How content
     Could it be
That in this life after death
     I grow again as a willow tree,
Standing weak to
     Dry wind blowing calm,
           In a grassy field,
           High on a hill,
     Alone against the contrast
           Of the sky
     And together with the symmetry
           Of existing just for the sake of it.

An attempt to remind us what comes out when the sun goes down, but I know what the darkness brings.
It brings your smile. Nothing could have been as bright and magical in the dead of this summer night. Not even the willow lights.

Some days the wind blows
and bends yonder willow
  Its roots hold sway
  perched high upon
  steep sea cliff walls
No gale could affix
a bow to such a limber
heartwood backbone
  Wind arched echoes
  undulate to and fro
  alike a gentle restoration;
  a resilience unrenowned

It looks as if it takes
the skies weight so lightly,
while the rising waves
gather an unhallowed chill
fomenting untamed
at the heart of the prevailing
       westerly swell

A human tends to lean rigidity
right up to the yonder most edge,
a thin line threshold
        a step away  ―
pushed by a moment's gravity;
a blind jump over a cliff
into an unfathomable deep ocean
       far beyond
       a forgiving
       willow's bend


Jesse Stillwater ... 09  May  2018

They say willow trees are weeping because
their branches sag towards the ground
while all the other trees
choose to reach up and up
towards a gorgeous sky


But perhaps willows just know that
you gain nothing from
grasping towards an endless horizon
and no matter what you do
you will never touch the clouds
nor will reaching them
do anything for you

and instead they let their branches bend
towards an earth
that yields boundless and glittering treasures
diamonds and gold
for those who are willing
to put in the work
and keep their feet on the ground

A girl sits beneath a willow tree
alone, pondering the branches,
embracing the cracks of the bark
while the scenery around her
flutters away in the bitter wind.
The secluded still point she had
built for her own protection
peaks at the last drop of breath
and roles off of her bottom lip,
but does not completely vanish.
Her thoughts of then and now
pile up onto an abundance of polluted
picture books, stacked beneath
the leaves of the tree. However,
they too flutter away with the wind,
lost in the sea of empty desires
and leave her to ponder the tree;
Only the old willow tree remains.
Her eyes trace the the divide
between the willow and the nothingness,
and she could feel the weight of nothing
pressing down on the branches.
The abundance of absence tugging
each limb closer and closer to her feet
and yet closer to the edge of nothingness.
The willow is now her pondering home,
the place where her free-most self
is trapped under the convexity
of her dearly beloved willow tree.
She sits and sits and wonders the beyond
of nothingness, but feels no inclination
to leave her familiarity, her home.
The bark forms her armor, the grain
becomes her fortress, and the trunk
is her best friend, whom keeps her warm.
She sits and sits, and will continue to sit,
forever more, forever less.

lark, perched and persistent,
upon that willow,
and billowing, that screeching wind around you;
and willowing, those branches stretched out to guide you;
and singing, that song reaching out to hold you;
and ages dying, fading away beneath those yellowed branches—
now you wait for the advent of spring, an eternal lament
of slowed, persistent flowing, of pointed, ageless growing—
of wallowing in the hollows
and promising in the branches,
and leaving in the sunset,
and learning in the shade:
she flew away, I think, to the edges of the sea.