"bough" poems
my love
thy hair is one kingdom
the king whereof is darkness
thy forehead is a flight of flowers
thy head is a quick forest
filled with sleeping birds
thy ******* are swarms of white bees
upon the bough of thy body
thy body to me is April
in whose armpits is the approach of spring
thy thighs are white horses yoked to a chariot
of kings
they are the striking of a good minstrel
between them is always a pleasant song
my love
thy head is a casket
of the cool jewel of thy mind
the hair of thy head is one warrior
innocent of defeat
thy hair upon thy shoulders is an army
with victory and with trumpets
thy legs are the trees of dreaming
whose fruit is the very eatage of forgetfulness
thy lips are satraps in scarlet
in whose kiss is the combinings of kings
thy wrists
are holy
which are the keepers of the keys of thy blood
thy feet upon thy ankles are flowers in vases
of silver
in thy beauty is the dilemma of flutes
thy eyes are the betrayal
of bells comprehended through incense
160.2k
I never saw a wild thing
sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself.
149.9k
The light wraps you in its mortal flame.
Abstracted pale mourner, standing that way
against the old propellers of the twighlight
that revolves around you.
Speechless, my friend,
alone in the loneliness of this hour of the dead
and filled with the lives of fire,
pure heir of the ruined day.
A bough of fruit falls from the sun on your dark garment.
The great roots of night
grow suddenly from your soul,
and the things that hide in you come out again
so that a blue and palled people
your newly born, takes nourishment.
Oh magnificent and fecund and magnetic slave
of the circle that moves in turn through black and gold:
rise, lead and possess a creation
so rich in life that its flowers perish
and it is full of sadness.
35.2k
#there are the ones
that feel it climb up
the shadow towards the light,
hesitation on every rung,
each wave of the arising
overwhelms unabated ―
and woe betides those
who are on the run
from a storm's deluge
A rousing ocean breeze
stirs inside the memory
of an unframed seashell
lying on the hearth mantel;
heightened sensitivity
lapping soundlessly,
spindrift plashing
the shoreline
of another world's
feigned peace
Perhaps the muted voice
of guilty pleasures,
hushed by their own
hidden truths
Feeling the unfelt textures
of every stifled vibration
left unbreathed
The naked truth befallen
so cold and lonely
Running in circles,
volatile as all those
unspoken excitations raging ―
and the whispers of those
who hear not
the voices in the wind
An emotionally enslaved heart
tarries, marooned high and dry
in a memory on a distant sand bar
lain fallow for so long ―
stagnant darkness
of an unsated soul
gathered on the back
of a parched tongue
sullied wordless
Rising up through
a dusty hieroglyph corridor
through an unlocked
labyrinth gate; vestige echoes
from somewhere left behind
in an incomprehensible
abandoned wake
It's getting harder and harder
for an insatiable soul to breathe ...
