Nightbird perches high
beneath the shooting stars
that dapple the bouquet
    of sleepless peace
... his soft downy breast      
    has lent breath
to the sweet April afterglow
     heaving with song

The mystical feathered troubadour's
     swooning echo
A melodic twilight serenade
conjures a moonstruck metamorphosis,
sprouting magical wings of flight;
rousing a lonely heart's esprit
     to fly away unfettered
     in constellations of song

How dare imaginings spilled from the big dipper
enchant such an enrapturing magic spell?
It's so far to fall from swinging on a star!
It's so far beyond nearing crescent moon
     when you wish upon a star  

Thereupon struck by a bewitching bolt of starlight;
Dropping asudden as a shooting-star!

    Rolling like trailing thunder;
        tucked and tumbling ―
             somersaulting,

           celestial rumbling
blossoming with an unearthly joy

A nascent winged heart splayed bare,
soars upon cresting wind waves;
    dreaming of that shapeless  
          w h o  o  o  o  s h ―
         gathering beneath
        ~ uplifting wings ~

  Suddenly ― gliding freely,
       winging gracefully
  upon wafting star drift glitter;
lilting lightly upon the arising cadence
of nightingale's melodious fluted song

Nightingale sings sweet April perfume
beneath the star shed lamplight twinkle

... and it makes no difference if it's only a dream
    if my heart had wings


imagined by:   Jesse Stillwater

Out here in the fields of the distance
whither the wind blows the silence further afield;
roughhewn footprints show a windswept pathway  
from whence feral feet lightly trod   

Only the passing whispers chase after the gypsy wind:
that the silence be in quire, placed aloft like a sigh,
pealing through the gentle sway of sweet grass' hush

There are no walls need echo an evanescent wind-song
as each breath of earthen psalm vanishes
lilting into the crystalline quietude colour;

The callused patience still held in these hands
is frayed and tattered, but hope heals stronger
than a ream of paper wings to fly away

And I'm mindful I'm not alone again, lost in
a lingering silent storm — pensively listening —
enraptured aneath all the big skies hold
 

                    Jesse Stillwater

The belated summer sky is alive
with a  D r a g o n f l y ballet

Beneath,.. the rain parched sod
lay sullied, cracked open
by an unsated thirstiness
awaiting the painted autumn days
and the cleansing rain's renewal

A lace-winged hatch rises skyward
— meandering  airborne —
drifting upwards like a burst of dust
dissipating in an invisible cloud
of eventide's silent breath

Darting shadows hover
above a seeker's curiosity
    just this side the  
softening sunset backdrop

A synthesis of fluid motion
  – darting kinesis –
    swift agile fliers
steal away over the thirsty pond;
their mesmerizing beauty enchants
as the dimming dusk falls silent —-
embellishing the unrelenting ending
   another summer's
 imminent curtain call;

reminding how inexorable-time
is only a contrived human notion,
a recurring extrapolation
  of passing  seasons

Heightening awareness:
how we too are only
passing through these
unholdable moments
   coming to know
    we cannot stop
   how life unfolds

The raindrops will quench
the pond's aching thirst
again one fall someday...

  — hereafter —
there will be another
beauty of dragonflies
some other eyes will see
preying on another burgeoning
gossamer-winged hatch

          and
another beckoning autumn
when the dragonflies hover
below the gazing totems
     in the treetops


Jesse Stillwater ... September 2018                                                 .

.

He liked to gather up the silence in the springtime
  Pack it up and carry it in an old timeworn leather rucksack
From a distance it looked like he was a senseless fool
  Picking up handfuls of nothing;  then putting it in an empty jar


No mind is paid to the fleeting glance in the corner of a stranger's eyes
  They were out of reach from the box he was living in
He kept gathering up the endless silence like missing pieces of a lost soul
   It seemed to be everywhere ―  and in it heard,  the only voice he knew


Supposing all his thoughts pondered come forth of silence
  Often resting sheltered beneath branches where it grew on the trees ―
It wasn't just the songbird that broke the stillness in dappled sunlight
  It was the dearth of love that rivers through a strong heartbeat’s
silenced words ...


Jesse Stillwater

04   May   2018

.
I’m just a lonely traveler
   on this earth
Sometimes it feels as if I'm
waiting for the sky to fall
with each passing breathe
       of wind

   Standing alone,
   a windswept tree
   leans downwind;
conspicuously wrought,
   naked and bowed
   by the grinding
      silent forces
  at nature's whim

Rootless tumbleweeds
roll by randomly:
    broken off,
spinning clockwise,
never looking back,
timeworn and tired
of resisting the prevailing
    high desert wind
and its unheld temper

Rattling the tinder
   dry sagebrush
like songless wind-chimes;
    voiceless fugitives
wreathing a bellowing silence


    Jesse Stillwater

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

Lamenting lines filling
   stillwater.

Find love in me, tarn.

Disrupt
    this still.

Ripple on the window.

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

I sat by the lake
sipping coffee and feeding the ducks.
In between breadcrumbs,
I dialed his number.
"Your call could not go through."
I grinned;
Could not, not would not.
Long since the city summers,
I finally found our stillwater space:
a sense of security that felt
as serene as my remote arcadia,
disturbed only by the footstrokes
of a hungry mallard passing by.
No breadcrumbs for him.

"Call failed."
Call failed, not I failed,
and I picked apart the stale bagel
to dip in my coffee
and feed to the ducks.

