Rowan's Promise...

Rowan's Promise...

Rowan had long locks of hair,
The color of Autumn fire,
Streaked through with chestnut brown.

Her eyes like amber and cinnamon were filled with an easy smile,
Warm like morning embers,
Easy to rekindle the bright light of laughter.

Rowan was the first-born daughter of Summer,
Her childhood filled with yellow dandelions and their seed-children flying on soft breezes,
Tickle-chin and bumble bees,
Butterflies and clover,
Beautiful lilac bushes and fireflies.

Soon enough came cool days,
Grasses grown tall and tufted,
Rabbits hiding abed and birds in big swooping black flocks,
Milkweed bursting with soft white and acorns falling,
Their caps like lost hats,
With breath hanging in the air like magic.

The leaves on the trees were mimics,
Vivid mirrors of Rowan's bright hair or her mother's,
Brown and red and orange and yellow,
Like cartoon fire decorating the land.

In what seemed like only a breath of time,
The air turn ed shimmering white as young Rowan exhaled,
Ponds became dark reflecting sheets of the soft charcoal-gray skies,
White flakes fell to Earth,
Days shortened into long and dark nights,
The stars became sharp and bright,
And drifts of snow rolled across the open fields,
Tufted by the tall locks of tawny-gold grasses and dark leafless trees.

Rowan and Summer lit candles and watched the Hunter dance across the cold dark nights.

It was one these long dark nights that Summer began to teach her daughter of their family:

"Rowan,
My love,
The time we just passed with the turning of the leaves,
The harvest and the falling of seeds,
The flight of the milkweed seed and the seeds of tall grasses on the wind,
The time of first breath steaming the air and first frost upon the prairies and windows,
That time was your time,
Your beauty lavishing the Earth."

Rowan smiled and remembered the beautiful colors,
And the feeling of the Spirit World close to the world of the living.

Summer continued the education of her daughter in her soft and warm voice:

"The time before that when all was green and hot,
When bees were busy and flowers turned to seed,
When leaves were emerald and creatures were swimming,
When dandelions showed their yellow heads and nights were warm and soft,
When birds raised their chicks,
That time was my time,
My beauty lavishing the Earth."

Rowan closed her amber eyes and remembered her youngest days,
When she roamed barefoot and waded in ponds chasing pretty dragonflies.

Summer continued on by the flickering light of candles,
As the snowy winds howled strong and frigid outside their house of stone and thatch,
An ancient abode made warm by the fire in a large hearth:

"Now we are in the time of my Grandmother Winter,
And this is her time,
And she will lavish her beauty upon the Earth."

Rowan's eyes opened in colorful surprise,
Full of doubt and disbelief.

"Mother,"
Said Rowan in a voice of dry leaves rustling in the tree tops,
"How can you call such as this beauty?"

Rowan gave depth to her question in a voice like a honking flock of geese and the flapping of many birds' wings:

"I can not bear to move far from our front door,
The trees look dead as sticks,
The paths I ran upon are treacherous with ice and snow,
The birds and bees and butterflies are all gone away,
And even the spiders,
Every pond is a sheet of ice as black as night,
And if the frozen winds do not chill my bones,
Then they howl and shriek about our door,
Worse if they are gone all is silent and dark as the days are short!"

Summer smiled as a wolf howled at the bright full Moon somewhere across the fields.

She replied to her daughter in the tones of a babbling brook and gently-rustling grasses:

"Look in the morning at the silver and crystal of the icicles in early sun,
And hear tonight the quiet inside,
For this is the time of rest and reflection,
Of learning and stories and tales of things long-gone and grand,
The time when old things pass and are either forgotten or woven into legend and songs,
As all the world makes ready for the arrival of my Mother,
The ever-lovely and new Spring."

Summer went on in the voice of bees buzzing and birds singing in the rustling boughs of trees:

"My Grandmother Winter is the source of all that is or ever will be,
She is the cold and the night,
The great void in which the Sun and Stars all nest,
She is the endless river of Time that allows the emergence of all which is new."

Upon these words a knocking came to their front door,
As if a sheet of snow and ice were flung at it,
And Summer smiled when she reached to open it for her dear Grandmother.

With a chill draft and a swirl of flurries,
Winter stepped over the threshold,
And the fire leapt and crackled as a burst of cold air rushed into the hearth,
Thereby feeding the burning of the logs stacked within.

