A Snowflake In Odessa

between these sycamore common and grand

columns rise from the sea

these are not mythical wrathful gods

just giants sleeping in a graying hazy breeze

a voice wishfully speaks to their dead unburied leaves

this eulogy his soft tones go unnoticed

a woman seen in her quietness looks into his eyes

under this undefined and anxious sky

pleading before and after this

day begins and ends

with no witness to bear

he relinquishes himself

snowflake in Odessa

JPPestana

A Snowflake In Odessa

1.18.2022

Above All Else

swing in the wind and dance

of frantic birds leave your soul

on the shelf of cloud there is time

before the storm

if you must be

be the newer man

hands buried deep in earth and clay

spring flowers surprise emerge before their time snow falls begins so softly even softer her words fall lost to snow

a sky squeezed between light and nothing else

is unbelieving it moves among what ghosts survive the sky sighs in relief

clouds leave without a trace

high waters flood over marsh

and road no safe place

for the mass of gulls

backs to the wind

huddled in cold

hard prayer

from the highest branches do hang

dark hearts crimes and spies

it is the vultures roost

the dearest untruth

only the you in

you can know

JPPestana

Above All Else

1.17.2022

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A Sparrow In Maple

is there another way

this locked room is like no other

this thick door a sign a name for loss

hidden from sight it is unknown if

the he even exists

in an aching wind that never ends

cold walls shiver

old snow soot remain in

the trauma vacancy of broken streets below

a body tosses dreamless in deadened sleep

from a window a sparrow in maple barely escapes

flies off into what life

once was

JPPestana

A Sparrow In a Maple

1.15.2022

 Nothing At All

cry out boy! 

cry out now!

you are alone in this town of

shady maple lanes 

flowery girls in summer dresses 

sunny daisies in impossibly green grass

you are forever in the narrow sorrowed alleyways 

between worn lives shouting tears in their despair

go ahead reach deeply into 

the most seemingly pleasant of insanities 

the unimagined is here to stay 

you unlikeliest explorer move from thing

to thing to thing know 

there are great lies still to tell

bells to chime the too fast hours of day

made up sins to share compare

cats on the tin roof confess rub purr for 

soft bread soaked in warm milk

nearby the river is really his sea  

poetry of gulls unconstrained wings are the 

expression of all there is

distracted you look away into the noisy shadows

crooked smiles of dangerous boys running wild 

gleefully certain of nothing 

at all

 

JPPestana

1.11.2022

Nothing At All

 A Romance

she sings alone for those most wanting

in this timeless window bright 

before her these creations flee

light dances with flesh and wish

her stories whisper more  

today she is rose and surely thorn 

wind and rain and fate 

an answer before a question

asked once before

too late 

 

JPPestana

A Romance

1.8. 2022

 

 

 

Of Frogs and Gods

call me in the voice you used once in a dream

when petals fell on the still pond and ripples

moved the sun from here to there when

sky and water became one insanely blue thing

when frogs became gods

gods became frogs and

I became one

and the

same

 

Of Frogs and Gods

JPPestana

1.3.2022

 

Survival

in this purist listen of winter wind

the most delicate leaves invisible on snowy willows speak

I tremble in their

prayer

JPPestana

Survival

1.3.2022