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

Flying At Night...

Flying At Night...

Meditation brings a deep buzzing,

Like a power line resting on your body,

Through your very bones.

Suddenly you are free.

Adrift in time and space,

A mere whim takes you away,

Touching the face of a star,

Or perhaps spinning your favorite galaxy like a top.

To see the beauty of Atlantis,

For that I would gladly fly.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

© 11/12/2018

All The Things Santa Ana Left Us...

All The Things Santa Ana Left Us...

The mountains so pretty,

Green after a fresh rain,

Golden when dry,

Boulder-strewn and dotted,

They underscore the sunsets,

Orange-purple-indigo reach for the fading sun.

The winds so fierce,

Blowing hot and dry,

Bellowing like a politician,

Stoking the hellfires we dread.

The humming birds so nimble,

Around us they flit and flutter,

Hover above our flowers,

Red caps and green vests,

We feed them sugar-water,

Giving thanks for blooming fruit.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

© 11/12/2018

Where There is Smoke...

Where There is Smoke...

The scenes look like a fire-breathing minister went to confront the rattlesnakes in the desert brush,

Probably with a can of gasoline.

Paradise is totally in ashes,

Just gone like the title of an old book,

Malibu is completely evacuated under smoke clouds the size of Texas thunderstorms.

It's on a biblical scale alright.

Ninety thousand acres here,

Three hundred thousand acres there,

Top off with people fleeing walls of flame doing eighty.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

© 11/09/2018

Pastoralis...

Pastoralis...

The vista is immense,

Expansive and panoramic,

At once immediate and timeless.

A water buffalo lives next to a Holstein steer,

Camel the next pen over,

Just before the wallaby cage,

As a honeybee chases me off the shady bench.

I have been watching the sun shine,

Down onto the mountains and the vinyards,

Glorying in the silence of the winds as crows soar on thermal spirals.

Our granddaughters and their new friend have been playing in the chicken coop.

The rabbits do not mind.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

© 11/04/2018

Life On The Small Screen...

Life On The Small Screen...

All motion ceases as the world comes into focus,

This narrow lens that feeds our minds like a fire hose,

The stream of thought bought from others,

Limited to the goods in someone else's bazaar.

Where is the contemplative silence of our own meditations?

The intricacies of bygone times may be beyond us now,

Lost in the race of electrons and photons hammering our brains with paid programming.

Thus are we encoded.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

© 11/07/2018

Dissonance De Ego...

Dissonance De Ego...

I am purposely mixing languages in my title,

Just to give a little jarring note,

Like the atmosphere around me,

A jangling and discordant ambiance.

Here I am,

Oatmeal-raisin cookie eaten,

Favorite coffee to hand,

On the tiny sliver of weekend,

The eked- out hour,

Where I might be here.

Immediately behind us is an animated conversation,

Intelligent and intellectual,

The highest level of whining,

Complaining gossip on a level I have never before heard 

Might I growl yet??

Carrumba!

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

© 10-26-2018

Author's Note:

Last Friday evening at Barnes and Noble.

The Tinkerer...

The Tinkerer...

A gadget is an object of delight,,

Better yet retro or steam punk,

Whiz-bang spark and flash,

Function with flair and panache.

It's always about making it work,

But making it look good never hurts.

Iron and steel and steam and wood,

Sparks and fire,

Hot air and smoke.

Resourcefulness is an art form.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

© 10-28-28

A Poets' Moon...

A Poets' Moon...

...can withstand a more varied light,

Or forlorn weather,

The coldest of winds and baleful gusts.

A lovers' Moon needs fullness,

Soft Summer night breezes,

Twinkling stars and music,

Candlelight or a gently-flickering fire.

A poets' Moon can withstand the flight of a raven across its gaze,

Or a dragon or witch or bat,

The first flurries of an encroaching blizzard,

Even the distant thunder and lightning,

Echoes of storms passed,

Anything in the Universe might appear.

A poets' moonlight will bare it naked,

Expose its core for all the night to see.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

© 10-28-2018

The High Priestess Of Sound...

The High Priestess Of Sound...

This world we live in is all out of tune,
Changed to fix a mathematical error,
Sometime back in the sixteen hundreds,
A convenience for the composer's sake.

Don't worry the wineglass,
Darling,
It may shatter explosively,
Yet only if it is the finest crystal of purity.

Pure notes devoid of linguistic meaning,
Therein lies the magic,
The root form of creation and cohesion.

A community of pure sound.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford
(C) 10-26-2018

Autumn In California...

Autumn In California...

A subtle change of hue,

Delicate tilt of Solar angle,

Tinges of color lend a subdued glow to specific plants and trees,

Especially in late afternoon or evening.

Nothing so overt as the blazing colors and tawny grasses,

The visible breath and frosted mornings of my native Wisconsin.

Here in Summer's Winter home,

Jack Frost is a rare guest in court,

Though mist and fog blanket the tops of mountains,

Ceiling over canyons in hushed morning reverence.

Verdancy is only limmed by Autumn fire,

Yet Orion rises.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

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Brain-Shaking The Universe...

Brain-Shaking The Universe...