climbing up a tree trunk―
up within the silence
of the listening tree
Toes dug into
the rough bark furrows ―
fingers reaching upwards
beyond their deepest known grasp
A shadow stranded
out on a hangin' bough
hearkening without ears that hear:
“perhaps they’ll listen now“
the wingless bird sings
in psalms that fly away
on tattered feathers
over untamed waters roil
Back to nature’s waning youth,
the bough bends unbroken
to taste the freedom
of the wild absolving seas
Jesse Stillwater
June 2018
Jul 12, 2018
Jul 12, 2018 at 12:41 PM UTC
O MY LOVE, COME WITH ME,
LET’S CLIMB THE MANGO TREE,
ITS GOLDEN FRUITS ARE RIPE,
FULL OF SWEET MEMORY,
LET ME LIFT YOU GENTLY,
TILL YOUR HANDS GET A HOLD,
THIS WARM ZEPHYR HAS MADE ME,
SO STRONG AND SO BOLD,
LET US CLIMB WITHOUT SCRATCHING
YOUR FLAWLESS IVORY SKIN,
MY LOVE WILL GUIDE YOU THROUGH
BRANCHES THICK AND THIN,
YOUR RAVEN HAIR CASCADING ON
TO YOUR NECK SO SLENDER,
SHINY NEW LEAVES OF THE MANGO,
SO DELICATE, AND SO TENDER,
SIT CLOSE TO ME ON A LOFTY BRANCH
TO HEAR THE SOULFUL KOEL SING,
LET'S SWAY WITH THE BREEZE
LIKE SOULS ON A SILKEN STRING,
MY HEAD ON YOUR SHOULDER
YOUR LOVELY FACE SO CLOSE,
SUN BEAMS DANCE ON YOUR LASHES
MY PRECIOUS VELVET ROSE,
YOUR FRAIL HANDS ENCIRCLE ME
LIKE CREEPERS HUGGING THE BOUGH,
YOUR WARM EMBRACE ENTHRALLS ME
TO KISS YOUR SHAPELY BROW,
YOUR SWEET FRAGRANCE INTOXICATES
AND AMONG THE CLOUDS I FLOAT,
LIKE A BUTTERFLY EMERGING FROM
A CATERPILLAR’S UGLY COAT,
WE SIT THERE FOR A LONG TIME
SUSPENDED IN SPACE,
I AM BUT A CONTENT SLAVE
TO YOUR HEAVENLY GRACE
LET MY LIPS LINGER ON
YOUR SOFT PETALS SOME MORE,
TILL I ETCH IN MY MIND,
EVERY BIT OF YOU TO THE CORE,
OH MANGO TREE WE NESTLE
IN YOUR MASSIVE ARMS,
LOST IN THE MYRIAD MISTS
OF ONE ANOTHERS CHARMS,
WHEN OUR YEARS ARE GONE ONE DAY
WHEN WE ARE AGED AND SPENT,
UNDER THIS GREAT MANGO TREE,
WE SHALL PITCH OUR FINAL TENT,
UNDER ITS VAST CANOPY WE SHALL LIE
LOOKING AT THE STARS,
OUR BONY FINGERS ACHING YET
TENDING TO OUR SCARS,
MY MIND’S EYE SEES YOUR WRINKLED FACE
SMOOTH WITH AN INNER GLOW,
SOFT AND BEAUTIFUL AS EVER IT WAS,
AND YOUR LOVELY DARK HAIR FLOW
YOUR FLESH AGAINST MINE
FEELS JUST AS YOUNG AND WARM,
OUR HEART BEATS MERGE
LIKE BEES FLYING IN THE SWARM
COLD TOMBS ARE NOT FOR US
NEITHER MARBLE NOR GRANITE,
UNDER THE LIVING MANGO TREE
FOREVER WE SHALL UNITE
OH MY LOVE, COME WITH ME,
LET’S CLIMB THE MANGO TREE,
YOU ARE LIKE ITS GOLDEN FRUIT,
AND FOREVER YOU WILL BE.
Dec 26, 2011
Dec 26, 2011 at 2:29 AM UTC
Frost-locked all the winter,
Seeds, and roots, and stones of fruits,
What shall make their sap ascend
That they may put forth shoots?
Tips of tender green,
Leaf, or blade, or sheath;
Telling of the hidden life
That breaks forth underneath,
Life nursed in its grave by Death.
Blows the thaw-wind pleasantly,
Drips the soaking rain,
By fits looks down the waking sun:
Young grass springs on the plain;
Young leaves clothe early hedgerow trees;
Seeds, and roots, and stones of fruits,
Swollen with sap, put forth their shoots;
Curled-headed ferns sprout in the lane;
Birds sing and pair again.
There is no time like Spring,
When life's alive in everything,
Before new nestlings sing,
Before cleft swallows speed their journey back
Along the trackless track,--
God guides their wing,
He spreads their table that they nothing lack,--
Before the daisy grows a common flower,
Before the sun has power
To scorch the world up in his noontide hour.