She was beautiful,
With long and pale white hair trimmed in glittering ice crystals,
Her eyes as pale a blue as twinkling starlight,
Her hand like gnarled tree-bark clutching a staff of long-dead oak,
Her shawl of frost lace,
Covering the shoulders of her long black dress of deepest night,
Clasped together with the Moon as her brooch.

Winter looked down at her stunned great-granddaughter,
And she smiled like moonlight peeking through the dark clouds of a snowstorm in the night.

She spoke then,
And it was like the thunder of a distant avalanche accompanying carolers singing:

"Granddaughter,
You are lovely,
Born to herald my coming to the World,
The color before my pale and dark presence,
And I give you your True Name with love,
Autumn you will always be,
And a tree with red fruit will bear your child-name,
For all to remember your first season."

As Winter spoke,
The first rowan tree appeared,
In the ground at the foot of the path leading to Summer's door,
Just in the place where Autumn had first played as a toddler,
Its red fruit blended against the deep green of the pines,
And so we have the colors of Yuletide,
To remember the passing of Autumn's time to that of Winter.

Autumn's amber eyes danced with delight,
However Winter had further to tell her lovely great-granddaughter.

Winter's voice this time was the shrieking howl of a gale upon the frigid sea:

"When the wheel turns past my time,
Will come my first daughter Spring,
With flowers and new creatures born,
Early rains and new leaf-buds upon the trees,
Though you will never meet your lovely Grandmother,
Nor she you,
I shall tell her of you dear,
And you must tell all the World each year that I am coming,
So that All may be renewed."

"I will and I shall dear Grandmother!"
Autumn promised in a voice of a scythe singing among stalks of wheat.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford
(C) 11/24/2018

The Weight Of Ghosts...

The Weight Of Ghosts...

Life is like an egg timer,
Or maybe an egg shell,
Or some other fragile damn cliche.

I know the richness of memories,
Times and places only a very few will know,
Less and less every year,
But I remember.

We're like cloud shapes in the sky,
Just visible for a blink or two,
But I have seen some seriously good ones.

It's comical,
When I talk to someone half my age,
The backdrop they're missing,
Utter cool evaporating on the wind.

Faces,
Places,
Times and sayings,
Hair and clothes and music,
But people,
People most of all.

The thought of no one knowing who they were,
That's crushing,
And I wonder if that's what truly ages us,
The sheer weight of ghosts.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford
(C) 07/25/2018

Twisting Bits...

Twisting Bits...

I've spun electrons since I was two,
Smoked a finger almost like Franklin,
I could easily imagine a key on a kite string,
And flying kites is a joyful bit of wistful magic.

I've flown phone calls,
Spotted airplanes,
And kept the internet humming,
Now I'm learning all about twisting bits,
Logic pretzels if you will,
As twisted as this ol' brain.

It's funny,
But to keep a career in what I've always done,
I have to become certied to nine levels,
Though most of the world thinks it's black magic,
See all the pretty blinky lights?

My head is so wrapped in this world,
Though life is warping by outside my bubble,
It's like a black hole,
Or maybe Hotel California.

Maybe the poetry Gods can sneak me out for a minute,
But the event horizon is pulling,
Pulling hard.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford
(C) 06/03/2018

One Terabyte Of Disco…

Post by AquarianM on May 8, 2010 at 5:07am

One Terabyte Of Disco…

Disco it off,
The dust of idle years,
The girth of computer slavery,
The mire of current conformity,
Lose it all,
Trance-tastic and ecstatic,
Becoming reverberating elastic,
Old memories of lights under the floor,
Back under the sequin strobes,
Falling in love with something my age,
Feeling lithe again,
Fluid,
I wonder,
If there’s a terabyte of disco,
I’m going to find out,
I’ll dance until I fall,
High-step into another dimension,
Hip-rotate into an altered state,
Dreaming black-light dreams.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford
© 05/08/2010

Words are the mind's bridge - it's connection to the universe.
Love is the heart's bridge - it's connection to all other souls.
Loving words can work miracles.
---------------------------------------
All of my published poetry is at:
www.lulu.com/spotlight/coloringbookforallages

Movin' Time Blues...

Post by AquarianM on Jul 30, 2009 at 11:54pm

Movin' Time Blues...

Put it here,
Throw it there,
Push it - pull it up the stairs,
Drenched in sweat,
No time for sleep,
To take your life it will constantly creep,
Move it, move it move it!

