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Best Poems Written by Stephe Watson

Below are the all-time best Stephe Watson poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Stephe Watson Poem

Snow, Snake, Snow, Birds, Sickness, Sitting

So many, maybe millions
No, billions. Trillions?
Of stars, a quiet, hot snowfall
of white stars; sandal season squall.
Each birch tree here outdoing 
January's record accumulation.

Weeks of hour after hour after hour
upon day upon day upon day of
birches' burstings into snow tears
seed of children as-yet unrooted,
unsown, ungrown, unknown.

A snake came to discard its boundaries-
Rubbing against me for some many
minutes. Trusting and patient;
or...oblivious to time and me

Then?  A bluebird who
seemed to Steal the Sky
and carry it in her feathers.
So much so that looking up
I was shown only gray-
Gray piled on grey, and here
only this bird shone.

Then a woodpecker- her red 
neck spot a singular cinnabar blot
a calligrapher's littler chop drop
a dalliance in dun
a dalliance with joy!
Otherwise grey with white streaks
bordered in black.
She landed too.
Beside me in purported meditation.
I mean, if I had been successful
at the measureless practice I'd not've 
remembered what I'd been there to do.

There by the Spruce, there by the altar
to unseen faeries, in crying distance of
The Grieving Tree, a yellow willow a-weep.

And then, the third day, I sat-
convinced of my path and this need
to sit there, on that Way, trying to do better,
to do less, to be better, to be less.
So I sat, convinced of the rarity:
The snake come to slough her skin
and rub alongside my leg where it
met and nested and nestled my foot.

Both died, or so it seemed.  The Buddhist snake-
Given new life, ouroborous of life, after
shuffling off its mortal matte coil.  
The woodpecker, from nest to laid-to-rest
Now lay, an offering, on altar stone.

I say both but it was three-
the Skybird too!  Dead of thievery.
Dead and witnessed by Third Eye, this
third "Why?!?!"  And so I?  I cried and I
I sat.

So I sat-
weeping with tree,
weeping for she.

For the bluebird died too!
There where the snake came,
there where the noisy-billed'd be.
She stole and savored the Sky
and Came to roost with this guy.
And by that same leg, with not one
single chirp, arrested her motion
and toppled over brushing my leg
with a blueSky wing under a darkening,
darkening, blackening, sky.


So I sat.
And then.
So I sat and then...
This fourth day alone,
beside faerie stone
A barred owl came down-
afraid not of Death.
Afraid not of Life.

I was neither surprised or amazed.
So I sat.
And sat.
And yes.

This owl then passed.

Just as the last
came to their last
in ev'ry each day passed

This owl then passed.
Dark eyes went hollow.
Lids slipped over soul.


Fluttered up like a helium dream
Six-foot up and then, suspend!
In no hurry to melt into Earth,
and no hurry to dissolve into Heaven.

Details | Stephe Watson Poem

The worst of the bright-cracks have passed.
The tumultiest of the bucketiest of the rains have proved not to last.
The cat has chirp-purred his way into a damp-fur snuggle.
It’s Price is Right time, now.

There’s a secret number.
To determine from beneath the summer-weight sheet,
from beneath the semi-awake but mostly asleep slumber-weight of this brain state.
From beneath the cloud cover and new-formed fog rising to blot out the new sun.
There’s a secret number hidden away in the gray that matters.
There’s a secret number literally there in the illiterate numberless noggin’.
There’s a nudge and a look (you know, I know, we each know that look) to insist we persist.

The head butt and urgent nuzzling and nuzzle urging and body lean
have made it plain in my coffee-less morning that through my sticky eyes
and muddled brain the scritching and the stroking and the scratching
must commence. The dance of where and how firm and the guess of
how frequent and how long a stroke and how fast or how slow is set to no and yes.
(At least I don’t have to guess at if-the-belly; I know it won’t e’er be the belly, no.)

I have to guess the right number of behind-the-ear fingertip presses without going over.
And without coming in too low.
I have to guess the right number of forehead fingernail short-stroke scratches without going over.
And without coming in too low.
I have to guess the right number of knuckle drags across the lumbar as haunches rise without going over.
And without coming in too low.
I have to guess the perfect secret number to keep his trust. To earn his not thanks and not claws. To be unthanked by a cat is simply the way of life. To be returned to by a cat is all we can ever aspire to. To be wrong in the early morning, to fail the mattress math of cat is to prove the unworthiness to this furred fellow of all humanity. There is one, and it is secret, number.
The cat demands it. Showcase your guessery and there won’t be love from the cat but there will also surely be no Showdown of people skills and feline necessities.

The wet cat needs this now.
Another day may dawn with designs for summer slumber through summer storms
but now - the numbers.
And if now, the numbers are found,
The Price Will Be Right.

Purrring.
Purrring as rain drops pool and rivulet their way off the Burgundy Maple outside the
unseen but screened window. Thrishhh and plip plip plüp.
The weight of a soothed cat against your arm. Morning songbirds, safely coming into the
dry-ish and catless yard. Seeking worms and mates and moments among the tiny flowers in the great green sea.
And the tickle of whiskers against a collarbone.
And the sound of the mouth surrounds opening and softnesses opening for a great big ‘ole smallish yawn.
And Purring and Purring and Purring.

Details | Stephe Watson Poem

Starstring Lingering

The lights have fallen
to nightbreak.
There, on the sharp horizon.
Cracked open.
Leaching
pastel peach...
(Or is it apricot?)
...into the dimming blue.

The moon,
two stars -
aligned,
in a line.

Three drops of rain;
frozen in their falling.
An overnight shower,
lasting longer than it did...