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

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

life goes on
even if you're
standing still

It was Winter 1st
   not long ago,
the longest night
lay bare next to me
    like a dream
     that passes
        silently,  
     then recurs —
hearing the silence
   whisper softly
as a colorless echo

      Withal —
    the shortest
    yesterdays,
half light minutes,
grey wintry mood
     moments,
  without hope
   of blue sky
impending lightly:

      Alone,..
   even a glass
      half full
under a solstice
     full moon,
  is only a glass
     partly full
  of moonlight

Twice as much
       silence
still leaves you
   half empty;
  and every tear
tastes the same
     in winter


Jesse stillwater — winter 2018

.
One day at a time
swings the pendulum;
only love awakens senses
too ephemeral to be restrained,
like the magic of a phonograph stylus
in a vintage vinyl groove
and the sensual touch
      of skin so new

It's not easy to watch
a flock flying away
      in the distance,
seeing the expanse beyond
reach of a wandering mind;

      heed distracted
      by the slow sway
of the treetops hypnotic careen

Doves dive on feathered canter,
      silent as the winged wind,
broke free from the gravity
      befallen the weight
            of the world
                                                
      Look­ing up wondering
            beyond the sky,
         the passing clouds
            crawl across
palliating the dusk hazed horizon

Synchronicity transcends across
an immeasurably deep river chasm,
      into a wordless abyss
      ensconced unthought
              between
        here and there

Silent silhouettes
            glide across
      the valley void below,
            wings to the sky

and, if you listen to a moment breathe,
            you can hear
                  the silent peace .............

you can feel the prevailing wind's direction
            blowing through your soul


             Jesse Stillwater
            December 2017

My mind is its own body
of water, fluid emotion
at mercy to the moon
Sometimes rapid as
the churning ocean,
unharnessable, dams
each waterwheel I build
as if equilibrium was Hell,
& then
Sometimes vapid as
a stillwater lake, where
peace is dawn's ripple,
days' first surface breach
of a fish upon fly bait.

"It's awfully hard to lead when your veins are full of lead,"
I said.
"At least, that's what I've read."

"You read too much then," she said,
then dove off the deep end like some kind of bird.  

I'm having trouble with compiling a digest of everything I've ever heard.
Which is to say, I find it all hard to digest.

Converse with one to get some kind of outlook,
only to desert those notions for the exact converse.

The answer's buried somewhere in a desert, underneath a billion minute grains of other answers,
but the words still flow like leaves in water,
and every minute of it just leaves me feeling number.

If luck be a lady, then I've got her number,
but who be the drawer?
And which drawer did I file it under?

It starts like this
Watch the ocean and sky kiss
Building a ship of feathers
A place for sunburnt, stranded sailors
A tray for stillwater dreams
We crave a spell, a fix, a score
A contagion or a cure
Wearing shades till the candlelight begins its rhyme
Never get caught in nursery time
Never make contact of eyes
We tell ourselves it's Bethlehem
Inhaling glass
Playing house
Psychological profiles of planets
Silence amuses and upsets
Lay on your backs, arms out-stretched
Watch other heartbeats teach flying lessons
Hallucinate in sunspots
See the clouds as they dot out your fate in negative space
An extinct hue of eyes amidst a shade of blue
Stick your head out the firmament
Past the clouds
Breathe in the stars
Dome of the world
Never as menacing as these white fences
The moon and her ******
All our defenses against a scorching sun
Skyscrapers pierce but our fingers an eyes remain the best tools to drill small holes
To see what we want to see
Squinting in belief or disbelief
Hot cities and cold deserts
Hot coals and dust bowls
Anchored ghosts
A strange, soothing spark
A defeated arc
Acorn fell upon my head
Mother earth waits with bated breath and open jaws
Beware mass hysteria in a closed world
Fear-mongers striking dumb first
War efforts
Sounding alarms
Black swans
Sick doctors
Confetti leaves
Glittering sheets of ice
Thrones of sapphire
Where is all that truly radiates
Invisible lighthouses of hearts
Pitching tens for spiritual camps
Sitting Indian-style above his grasshoppers
Waiting for the day they'll make music again
Rotating along the circle curve like Buddha on a toy train set
A supposed circuit unending
Making night, restoring light
Millions of years in one blink
Life unworthy of life still thrives
Tattooed with shoelaces and turquoise veins
Repercussions of deformity
Antiseptic bombs
Hitchhiker's thumb
Scapegoats and escape artists
Chicken pox
Contempt attacks with gnashing teeth
Compliments and black *** magic
Totality, forgiveness, thunderstruck
Too good to be true
Kneel in the desert and die
Animals **** and we sing love songs
Oblivious housewife with a feather-duster
Talking puppets
A flick of ash
Adam's rotten-apple atoms
Superbirds and Zenplanes
The Morning After
Dead idols, trendsetters, setting worlds on fire
Casino collapsing
Purse-*******-Keys, check
An embrace like a boa
Penetrate, Swallow Whole
One nail through two feet
Time's cruel canopy
A funny tragedy
The audience is laughing blood

Gazing across verdant moss carpets
And hills cut gently by the rail bridge,
A traveler paints on a platform
Undisclosed, watching the bright cove fan,
Unscaleable, into fjorded mounts.
Brush bristles blot confident masses,
Humming while the thinner brush defines,
But how can they capture in one stroke
The place where foam-film ends abruptly
And gives way to stillwater mirrors?
Or that distant rim, broad and exposed,
Where sea and sky blend and lift islands,
And white clouds roll on forevermore?