There is no time like Spring,
Like Spring that passes by;
There is no life like Spring-life born to die,--
Piercing the sod,
Clothing the uncouth clod,
Hatched in the nest,
Fledged on the windy bough,
Strong on the wing:
There is no time like Spring that passes by,
Now newly born, and now
Hastening to die.
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The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Faces without name, faces without purpose
Faces that are just like my own.
I watch the decrepit, old man
Standing, waiting for a train to nowhere
Wandering through the rest of his days
Like every second
Is his
Last.
The children playing there don’t know it yet.
Soon they will -- their weary mothers do.
Every day, growing older.
Every day, growing colder.
Every day, realizing our fate.
The tracks are wet from the cold,
Unfeeling rain.
The rain, which pours from the
Infinite sky,
[Of which we will all soon belong]
Floods the streets and earth
[Of which we will all soon belong]
The drops dismantle the delicate flowers surrounding us...
Petals
Drop
To
The
Ground
helpless.
Our days dwindle as such.
One day
We will all be these
Petals on a wet, black bough.
Nov 11, 2012
Nov 11, 2012 at 3:02 AM UTC
.
...is a fragile little thing,
that most tend to overlook.
Small word with a **** big meaning*.
Some may uphold it; some may
conveniently have it mistook...
Trust...
...is in the grasp of the unknown
stranger,
that helps you up when you've fallen
down.
Trust...
...is the pact between you and the cab
driver,
as he takes you to where you want to
be, across town.
Trust...
...the bough on which your swing does
sit.
Pray that it doesn't break as you enjoy
its joyous ride.
Trust...
...your cook, hoping in your food he
doesn't spit...
Especially when you've provided
feedback that scuffed his pride.
Trust...
...lays exposed when the keys to your
house you surrender,
to your neighbour who'd keep an eye
while you're away on a retreat.
Trust...
...exists latent in the open palm of your
caregiver...
As a child you'd take his hand so he'd
ferry you safely across the street.
Trust...
...is the unspoken oath that I had thought
we both held sacred...
When I spilled the contents, my heart
couldn't bear much longer.
Trust...
...meant nothing when you took it all for
granted,
when you weakened and succumbed...
...and then shared with another...
Jan 21, 2015
Jan 21, 2015 at 7:14 AM UTC
A widow bird sate mourning for her Love
Upon a wintry bough;
The frozen wind crept on above,
The freezing stream below.
There was no leaf upon the forest bare,
No flower upon the ground,
And little motion in the air
Except the mill-wheel’s sound.
10.2k
I was told when six
lighted smokes show up for miles
during a blackout
Toward home, Christmas eve
lighted candles on tree bough
pierce through dark windows
Moonlight can become
bright enough to cast shadows
beneath my movements
Feb 15, 2016
Feb 15, 2016 at 5:40 PM UTC
Two boys
and girls
unclothed each other
simply at a picnic
flush with wine
alongside
sun-flecked trees.
The girls,
easy as the
forest round,
burned,
delicious,
as the boys
eager and nervous
in unequal measure
partly gave up
concealing
their joys
at forgetting
or remembering
in flickers
their bare bodies.
It went on
over nettles
and half-hours
and clambered
trees and
photos taken
almost formally
(on film,
of course).
And boyish lust,
at first sinuous,
a darting tongue,
began to
soften against,
for instance,
the sheer,
unthinkable
texture
of the two
girls carved
now backward
over the bough
of a storm-felled elm.
And there
in the embers
of evening
they learned
to thrill originally
at the vast,
gorgeous
and astonishing
irrelevance
of what
might happen next.
Jan 26, 2011
Jan 26, 2011 at 7:05 AM UTC
No windows in my small house where the birds had been made of faint shadow and the rivers are laughing with tears. Our windy December has destroyed everything even my soul so I am now just a soulless apparition. Look at our trees; they are kneeling; the wind has stolen their dreams. I am a man from the south where everything is soft and bland, but the rigid hands of this windy December have scattered our girls’ woolgathering.