By the tiny grace
of an unseen spider;
her webwork
holding these three,
three pieces of rain -
up to the fading moonlight
as dawn conspires to interfere
with the colors she is daily born in.

The white brings blue.
The day brings night.
The night brings dew.

I long for you.
In the long days,
in the longer nights.
In the dark,
in the light.

If I’m lucky,
in my ache,
I’ll be suspended
for a moment more.
Between heaven.
Between earth.

Consumed by starlight.
Embracing dark, forestalling dawn.
Awash in moonlight.

Details | Stephe Watson Poem

Fivesevenfive5

The beavers love rain.

They love water so much they

keep it where it fell.

Details | Stephe Watson Poem

Moon's Rise, Man's Fall

A colorless sunrise, 
this moon...tonight.
Nothing she has to
forget.  Nothing to ready
for. 

There behind the swamp's
trees. Soon to fall -
from rot
from age
from beetle
from beaver
from wind.
Still, though
she rises where
all will fall.
Her borrowed light
brightening my
darker, later
days.

Details | Stephe Watson Poem

The Golden Our

There comes a time,
in the early, but
not so early, morn

when, and this is key,
if a portion of an instant
rationed a morsel of a moment -
but a crumb of that fell free
and it cast a deep shadow
whose depths made mockeries 
of spelunk;

which you may remember 
you'd dreamt of in some past
life and, if from this minusculity
sprang, the littlest offspring,
a hint of a glance of,
a coup d'oeil
the last of day,
the half-remembered,
prior life

when, if you glimpse
the newborn gold,
your heart'll still,
your mind'll still
and yes, your stillness
be distilled into
stiller still

if your heart and eyes
don't again conspire
to draw your mind
to your routine
of first and, perhaps
only, taking in the
most of things
the highlights and the
canopy's myriad meanderings
the rootings at their footings
supposed but rarely seen
in dark, in secret but
carrying no wrong
rather though
in the tree trunks'
simple middle


for a briefest, gilted 
eternity, the trees
will burn not from
their crown
nor from their feet
and, despite the ice,
the sparkless space,
the cold steel
darts of insistent
slanting rains,
the trees will burn,
the trees will burn,
and all-at-once
the peripatetic sun,
its whims having won,
will dance along
and share its breath
with everyone

Details | Stephe Watson Poem

Having Felled It

The warmth no longer comes
it seems to only leave.

The furry ones, all
caught in hypnotic disbelief:
hardening ground's
taken root
where once
gardening grounds
(forsaken, mute)
were once and again
makin' fruit.

Each beast, shaking
like a leaf
(though, truth be told
I've only ever 
seen 'em dance)
as if to compel
the sun to
sidle up
'n stay a bit.

The butterflies are all turned
to windblown, drying leaves.

The biting clouds of gnats
are now 
the biting cold of early flakes.
All hatched and reared
(the secret thrush, the ungainly, splashtering loon, 
the burly snakes)
as evening hurries home
to be home for the night.
It's so early, so late.

The fatted robin's gone
just as the field mice hid
from barn-now-lapcat.
This constellation of crows,
a raucous perch, tried 
that hiding ploy: their clotted knotted
silhouetted faux-leaf blackening hide out
where the leaves’d lived but crows are not
meant to blot the low sun as they’d plotted...
And so it was as so its been since Oh, so ever since -
a bird of prey, answered their
plaintive caws with painted claws -
a fracturous startle from above
a crash!  a cry!  a scattering!
one down, one murder
still.

Nothing softens, nothing greens.
No flowering as Southern urges
force flocks into making V-lines.
Each nest left: all break routines.
Summer is souring, as frost emerges
and last-one-picked, the pines -
lefties left in left field;
icing soon, their needles their shield
and, the coach never intervenes...

The light more slow to show
more tugged and bent to slant.
The sunshafts seem to push
the cold ahead as snow by plows.
And for our part we too as well 
well, we turn away, turn indoors.
We turn our dreams to
make-it-through this.

We turn our collars up, 
and too, our eyes to floors.
We turn our (each seems to)
thoughts inside this shell
not towards Inner but 
rather, of course, truly from-
far and away from the 
Cold & Falling, closing crisp.
How unlike the Scholar's Cup!

Our husks indoors,
our thoughts follow
but burrow deeper still.
Don't blame the light
for not keeping company
so deep where hides 
a fearful, frigid 'you.'

It's Autumn
all turns on
one point.

It's Autumn
Fall burns on.

It's Autumn
sun burns on
one point
(of light.)

I have never felled so alive
as now.

Details | Stephe Watson Poem

Zuowang

In the high valley
I make my Sit and Forget place.
(Truly, though my Chit and Regret place.)
     My cushion.
     My tea.
These pale wildflowers, 
and the hauntings of my heart.
The silhouetted geese,
and the tauntings of my mind.
(Truly, though the dauntings of my no-self.)



The winds blow up the
slopings.
The breeze pools, cool here,
in the dale.

Each Accomplished blade of grass,
each of the thousand million,
sways now South, now Easterly...
Opinionless, the sheaves of green
whither this, whither that;
all bending, all pointing
singly, as One...

I alone, in this high mountain valley,
somewhere above the clouds,
somewhere beneath the peaks,
am delighted by my opinions;
tormented by my opinions.

I sit...
Breezes...
I sit...
To wit:

Best Poems Written by Stephe Watson

Mistitation

Perhaps Not the Mountain

Snow, Snake, Snow, Birds, Sickness, Sitting

Purr, No Chance To Dream

Starstring Lingering

Fivesevenfive5

Moon's Rise, Man's Fall

The Golden Our

Having Felled It

Zuowang