Stars out in their billions
Above a living sea
Seagulls sleep on beaches
The wind blows to the lea
Old Mexico is haunting
A place of History
To these graceful sandy shores
You invited me
Your residence so gracious
Where I could be free.

I picture Starry Starry Night
Swirling colors, yellow, cream
Italian Cypress blowing
The deepest darkest green
Vincent must have such a Muse
What would he have seen?
If he came to Mexico
To stars like in a dream?

We exist neith different Skies
In these shells of flesh & bone
But we both seek the same prize
We are NOT alone
I would give all that I have
To soothe your road of stones
Yes, I'd give all that I have
I'd give all that I own
To give you all these billion stars

And a place you could call HOME.


Catherine Jarvis
11/19/2018

Energetically I know how you feel
My gift is not confined by space and time
Psychic abilities come with the territory
Always put needs of others ahead of my own
Time with nature is time at home
Highly sensitive is an asset not a weakness
Sense the world deeply suffer immensely

It's telling looking through
the window’s eyes ; 
a room with a paling grey glass view
befogs the clouds reign inside the storm
Often feeling misbegotten regret
for the unfiltered passing glimpses,
whetstone honed and splayed ;
raw hues of a latent life exposed

There's an uncertain hidden shame
in the unheard truth
starving out in the cold;
dwelling in a petrifying silence
of a common hunger
the lonely do ache
  
Merciless hunger pangs
manifest and shake
with an unrelenting bitter taste ;
loneliness grapples and grips
like a silent earth quake
rattling a rib caged heart — writhing
as Autumn bares the trees
  
A jagged ambiguous fault line
ripples through the hollow echo ;
a bolt of lightning caught in a bottle
strikes — silently contained
swallowing the unspoken words
in a greater good

This broken merry-go-round
keeps turning round and round;
the great mandala spinning on
like a worn out hamster-wheel
without a conscious trace
of going anywhere out there

The place you come from
is gone when you leave it —
even if you really never
feel you were from anywhere
but a thousand unmarked mileposts
from out here somewhere adrift;
a pilgrimage towards understanding
why sometimes I don’t know
if I know who I am — or could have been —
waiting on a threadbare prayer

One-day the winds of change
will shapeshift — bye and bye ...

"When the light that's lost within us
reaches the sky"


Jesse Stillwater

November 2018

River as persistent
as the enduring ******
for self-preservation -

Carving by currents
and flowing within
a necessary course

Determined
by ancient
inherent law.

Oblivious to danger
and ignorant of doubt
it is perpetually unconcerned -

The river carelessly
generous
without discrimination -

Ever sustaining
trees, grasses and
underbrush shelters

Home to life in its waters
and nourishment for those
that come to the banks

Never quarreling with any
human imposition
be it sport or utility

And always providing
the perfect primordial
music for meditation

Always offering
an immaculate lullaby
for the tranquil restorative
of sleep.


- fr

The light through
My Grandmother’s
Bedroom window
Called out to me

‘Calls out to me’

Leading me to places
Where I had to go
Revisiting me now
In my twilight years

‘In my twilight years’

Reminding me again
Of those places I’ve been
And my reasons for going
As the mileposts shone

‘And the mileposts shine’

Reaching into the distance
Where the horizon pulled
And the dawn arrived
In what drove me once

‘In what drives me still’

(Villanova Pennsylvania: January, 2014)

There are lights in the sky
Each a lamp lit for someone else
And none for me

I’d sent flame after flame
Up there for you hoping that
One day they’d be bright enough
To reach you

To listen to your words of white heat warmth
That will send a wave of fire through
The void and light a billion stars
For me
Even if you didn’t intend to
Your words, your smile,
Even your silence is what
Lit up the sky for me
So that I saw besides everlasting darkness
And ever more endless shadow
There are life brewing in the silence
Though not for me

The silence only smothers, and suffocates me
Like an invisible hand tightly gripping onto my throat
Without me noticing, ever so violently
Yet ever so slowly squeezing harder and harder
Till I cannot breath, not knowing the reason why

It forces me down into the depth of the abyss
Till I am no longer one, but one with the shadow
One with the bottomless pit of despair and fear
Till I am no longer within the void, but am the void

Yet, when I saw you
When I met you
I was lifted up out of where I thought I belonged
And could hold against the weight
Of all that is without light
The gloom, the shadows, the night
The black of space
The silence that cries
And floated weightlessly
Above, below, and within
All there ever was, and will be
For, even though I know not how
My love for you
Has the power to lift me up:

Beyond the wild fields of stars
Beyond the glistening ocean of light
Beyond the dreamless darkness
Beyond the unkempt bed of life
Beyond the inescapable swamp of death
And beyond
All of time

To a place where only the existence of you
Holds out its shapeless hand to me
And lead me
Rather the merely dust, and breath of me
Through the void, to the empty vessel
Carrying all the pure
Feelings, senses, love, and even pain

Though it is a place
Way beyond the rays of any sun
Way beyond the circle of life
Way beyond decay and apathy
Way beyond flesh and blood

I saw every color
Every being
Every state of being
Every possible and impossible thing
Every time and space
Pass through the ghost of you and I
And cease to be
At least that’s what they appeared to be

The twinges, the sharp electric sparks
You sent through out every atom of my body
And every participle of my soul
Told me that

They are no longer life that exist exterior to us
But within us, or rather
They are us, were us, and will always be
As they have never existed otherwise
In and since that moment of eternity

I see every river through me
My blood and hair
Every fish, your touch
Every dancing seagrass
The joy your gaze ripples through me

I see every mountain and valley
All around you
Every bump on your skin
Every wave on your fingertips
Every stone and sharp edges, my pain
Every field my words of love unending

Every burning star
Dots our shining eyes
Every moon, every heavenly body
That passes, they are the fleeting
Yet never ceasing reflection of affections
Waltzing again and again across our sight
Playful like children
Not yet exposed to any worldly sorrow

Every bit of space without light
Every pit of pure darkness
Caves of eternal shadow
Every howling silence that plunders pass
They are too, forever part of our love
For
They are the pain of longing
That makes each moment of proximity
So frighteningly precious
Afraid to be lost, so keeping it close
Like a token of innocent love
Pass down through generations
Till no being of flesh and mind
Remains, yet the dust still holds
Tightly onto it
Never letting go

And,
At last
Every bit of you
Like water droplets through the given earth
Like sunshine in an inseparable bond with life
Like rains of stars that will never leave the sky
Have seeped, melted, and spread
Through every drop sweet and bitter of me
Till I am no longer just acquainted with living
But am the very dream of life.

Autumn comes again, with her bare arms,
the depths are hiding deaf fountains of smiles,
the cold rains and fog wandering in the farms,
the warm sunrise was expelled, so he cries.

The secrets of waterfalls that carries their name
are reading my bitter soul as an empty shell,
my tears are flowing to extinguish the flame
of the clouds from heaven... so they tell.

I wonder if my heart will slow down in time
until the dawn of old age that puts a spell
on the sunrises and sunsets, in the meantime
I can take over the duties of the fall as well.

Until then, I remain an insomniac in motion.
Until flowers grow into the heart. I will not surrender.
I'll try over and over again, until tears make an ocean.
Tell me... when I'm going to meet my life's defender?