Here the streets are so raging, do you know why? I think you won’t know the story. These streets have been made by the rough fingers of our December where the nights are weepy, and the moons are colorless. You can’t see anything here in December just violent and shameless faces. Yes, our December has a veil but its stormy soul destroying our dreams. Our stormy December is strange and reckless, but we love it because we are strange and reckless like it.
Yes, December is not my friend, but I see its footprints and follow them. It fills my lung with wild air; yes, our December is crazy and has so attractive eastern eyes. You may see that bough, that leaf and that very small bird; you may see them but you wont know anything about their wild souls. Our wild December is unbelievable, and it can make amazing fairies from our vanished tales.
Jan 27, 2019
Jan 27, 2019 at 2:30 AM UTC
I’ve watched you now a full half hour
Self-poised upon that yellow flower;
And, little Butterfly! indeed
I know not if you sleep or feed.
How motionless!—not frozen seas
More motionless!—and then
What joy awaits you, when the breeze
Hath found you out among the trees,
And calls you forth again!
This plot of orchard-ground is ours;
My trees they are, my Sister’s flowers:
Here rest your wings when they are weary,
Here lodge as in a sanctuary!
Come often to us, fear no wrong;
Sit near us on the bough!
We’ll talk of sunshine and of song,
And summer days, when we were young;
Sweet childish days, that were as long
As twenty days are now.
8.7k
How this **** fable instructs
And mocks! Here's the parody of that moral mousetrap
Set in the proverbs stitched on samplers
Approving chased girls who get them to a tree
And put on bark's nun-black
Habit which deflects
All amorous arrows. For to sheathe the ****** shape
In a scabbard of wood baffles pursuers,
Whether goat-thighed or god-haloed. Ever since that first Daphne
Switched her incomparable back
For a bay-tree hide, respect's
Twined to her hard limbs like ivy: the puritan lip
Cries: 'Celebrate Syrinx whose demurs
Won her the frog-colored skin, pale pith and watery
Bed of a reed. Look:
Pine-needle armor protects
Pitys from Pan's assault! And though age drop
Their leafy crowns, their fame soars,
Eclipsing Eva, Cleo and Helen of Troy:
For which of those would speak
For a fashion that constricts
White bodies in a wooden girdle, root to top
Unfaced, unformed, the nipple-flowers
Shrouded to suckle darkness? Only they
Who keep cool and holy make
A sanctum to attract
Green virgins, consecrating limb and lip
To chastity's service: like prophets, like preachers,
They descant on the serene and seraphic beauty
Of virgins for virginity's sake.'
Be certain some such pact's
Been struck to keep all glory in the grip
Of ugly spinsters and barren sirs
As you etch on the inner window of your eye
This ****** on her rack:
She, ripe and unplucked, 's
Lain splayed too long in the tortuous boughs: overripe
Now, dour-faced, her fingers
Stiff as twigs, her body woodenly
Askew, she'll ache and wake
Though doomsday bud. Neglect's
Given her lips that lemon-tasting droop:
Untongued, all beauty's bright juice sours.
Tree-twist will ape this gross anatomy
Till irony's bough break.
8.6k
How dull the wretch, whose philosophic mind
Disdains the pleasures of fantastic kind;
Whose prosy thoughts the joys of life exclude,
And wreck the solace of the poet's mood!
Young Zeno, practis'd in the Stoic's art,
Rejects the language of the glowing heart;
Dissolves sweet Nature to a mess of laws;
Condemns th' effect whilst looking for the cause;
Freezes poor Ovid in an iced review,
And sneers because his fables are untrue!
In search of hope the hopeful zealot goes,
But all the sadder tums, the more he knows!
Stay! Vandal sophist, whose deep lore would blast
The grateful legends of the storied past;
Whose tongue in censure flays th' embellish'd page,
And scorns the comforts of a dreary age:
Wouldst strip the foliage from the vital bough
Till all men grow as wisely dull as thou?
