
Dublin, Ohio

Tish Davis: NIGHT PADDLING

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I show my son how to tie up the food pack. “It keeps the bears away.” He carries me through the darkness to the lake’s edge where my husband is waiting with the canoe. The last time I was in the Boundary Waters I was the teenager. Now I must ride in the center of the boat. My doctor advised against this trip and told me not to expect remission from the disease that is consuming my body.

The rhythm of oars pulls the boat forward. The silhouettes of the pines succumb to the stars. Under the aurora, even the moon releases its brightness to the lake’s embrace.

I take a metal cup out of the pouch and dip it into the water.

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planetarium
an operator freezes
the sky

by Tish Davis

Dublin, Ohio

Tish Davis: THE TABORET

Crayons spread across the bedside table in her room. She's had recent surgery but I don't know her name. Is she mom's age? I clip on my nursing home volunteer badge. Would she like a visitor?

She's coloring – a big red Christmas bow in process on the page, each stroke deep. "I'm going to hang it over there," she points.

My kindergarten voice, "That's so nice." Her eyes motion, a stack of drawings on the chair. "Can I see them?"

I sort through her papers – candy canes, baskets, a snowman, a single sketchbook at the bottom. "It's okay," she tells me. "Open it."

Black and whites – I run my fingers along each page slowly, then stop. This drawing – a house blanketed by snow, pleats laced and pulled back into loops, a wreath in the middle of each. A front walk, shoveled, leading my eyes to the door knob. Along the way, pencil surrounded by Crayola hues, circles one by one on either side of the bell.

sitting in mom's rocker
this year's Christmas lights
blinking

by Tish Davis

Dublin, Ohio