Sunset Over Corn...

Sunset Over Corn...

It's a small post-industrial city,

Like most of them are around here,

"Back home." 

The ones that mattered in my life,

They still have small factories a bit,

Restaurants and dentists,

Places I used to know,

Places where those places used to be.

Restaurants have changed names,

Menus,

Staff,

Quality.

I came here for the living,

And also for the dead.

There's moss on some of the headstones,

I ruined a towel cleaning the letters, 

So they can be seen again.

After all the decades,

At least that.

You can never really go home again,

Only in your head and heart.

Some of the faces I saw,

Some of the words I heard in person,

That might not happen again.

What I'm in store for looks like a hard road,

Will keep me off other roads until I don't know when.

There are no real cornfields where I'm going,

Not like the ones that surround these cities and towns,

The pines and waters of the Great Lakes must sustain me in memory.

This may be my last country highway sunset over corn.

My heart is torn,

But I know where I belong now.

Some things will whisper to me forever.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

© 08/07/2026

New Mexico on The Southwest Chief...

New Mexico on The Southwest Chief...

The blue sky is vast,

Wide,

Endless.

Whale clouds swim it in widely-separated pods,

And the tail of the Rockies streches across the Norther horizon.

These Amtrak wheels sing constantly on the rails,

An endless beat keeping time,

Master clock of breakfast,

Lunch,

Dinner,

Destinations.

Albuquerque is somewhere East of us,

Racing to us,

Timed to the beat of random conversations overheard in snippets and bits,

From people who are leaving Everywhere,

And going there too.

The buttes and mesas and chaparral race past in a non-stop panorama,

Sage and barbed wire fences,

Cattle and sand,

Dirt roads to everywhere,

Caved in adobes and old hulks of steel chariots.

The whole world is in desert camo,

Tan and shades of sage and the russet brown of lonely telephone poles.

It's how the journey sings,

If your lucky graced with the swing of an Aermotor windmill pulling water for hot cows.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

© 07/27/2026

Rolling BackOut Of The Route 66 Sunset OnThe Southwest Chief...

Rolling BackOut Of The Route 66 Sunset OnThe Southwest Chief... 

A friendly neighbor drove me to the tracks after the mad dash of stocking and packing,

My lovely Wife is no longer able to join me in the adventure,

Sad at that detail. We always were best at playing together,

A sunset of its own sort.

Seated for an hour in the hot dry evening wind of Riverside,

Tense with wondering which side of the tracks Amtrak's steel pony would show up on,

Knowing this is my last ride anytime soon,

A date you don't want to miss.

Dad is turning 85,

Little brother 60,

Big sister 66 like the highway,

We're all American classics now,

But I still have some steam left in my ventricles.

Stressing my ankle and puffing,

I made my seat and boarded like the big engine that could,

Wiped the literal sweat from my brow,

And rocked the rails in a coach seat bound for Chicago.

One my oldest and dearest friends,

A brother after so many years,

He will pick me up in the city after 46 hours of steel wheels rolling on rails.

The anticipation is a familiar glow,

And I am chatting on my phone while it charges with a long-time internet poetry friend in Louisiana,

Decades of conversation in phone calls,

Text messages,

And best of all two poets dancing with the muses together.

The rails take me out of Riverside following Old Route 66 past familiar places from my Fiber Cowboy days,

San Bernardino,

Hesperia,

Victorville,

Helendale,

Barstow.

The coach seats are wide and deep,

At 6'6" I stretch my legs straight,

Bright with the sunset windows of Americana on rails,

Run down in places but still magnificent.

The window panorama rolls from Southwestern architecture and palm trees to the depths of the Cajon Pass,

Ear popping 3,300' climb between piles of rock and stone and sand,

Creosote bushes and sparse chaparral the Earth's blanket here.

I walk-roll down to the observation car,

Step down to the cafe for a San Pellegrino sparkling water and a refill of black coffee.

The sky of the West has rolled on from a hot pink metallic sunset with high thin clouds of purple metal foil to a deep indigo cap atop an intense rosé blush that should be a lipstick color on a hot date in a classic film.

Now it's black,

A prelude to the train rocking me to sleep,

Occasional lights of desert life twinkling across the invisible sands.

The sound of the wheels and the rocking of the train bathe you in the essence of a twilight journey,

A rusty adventure that preludes the night.

It's all rock and roll,

America.

Sit up and ride.

AquarianM

Daniel A. Stafford

© 07/25/2026

United States Of America At 250 Years...

United States Of America At 250 Years... 

E Pluribus Unum - Out of Many, One.

 It's crazy, the shift in atmosphere between 1976 and 2026.

So many are in mourning for what was thought to be normal bedrock for this country.

Institutions.

Programs for foreign investments in kindness.

Programs for the informing of the domestic populace.

We have taken opinions from everyone and called them news. The distinction between opinion and objective fact seems so blurry in a world dominated by podcasts, YouTube channels, and blogs (maybe) that even an understanding of what that the definition of the discrimination is appears to be fading from public consciousness.

To many who believed there was a structured order for progress towards peace and individual freedom and global prosperity and cooperation, it feels like a chaos bomb has gone off. A metaphorical flaming wrecking ball that is tearing down a razing what we thought of as the structure and nature of this nation.

