Passing by, just the same,
woods are blue and unforgiving,
The wilderness has no name,
That would be known to the living.

By the mountains proud and tall,
Dare you call the prophecy,
Take a silent, quiet stroll,
And don't bring snow down at me.

Walking up when it pulls down,
The sad truth about gravity,
The abyss is calling now,
The voice of still depravity.

Down the mighty side of her,
Dare you climb the way you came,
One wrong step and little birds,
Will eat you and worms, just the same.

When Left in solitude or when surrounded by many
The Overwhelming stillness of it all sets in
The Numbness pours over your body making you wish
something Else was there
But Life has its way of making your senses disappear
The Yearning of it all seems less sever

Loneliness is a jar of candy
Except there's no candy inside
And nothing there to take its place
The emptiest feeling of all time
When placed around a crowd of people
No one sees you because you're clear
And when you try to speak
They act as if they can't hear
So you stay in one place
But still no one can see
The expression on your face
Which is there because you're empty
The stillness of your body
The coldness of the glass
You wish this desolate moment
Would hurry up and pass
The vacant darkness
That lurks by your side
No way to run from it
No where to hide

Somewhere in Vermont
I see the sky
Stars scattered
like lighting bugs back home

Clouds drift,
Cold breeze,
Threatening rain

Shaped like an unfamiliar constellation
Headlamps shine
Some red, some blue, some yellow
Some bright, some dim

There's a presence here
Neither scary
Or threatening

Or even mysterious

People breathe,
A guitar sounds,
Pens scribble
Each in unity with the other

Somewhere in Vermont
People write
Separated by space
Their own thoughts
Spilling around them

Combining as one
Yet still
Individual

Brought together
By happenstance

They breathe together
as
One

When it is quiet, outside
only a light commercial
for pleasures of the big city
inside everything gray

the smell of the dog
just me
walking around
as if I'm not at home

but explore what
there is to see of the people
who live here: nothing
special, though there is

one tidy room
with an empty cupboard
and on the bedspread a cuddly toy
soft under my hand

then it grows still
in me, I am
not looking for anything, there's nothing
I'd wish to hope for

There's a sharp frosty switchback that never sees the sun in winter
  skies of blue. The frost heave cut-bank rocks tumble down to the
side of the road,  in the ice shard mottled ditch lay frozen stiff

Tall Sitka spruce marbled gray shadows mat the sparsely traveled
  corridor, paved with potholes, where the roads have no names
Sometimes listening quietly to the bare stillness, there are
  rhetorical questions heard in the silent reverie's say:

                        "Have you ever been afraid?"

The tree-line gaps above the jagged gray stone ravine, disappearing
  down the rugged mountain shade, falling into the pillow-top fog bank blanketing the canyon's murmurs below — headed towards the ocean

Crystalline spring waters gurgle up roadside — out of nowhere,
  where tired boots stand in reverent contemplation as it all sings out  harmoniously to the trees in the key of silence;   it was there
  in a gust of restless forbearance heard the frozen peacefulness  say:

                         "Have you ever felt alone?"

Gathering a deep breath of marbled gray shadows, silence bears
  a loud holler's scorn — echoing back and forth down canyon walls,
with the spirit of a voice a multitude strong,  evanescent
                             as winter's outgoing tide.


                      January 2019 — Jesse Stillwater

I’m often afraid
Of what I can’t always say
Not knowing is sure to make fear
Multiply upon itself until I cannot
Breathe and my heart races as if it
Can run away despite my body’s
Stillness
Frozen like a rabbit hides from
Slathering wolves
But my wolf is not so solid, its sharp
Teeth and ember eyes change into
Something with which I cannot
Reason
Maybe it is nothing I fear
Dark branches stretching out
Into night drenched
Solitude
Headlights my only solace from the
Dizzy roads and inky stars
What are they hiding, those
Branches
Perhaps wolves, perhaps nothing
I prefer the wolves