A change of address,
A change of state,
Relaxed to busy,
Resigned to fate,
Exhaustion's folly,
I'm not one spared,
These new digs now must be shared.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford
(C) 07/31/2009

Author's Note:
We've been moving all week. I hope to be done by Saturday - so the "putting away" can begin.

Yuku Is Stinky...

Yuku Is Stinky...

Eat my pictures,
Thou black hole of the web,
This slow orbit to nothing,
I see it coming,
It's the Tapatalk curse,
The slow squeezing death,
We're all just frogs in your boiling pot,
You maddening beast from the depths of Hades,
Watching the magic fade,
I understand the Fey Folk now,
Thanks to Yuku.

The beast from Mordor is sniffing about the bushes.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford
(C) 08/23/2017

Racing The Tide...

Racing The Tide...

I built a lovely sand castle,
It sat high above the surf,
The rooms and turrets lush.

Time washes by,
Foam bubbles back into the sea are swept.

Every detail and sconce was a moment of my life,
A palace of ephemeral wonders and thoughts flashing by,
Fish in the cloud currents.

The sea is rising,
The waves always roll and roll.

I race the tide,
Trying to recreate all the details,
Here upon higher sand,
A place to last a century or a decade longer,
Just to leave a trace.

My world is Pompeii,
I pray for wind in my sails.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford
(C) 07/25/2017

Author's Comment:
My long-time personal website, Word Whizzyrds / Super Aquarian ( www.whyzzrds.com / www.superaquarian.com ) is going under. I can't afford the hosting costs any longer. I will still retain the domain names, and re-point them after it goes down some time in August. I've been duplicating as much as I can at superaquarian.blogspot.com , and am doing a little more every night. To be honest, if you look at it on a desktop, I think that the Blogger site is slightly more visually beautiful. There's no way I can transfer it all in the amount of time, however. I also can't duplicate some features, and there are links around the web that will go dark. Some of the MP3 links and pictures I have on poems in the archives of this site, for example. I do have a backup of the full site, but it took me well over a decade to get it in place. The domains will be pointed at the Blogger site after the original goes nova.

The Bean Diet...

The Bean Diet...

Bean burritos,
Three kinds,
Only a buck forty-nine.

Red beans and rice,
Maybe an apple,
Would be nice.

Wallet may be thin,
Yet somehow,
We'll win.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford
(C) 07/15/2017

"Rembrandt Sleeping..." Poem #29

Throw-Away People...

Throw-Away People...

Out to pasture young,
Fifty isn't too old,
Nor fifty-five.

When people are just a ledger entry,
In a world of "throw-away..."

Society is insane.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford
(C) 07/09/2017

"Rembrandt Sleeping," Poem # 25

A Highly-Charged Particle...

A Highly-Charged Particle...

The stress of the pennies,
They don't rain from Heaven.

A bucket of marital bliss,
Wrapped in a dollar-sign bow.

The wires buzz and hum.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford
(C) 07/08/2017

Rembrandt Sleeping, poem #24

No Wasted Moments...

No Wasted Moments...

If sleep is a necessity,
It is also an enemy.

While I love dreams,
There is a limit I face.

Only so many hours,
Only so many days,
Years on this Earth,
Those are always counted.

If only dreams were instant...

---Or lives endless.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford
(C) 07-05-2017

"Rembrandt Sleeping," poem # 21

Why We Need To Save The History Of Web Poetry (Video)

Online poetry is a very unique *global* culture. It speaks to the emotional mindset of a large cross-section of the world. Web poetry began in the mid-1990's, and some of the poets that started with it have already passed away. For understanding the psychological history of humanity, if nothing else, this is an important tool. How it came about and was shaped over the years is an important factor. This history is little-known, and in danger of being lost. This is the second in a series of videos I plan to do on the subject, so that at least what I know of it is recorded for posterity. - Dan  

The Last Of Monowi...

Post by AquarianM on Nov 21, 2005 at 1:36am

The Last Of Monowi...