Some of the shell remains, but it can't be rebuilt for the better until we figure out how to heal the base divisions in our country. People rarely understand Latin any longer, and our national motto has been changed from "E Pluribus Unum" to "In God We Trust" by regressive actors.

The sense of value in being a civil servant is under attack, as are the people who are civic-minded.

We are divided by so many classic dualities:

• Racial Equity or Discrimination. 
• Gender Equity or Discrimination. 
• Freedom of protest or its violent suppression. 
• Freedom from religion or its imposition upon our lives. 
• Economic security for the masses, or unregulated capitalistic exploitation leading to massive inequality.

Most of all, will we be a nation of compassion or a land of cruelty.

For all the technological changes, the challenges of the human condition, the battle between love and fear is what still plagues us after two hundred and fifty years.

And yet, this is still one nation, so far. Like the founders, we can only hope that our better angels can prevail, and that we can build this nation forward into a better worthiness of its heritage.

We can and should celebrate the framework we were handed by our forebears, and what good we have been able to be in the world.

Still, we need to roll up our sleeves, step into the future, and hope we can heal and rebuild something of beauty and grace.

In two hundred and fifty years, so much has changed, and so much has not.

We're still imperfect humans, reaching for the light.

Happy birthday to you, our United States of America.

May we yet live up to that name and vision.

© 07-05-2026 by Daniel A. Stafford

Odin's Breath...

Odin's Breath...

...lives in the quiet places,

Frosted mist squeezing between snowflakes,

The moment a stag raises it's head,

Before it ears rotate,

The time between the last of dusk and the first of night,

The instant between thought and action.

That gathering pause.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

© 07/05/2026

Learning to Use Ghostwriter To Write In Markdown...

Learning Markdown Practice 001 - 07-04-2026

Just me learning MarkDown file editing.

1. I understand that a single asterisk on either side of a character or string will make it Italic.
2. I also understand that TWO asterisks to either side of a character will render it BOLD.
3. I further understand that THREE asterisks to either side of a character will render it both Italic and Bold at The same time.

Now I’m curious about links - I think I understand links in markdown, but I’ll try them here below for testing purposes.

1. So I think this will give a link to my main poetry blog: Spell Book Poetry - Let’s test it and see… Beautiful, that definitely worked.
2. Now let’s try an image display:
   - Happy 250th Birthday, USA!

Beautiful! Now, let’s try both Structured and Unstructured lists:

First, a couple of strucured list formats, hopefully:

1. One
2. Two
3. Three

A. A B. B - Hmm. Looks like only numerically structured lists, or I don’t know the correct alphabetically-structured syntax yet.

Non-structured lists:

• Asterisk bullet 1
• Asterisk bullet 2
• Asterisk bullet 3

Now, I’m not 100% on what a Block Quote is yet, but let’s try it:

“This is my first ‘Block Quote,’ so I wanted to see what it looks like.” - Dan Stafford, just now. {02:09 PDT on 07-04-2026}

Wow, that was kind of cool - and I think that’s the majority of Mark Down syntax I’ll use. I don’t currently write code except for light HTML.

I Like Mark Down. It’s simple and lightweight, without distractions.

Now to figure out how to get Mark Down converted to HTML… - also Dan Stafford

Ghostwriter can be found HERE at GHOSTWRITER's page.

For Windows, once you download the Ghostwriter installer and extract it to a folder, you can just click on Ghostwriter.exe" to run the program. I just right-clicked the application on the taskbar and pinned it to the taskbar while it was running. Simple stuff.

Have Fun! - Dan

Blue Ships...

Blue Ships... 

There's a story just a little old,

Still needing to be told,

Forever is far too long to hold, 

A wistful pan of fools' gold.

She was like an angel,

A glory to behold,

Stars in my eyes,

I would never have believed,

Always knew she was way out of my league.

Years and decades,

Dancing in the corner of my eye,

I still sometimes sigh,

But I can't lie,

I was was a wistful fool,

Didn't know what was true,

As time wastefully slipped by,

Can't play it cool,

It's all about what we did and didn't do.

One night she said it out,

"Love him to death,

We should've married long, long ago,

Just never happened." 

My jaw hit the floor,

As she walked out the door,

Never to fill my eyes again,

Haunted by what we did and didn't win.

She was like an angel,

A glory to behold,

Stars in my eyes,

I would never have believed,

Always knew she was way out of my league.

And as I reminisce,

It always seems amiss,

And I will be the one,

And she will be the one,

We both will be the ones who got away.

And I will be the one,

And she will be the one,

We both will be the ones who got away.

Haunts me to this day,

True but sad to say,

And I will be the one,

And she will be the one,

We both will be the ones who got away.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

© 06/30/2026

It Takes So Long To Find Your Voice...

It Takes So Long To Find Your Voice...

You can spend years,

Whisper singing in the shower,

Trying to keep up with Elvis,

Your truck rolls faster.

Half-baked karaoke every six months,

Restrained,

Untrained,

All gut and beat and no practice.

We gotta work to feed the bills,

No frills,

Sleepless chills,

There's no control in a tired brain.

Music is all about time,

Man,

Keeping it is wonderful,

But first you gotta find it,

'Cause when you can't

It takes so long to find your voice.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

(C) 06-28-2026