Happy the man whose fresh, untainted eye
Discerns a Pantheon in the spangled sky;
Finds sylphs and dryads in the waving trees,
And spies soft Notus in the southern breeze
For whom the stream a cheering carol sings,
While reedy music by the fountain rings;
To whom the waves a Nereid tale confide
Till friendly presence fills the rising tide.
Happy is he, who void of learning's woes,
Th' ethereal life of bodied Nature knows;
I scorn the sage that tells me it but seems,
And flout his gravity in sunlight dreams!
7.9k
This sunlight shames November where he grieves
In dead red leaves, and will not let him shun
The day, though bough with bough be over-run.
But with a blessing every glade receives
High salutation; while from hillock-eaves
The deer gaze calling, dappled white and dun,
As if, being foresters of old, the sun
Had marked them with the shade of forest-leaves.
Here dawn to-day unveiled her magic glass;
Here noon now gives the thirst and takes the dew;
Till eve bring rest when other good things pass.
And here the lost hours the lost hours renew
While I still lead my shadow o’er the grass,
Nor know, for longing, that which I should do.
7.3k
The wild bee reels from bough to bough
With his furry coat and his gauzy wing,
Now in a lily-cup, and now
Setting a jacinth bell a-swing,
In his wandering;
Sit closer love: it was here I trow
I made that vow,
Swore that two lives should be like one
As long as the sea-gull loved the sea,
As long as the sunflower sought the sun,—
It shall be, I said, for eternity
‘Twixt you and me!
Dear friend, those times are over and done;
Love’s web is spun.
Look upward where the poplar trees
Sway and sway in the summer air,
Here in the valley never a breeze
Scatters the thistledown, but there
Great winds blow fair
From the mighty murmuring mystical seas,
And the wave-lashed leas.
Look upward where the white gull screams,
What does it see that we do not see?
Is that a star? or the lamp that gleams
On some outward voyaging argosy,—
Ah! can it be
We have lived our lives in a land of dreams!
How sad it seems.
Sweet, there is nothing left to say
But this, that love is never lost,
Keen winter stabs the ******* of May
Whose crimson roses burst his frost,
Ships tempest-tossed
Will find a harbour in some bay,
And so we may.
And there is nothing left to do
But to kiss once again, and part,
Nay, there is nothing we should rue,
I have my beauty,—you your Art,
Nay, do not start,
One world was not enough for two
Like me and you.
7.1k
She bares her soul
to no one —
a façade for each mood
that infests her thoughts
like the plague;
reticence stalks her
every now and then,
as she tries shying away
from her darkest
secrets ripe as cherries
hanging from the bough…
a charade of whims
planted mysteriously
on her sealed lips.
Feb 10, 2015
Feb 10, 2015 at 6:24 AM UTC
When grandma laid me down to sleep
she prayed the Lord my soul to keep
and if I died before I woke
she prayed my soul the Lord would yoke
Post-psychedelic black door dreams
monsters climbing in the breeze
Running, falling, flying, stare
yet with the morning not a care
the wafting flow through morning light
Madame’s kitchen fueled the air
The children sang of fresh insight
With voices pure and futures bright:
We smell sausages, we smell sausages,
we smell sausages, we smell sausages,
We smell sausages, we smell sausages,
we smell sausages, we smell sausages
Slipping, sliding, sowing sin
Sipping cider in the sun
Seeking soaring savoir faire
Serenade non-sequitor
Life’s a joke at seventeen
Painful angst, gray misery
With one look the light pours in
Eyes to see, now born again
Fresh squeezed juice is just divine
Grapes and berries off the vine
over easy, over hard
Weeds have overgrown the yard
And all the brothers in their haze
with lifted voices sang their praise:
We smell sausages, we smell sausages,
we smell sausages, we smell sausages,
we smell sausages, we smell sausages,
we smell sausages, we smell sausages
Mother’s teeth and Mother’s paw
Mother’s cradle, Mother’s bough
Mark the day’s devotions done
in the back track He looks on
The Sun is setting in the East,
and though the Magi know the truth
The Book of Lies, lies in disguise
of jagged tooth with mangy hide
The night recedes, the morning calls
Memories of far gone days
Memories of yawning halls
Memories of random joy
Though the hand that feeds we bite
now sing we all, with all our might:
We smell sausages, we smell sausages,
we smell sausages, we smell sausages,
we smell sausages, we smell sausages,
we smell sausages, we smell sausages
Mar 5, 2015
Mar 5, 2015 at 4:25 PM UTC
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
5.1k
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
4.9k
When I am dead and over me bright April
Shakes out her rain-drenched hair,
Though you shall lean above me broken-hearted,
I shall not care.