The prairie grass returns,
Covering over fallen homes,
Places only ghosts now roam,
Empty houses and broken streets,
The hopes of generations fallen to ruin,
All at the stroke of the globalization pen,
Farms and factories silent and deserted,
Gone back to what it was before we came,
A white-haired stubborn old lady,
The lone inhabitant of a place that's gone,
No future apocalypse,
Nothing you have to wait until 2100 for,
They say we've never abandoned an American city,
That lie is apparent all over the countryside,
The last lady of Monowi can show it to you today.


www.whizzyrds.com/Ghostville.html

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford
© 11/21/2005

 

Author's Note:

It's pronounced "mon-o-way" according to a gal who used to live there. Monowi was a town in rural Nebraska with only one resident left. It also had or has a small library full of books donated by people from around the world.

The Shadow Disaster...

The Shadow Disaster...

The latest and the greatest,
An ease of discomforted mind,
Convenience that beats the clock,
Perhaps the greatest disaster to afflict Humanity.

How many Grandmothers' recipes lost?
The skill of splitting wood,
Reading the habits of squirrel and wolf come Autumn,
How to cook ebelskives and forest mushrooms,
To know the breath of Winter and survive?

If the grid died,
Would we?

Will we ever know the glory of our ancestors' dishes,
Feel the breath of their spirits breathing the kindling of our hearts?

Thousands upon thousands of years these treasures took,
The stories and the marvels,
The handicrafts and the ken of seasons,
All to be oiled on a slide to oblivion,
For the sake of ease and comfort.

I wonder if I am the last,
To ever taste or feel the heart and soul of the past.

Winter comes,
But in a hundred years,
Who will know the meaning of cold,
Or white flight upon the winds?

Jack Frost may die,
So also millennia that ride His frozen back.

Come,
Ride the toboggan into nothing,
Eating the last taste of our ancestors' dust.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford
(C) 11/20/2016

Vortices...

Vortices...

Great spinning energy,
Red flame flecks like spinning burning leaves,
Bits of paper in an orange-lit cyclone of mind,
Special places where the fire is a healing burn,
Cracking open the shells of rebirth,
What is a disaster for the old is an usher,
So get ready to dance at the center,
Spinning,
Glowing,
Burning,
Whirling light in the darkness,
Who will be be left standing?

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford
(C) 11/18/2016

Author's note:
Every once in awhile I get flashes of insight, and they can be just subconscious imagery. I had a flash of this today. Like the place I was in was at the center of the fires of change, protected, just the place for an audience to ride it out.

The Goat Is Dead!

The Goat Is Dead!

I missed the night of Hailey's Comet,

Cloudy skies,

Was working instead.

I was asleep,

Last time the Eagles played,

No time off I was home in bed.

I've never seen,

The Pyramids of Egypt,

No trail to that ancient dusty land.

Never saw,

The space shuttle landing,

Not a single rocket take off.

But I was there,

Yes I was watching,

The night we learned the Billy Goat was dead.

The last time,

They couldn't announce it,

radio hadn't been invented yet.

Six-to-six,

In game seven,

Bottom of the ninth it went to ten.

Got rained out,

The tarp was over the field,

It dried up and on they played.

I was there,
Yes I was watching,
The night we learned the Billy Goat was dead.

2016,

The Cubs won the Series,

First time since 1908.

I missed the night of Hailey's Comet,
Cloudy skies,
Was working instead.

I was asleep,
Last time the Eagles played,
No time off I was home in bed.

I've never seen,
The Pyramids of Egypt,
No trail to that ancient dusty land.

Never saw,
The space shuttle landing,
Not a single rocket take off.

But I was there,
Yes I was watching,
The night we learned the Billy Goat was dead.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

(C) 11-03-2016

Author's note:

The Billy Goat refers to a supposed curse on the Chicago Cubs imposed after they wouldn't allow the owner of the famous Billy Goat Tavern to bring his mascot on the field at Wrigley. This one is for you, Lenny "Pops" and Uncle John O'Hara - they waited their entire lives for the Cubs to win the series and missed it by two years. They passed within two weeks of each other in 2014.

The Goat Is Dead!

The Goat Is Dead!

I missed the night of Hailey's Comet,

Cloudy skies,

Was working instead.

I was asleep,

Last time the Eagles played,

No time off I was home in bed.

I've never seen,

The Pyramids of Egypt,

No trail to that ancient dusty land.

Never saw,

The space shuttle landing,

Not a single rocket take off.

But I was there,

Yes I was watching,

The night we learned the Billy Goat was dead.

The last time,

They couldn't announce it,

radio hadn't been invented yet.

Six-to-six,

In game seven,

Bottom of the ninth it went to ten.

