The woman in the window
  Looks out beyond the glass
Beyond the reach of her whispers
  Befogged upon windowpanes glance

Farther  than  the  bounds
  Her own breathe imbues
Out of reach her long fingered touch
  Tracing her murmurs on looking glass dew
Grasping for the shadowed artifacts
  Only time does nonchalantly drift past

Perched alone upon a cloud of silence
  Her thoughts eddy in soundless swirl
Spinning like dizzying shadows
  Swallowed by a thirst for light

The other side of window beckons
  Only she knows she’s looking out through a sigh;
Seeing no one familiar looking back ―  
  For what hidden jewels within abide

She dreams of dancing leafless by daylight
  Twirling beneath the whispering willows sway
Just a step away from being free
  Just a step away from feeling alive

With first step beyond imprisoning hesitation
  Crossing over the threshold of a dream
Through a liberating portal outside the glass
  Just on the other side of the windowsill ...


                  Jesse e Stillwater

Healing leaves are now disrobed branches
on the edge of this wilderness.
Many tall Douglas Fir stand sentinel
over 100 foot tall amazing grace — the fleeting leaves
expose the beauty of the moss clad scaffolds
adorned with a lime-grey lichen lace
Nature is my refuge — solid ground to stand
in this harmony and peacefulness.


Jesse Stillwater — December 2018

Not many people know
where the old road goes
I’m older now and it seems
there are more and more
       paved roads
that lead to nowhere —
   most of the time

As a kid, living miles up
  a rough potholed,
country road — a hike away
from the edge a small town
  out in the sticks,..
you come to know onliness,
blind to a journey alone

   I never stepped on
cracks in a town sidewalk —
  never learned what
  "superstitious" was,
    like the other kids
        from town

It wasn't the cracks
  in the sidewalk
I feared to tread;
steppin' on 'em breaks nothing
  already broken —

It was just all so different
than the long walk home
where that old road goes —
grandma always said:
"follow the creek upstream;
it'll always lead you back
  where you belong"

   The washboards
in the steep narrow road
up the hill, were like
  muddy stair steps
in the rainy season

Sometimes I followed
on up the creek below
to the upper log bridge
     swimmin' hole,..
where I learned to listen
to the sweet melody
of unclouded days;
and for a moment
I thought I belonged

     I still haven't
found my way out
  of this memory
I’m holding onto —
because life is just
an unstoppable
season, passing by
    on its own;
   like the way
     rainwater
  in the swollen
creek bed flows:

   And I'm just
another passing September
no one will remember —

   most of the time


Jesse Stillwater ... September 2018

The river forks at big stone eddy
rending currents meandering course,  
its silence speaks not with forked tongue
as kismet's swirling eddies abide
     as if time immemorial;
     a river naturally cleaved
in two separate distinct directions
befallen destiny  without a choice


Spinning round and round in big stone eddy,
time just drifting by in the throes
of doubt — high water rising
beyond the bounds of earth
taking drowning souls up to the sky


Choking on a mouthful of unanswered questions,
suffocating on the parting words left unsaid;
distilling life into poetry hew from being —
trickling out like the spilled out sky —
taken down to the empty riverbed
leave lay' til it's all washed away,
in the music of the pourin' down rain


Freedom embodies metaphysical incarnations
riding the prevailing currents it can't control
Gravity-gathered  down to the shoreline,
manifest reclamation after the deluge,
from somewhere far above the high-water mark


Swallowed by all the darkness woe betides,
thinking you carry such a weight to hold...
It seems all got a handful of sand to toss
up into the wind to seed the clouds
The totality of eclipsing silence grows
that rent the stillness of a dream
of peace on an eroding shoreline


In an Eddy of Expectations & Disappointment
dark waters will ebb and flow,
imponderable as drowning hope,
leaving it all out there to dry after the rain

       believing in your heart —
        the best is yet to come


  Jesse Stillwater ... November 2018

An earth sized boulder
dislodged with the thunder
Unleashing catacombs  
of terrestrial darkness
lay compressed beneath it
for a thousand years

The hidden ancients
heard its soul hold forth;  
their rumbling silence
    ―  laid bare ―
They heard its voice
rises up with the ears
of a new-born fawn

Beguiling roots,
solid as a rock,
hold together
like dark matter
A soul weight
beyond measure
shouldering the torn
of a divided heart

Heaviness ...
O' the heaviness ―
just a platitude for
what you feel
when it all comes
tumbling down
to the ground

Venerable
times immemorial:
an urging silence
pushing down
to the grave,
trying to unlearn
the things
never known
about the hearts
we leave behind


Jesse Stillwater

The full moon caught a glimpse
where the billowed clouds parted
Saucer size Dogwood blossoms
echoed an urging reflection
through wide open window ;
the diffused moonlight reached in
touching the open palms
enduring in an empty void
lay down beside

Softly burnished reflections
lighten blanched flesh petals
swaying in the wakened
     spring cadence
Rhinestone memories
tethered from somewhere above ;
as if manipulating puppet strings
dangling down through
the seesaw cloud gap ―
scattering candlelit sequins
like unmapped constellations
brushed by the moonlight
in the dale of your leafless *******

The fragrant breeze
of your memory
gathers a sweetest taste,
teasing wishful thirsty lips
into a gentle smile ...
Tracing unbounded memories
with wandering fingertips 
upon your intimate
canvas oasis in my mind

Fallen petals floating gently
across still waters
induced by whispered breeze ;
quiet reminders that ripple
the mesmerizing silence
with the lonely breath
an unheard evanescent sigh
 
The open window
let the moonlight in,
illuminating lingering
shadows of the past ...

you feel the waft
of spring breathe ...
but you just can't help
where the wind blows


Jesse e. Stillwater

Marooned  land-locked
    on  island  earth

Born with an orphan’s
    unknowable ache

Born with an empath heart
– always feeling too much –
mystic receptors wide awake
    in a highly sensitive soul

It’s as if I've walked along
      forever alone,
    one step at a time,
    lost in a restless nebula
from the earth to the moon

Consciously dreaming
      to steal away, 
bearing the weight of the sky, 
upwards over the mountain,
away from these chains
         that bind

    The maelstroms echo
behind silenced, probing eyes
with an unsated thirst
      to be wanted
    dead or otherwise:

Never understanding
    the reasons why,
spinning around in my head;
where "once upon a time"
        was hidden,
        buried alive              

A lifetime spent trying
    to unlearn the things
    I wish I’d never
    sought to know,
    clinging to the love
I've touched in my life
  evermore enwombed
       in my heart

    Passing milestones:
walking another barefoot mile
passing so many locked doors
    without keyholes
– way outside the lines –

    Choking on all
    the latent words
      lay fallow, 
      left unsaid 
Always looking for
something dreamt
but seldom manifest 

Growing so tired and weary
with no one standing by my side;  
no one to lay down beside me
    to take a rest for awhile

Just another chapter
in a timeless same old story;
  another dark star
      burned – out
      – vanished –
into the utter obscurity
of a sky so close and yet
       so far away...


Jesse Stillwater ... August 22, 2018