I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful
When rain bends down the bough;
And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted
Than you are now.
4.8k
O Buddha, the gold vein of thy sermon of mercy ran through gloom-gorged, rocky hearts, and illumined their darkness.
Thou loftiest soarer of renunciation's skies, beneath thy God-lifted eyes, the kingdom of sense-comfort, the rivers of gross greed, the vast and lust-scorched deserts of desire, the tall trees of temporal ambition, the cactus plants of prickly world-worries—all melt into invisible smallness.
Buddha, the arc-light of thy sympathy sought to melt the hardness of cruel hearts. Once thou didst save a lamb by offering thyself in its stead.
Thy solemn thoughts still silently roam through the ether of minds, searching for ecstasy-tuned hearts. Seated beneath the banyan bodhi tree, thou didst make a solemn tryst with the Spirit:
"Beneath the banyan bough,
On the sacred seat I take this vow:
Let derma, bones, and fleeting flesh dissolve;
Until the mysteries of life I solve,
And receive the all-coveted Priceless Lore,
From this place I shall stir, never, nevermore."
Thou symbol of sympathy, incarnation of mercy, give us thy determination, that we may seek truth as doggedly as thou didst. Bless us, that we may be awakened, like thee, to seek remedy for the sorrow-throbs of others as we seek it for ourselves.
From: Whispers from Eternity
A Book of Answered Prayers
1949 Edition
4.8k
The shadows have their seasons, too.
The feathery web the budding maples
cast down upon the sullen lawn
bears but a faint relation to
high summer's umbrageous weight
and tunnellike continuum-
black leached from green, deep pools
wherein a globe of gnats revolves
as airy as an astrolabe.
The thinning shade of autumn is
an inherited Oriental,
red worn to pink, nap worn to thread.
Shadows on snow look blue. The skier,
exultant at the summit, sees his poles
elongate toward the valley: thus
each blade of grass projects another
opposite the sun, and in marshes
the mesh is infinite,
as the winged eclipse an eagle in flight
drags across the desert floor
is infinitesimal.
And shadows on water!-
the beech bough bent to the speckled lake
where silt motes flicker gold,
or the steel dock underslung
with a submarine that trembles,
its ladder stiffened by air.
And loveliest, because least looked-for,
gray on gray, the stripes
the pearl-white winter sun
hung low beneath the leafless wood
draws out from trunk to trunk across the road
like a stairway that does not rise.
4.7k
forgotten trifles
dust and pollen
tie the land and sea together
with a thicket of pine
white light shining through its crown
a bough once firmly rooted in heavy layers of strata
now aboveground it exceeds its breach
like a loaf of darkened bread
it lies (resting in the sand) stacked in rows
the sun and moon having melded its form
--- --- ---
the sky is a coronae of thorns coming down to greet me
running on the beach we see what looks like the torso of an elephant, I say its a wrecked ship, a storm has washed it ashore, you say it came from the Big Bang, we laugh and sit together on the end of an exposed epoch
it is dead
we are alive
thick with moments of compassion
fused with ignorance and neglect
how now are we communicating -- do you remember when you looked into my eyes and raised your arms triumphantly and proclaimed “ologemeide ... I tamed you!”?
Sep 21, 2017
Sep 21, 2017 at 7:47 PM UTC