Got rained out,

The tarp was over the field,

It dried up and on they played.

I was there,
Yes I was watching,
The night we learned the Billy Goat was dead.

2016,

The Cubs won the Series,

First time since 1908.

I missed the night of Hailey's Comet,
Cloudy skies,
Was working instead.

I was asleep,
Last time the Eagles played,
No time off I was home in bed.

I've never seen,
The Pyramids of Egypt,
No trail to that ancient dusty land.

Never saw,
The space shuttle landing,
Not a single rocket take off.

But I was there,
Yes I was watching,
The night we learned the Billy Goat was dead.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

(C) 11-03-2016

Author's note:

The Billy Goat refers to a supposed curse on the Chicago Cubs imposed after they wouldn't allow the owner of the famous Billy Goat Tavern to bring his mascot on the field at Wrigley. This one is for you, Lenny "Pops" and Uncle John O'Hara - they waited their entire lives for the Cubs to win the series and missed it by two years. They passed within two weeks of each other in 2014.

Inscribed In Stone...

Inscribed In Stone...

Words are everything.

Read it again;
Words are everything.

They make us.
They break us.
They echo us to the future,
Long after our dust is eaten by Earth.

When we are stars,
Shining in the depths of night,
Words give voice to our silent light.

See and remember,
See and hear,
If you can read the stars,
Inscribed in stone.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford
(C) 10/20/2016

For our stars gone to the sky.

*Side note: We just had to put down our 19-year old cat. He was a very mellow and intelligent guy, and of course a total foodie. Indy, you get a star up there too, old man. 

Those Heady Days Haunt Me...

Those Heady Days Haunt Me...

I remember the hustle and bustle,

The words were a tornado,

Where now there is a chill breeze of Autumn.

The back-and-forth was grand,

The ship of poetry like a yankee clipper at twenty-two knots,

Full sail under the bright stars of a deep oceanic night,

Our Muse the Lady on the bow.

There were so many of us alive then,

Our ghosts that we miss haunt us,

Yet if we look back in the logs,

Their voices are with us,

So long as these stars stay up in Heaven.

I fly like a silver albatross to the drumbeat,

Driven to sail these seas,

Perhaps all my days,

To cherish all the eddies and currents and wave crests,

Breaking upon the black seas.

Samhain is more than a dream of poets,

A pool of universal depth,

Steered with keyboard and pen.

All hail!

All hail!

Another Star burned down out of the deep dark night!

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

(C) 10/04/2016

Author's note:

For Maggie / Cusick - whom Cherri's post on Christine's memorial now tells me is a star up above. You can see a beautiful - and awarded - example of Maggie's poetry HERE.

Blog Updates And Wow It's Been Six Years Since I Posted Here...

Blog Updates And Wow It's Been Six Years Since I Posted Here...

I still can't believe it's been so long since I posted to this blog, (I have over 30) but I'm super-glad it's still here to post to.

*Spell Book* is one of my oldest blogs. It was showing it, too. The blog was running an ancient "classic" Blogger theme. I went in to try and update it a couple of days, and the Blogger Gremlins damn near ate my homework. The blog went down hard. It just fixed itself and came up on a modern template today. Maybe it just took several hours to convert to the new blog format. All I know is that I wanted to kiss my screen!

Worse, much of the poetry on this blog had been lost from elsewhere on the web. Some of the poems here may be my only surviving copies. Try any of those links on the list of poems I had published on Lightverse.com. They won't work. The owner of the site got a major hike in hosting costs, so he let the site go down. I've gotten emails from some of the other poets asking about it. I've emailed the guy. He says it will eventually go back up, and he has a copy of all the content, but it's going on two years now. I'm not holding my breath.

Now I get why there are always "unpublished" or "never-seen" works from so many artists that pop up from time-to-time. It's damn near impossible to stay on top of everything anymore. I have numerous notebooks and journals, and well over 30 subject-oriented blogs. (Including my main home online, www.SuperAquarian.com)

I've been through a lot of life changes over the years - moved three times, the last to California. Swapped out a 21.5-year Telecomm career for two small businesses. Gained a couple of grandchildren. Started karate, and stopped because of breaking an ankle on Illinois ice shoveling snow. Started up again just a month ago.

At any rate, I'm still around, and so is my old blog. Now it looks better than ever. Life is good.

Thank you for reading,

AquarianM