A quantum field is the waving grass of endless possibility,

Waving this way and that,

Depending on the winds of thought,

Tickling the feet of minds all about the Multiverse.

If an ordinary human has the wing-breeze of a monarch butterfly,

Then poets are as an albatross,

Where a shaman or yogi may be a Thunderbird or Dragon,

Shaking fluid reality,

Or soaring on the shared winds of monarch migrations.

We all dream of being hurricanes.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

© 10/18/2018

I Want To Dream...

I Want To Dream...

...Of a sound,

Maybe a droning hum,

Or possibly a drumming drum,

One sound that lets me see,

Drowns out all the wicked noise.

I will dream it so clearly,

So tight to the sound,

That I will see a new universe,

One full of trees,

With clean air and crystal-clear skies,

I'll see for miles.

There will be no clocks,

No tick-tocks,

Everyone will wake when they do,

 And fall to sleep then too,

Work at things that they love,

Where art and crafting are of value...

They and I will write there,

in beautiful flowing cursive,

A beloved finger print.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

In The Moment...

In The Moment...

Joy flows from the smallest of things,

Sunrise to open eyes,

The scent of a grandmother's kitchen,

A warm coffee mug on a frosted morning.

Gold may bring ease,

Possibly,

But it is cold in your hands,

Will break your teeth,

Make you look over your shoulder,

Always glancing side to side.

As long as there is food,

Friendship,

A beloved face to see and touch,

A voice intoned in warmth,

A fire and a candle,

Somewhere soft to lay your head,

Wealth is all about you,

Simply awaiting definition.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafgord

© 10/13/2018

Inspired by Anil's poem above.

Public-Domain E-Book: "The Great Book Of Blizzard..."

Preface to "The Great Book Of Blizzard":

The Poetry that is contained in these pages is the result of a lifetime spent mostly in places with real Winter; The Great Lakes for the most part, yet also the Great Plains, the Rockies of Colorado, and even mid-North Texas and Northern New Mexico.

In the face of Climate Change, I wanted to save and preserve what it was like to live in these places in the era of actual Winters.

Many of these poems are what I like to call “Poetic Memoir,” and are based on real events in my life. Some are simply fantasy based on a lifetime of experience with snow and Winter...real Winters.

Although I have lived in Southern California for four years as of the completion of this compilation in 2018, never forget that I am a native of Wisconsin who spent fifty years in the Midle West of these United States of America. My family still lives there, and lives with snow.

For those of you who find snowy Winters a novelty, or know it not at all, I hope this book can give you a deeper understanding of what it was like.

What so many forget is that almost everything in nature needs a period of rest and renewal before the busy regrowth of Springtime. Even humanity needs – and mostly neglects – quiet time to turn inward, reflect, and recharge.

Thank you for reading.

With love and light,

Daniel A. Stafford

10/07/2018

This book donated to Public Domain

Download .PDF e-book for free HERE.

The Whirling Dervish Of The Middle Country...

The Whirling Dervish Of The Middle Country...

They bide their time all the long Winter,

Finally dry enough to fly as Spring renews the Earth.

At some point,

The dry and dead stem snaps and releases,

And the mother tree is left,

Towering immobile above the soil.

If the only moment a plant knows in its long life is as a seed,

These must be among the most graceful.

Spinning,

Whirling,

Twirling.

They settle softly to their bed of chance.

Maple seeds are a wonder of nature.

A single-bladed helicopter, 

They have been toys for children as long as children could see them flying.

I wonder if Igor Sikhorsky was a maple-seed child?

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

© 07/06/2018

Ever So Much More So...

Ever So Much More So...

Not a moment goes by in quiet,

Clock hands whirl in a furious rush,

Every second wrapped in a harried agenda.

We are infinitely more connected to the wider world,

Lost in the demands of the little rectangular devils in our pockets.

I have not read a complete novel in two years,

And there are people besides me who would consider that evidence of a collapsing universe.

Carry on,

Wayward souls,

But quickly.

Tick-tock.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

© 09/30/2018

Nostalgic...

Nostalgic...

There is something about this poetry board,

A feeling,

A look,

An essence.

As close as I can come to holding paper and turning pages,

When there is really glass and plastic in my hand,

Glowing.

It almost seems the older posts might yellow with age.

This is a good thing,

In its way a glorious achievment.

I only hope the place keeps its soul.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

© 09/30/2018

Elvis In The Temple...

Elvis In The Temple...

It was a strange dream,

Odd and disjointed,

Nothing new for the painters of night graffiti.

I was walking down an old street in the deep South,

Walking up to a seemingly abandoned ruin.

Oddly, it was a place I knew by deja vu.

An enormous concrete pyramid,

Overgrown with vines and ivy,

Shaded dark at night,

Imposing and immensely heavy.

The entrance was under the light pool of a lonely old street lamp,

The kind that resembles a gaslight.

Just as I was about to walk up to the door,

A long black limosine pulled up,

Disgorging three very unexpected spectres in the flesh.

Elvis was in the middle,

An old man in a suit first with a key,

A beautiful woman followed.

All of them were dressed in fine black clothes, looking sharp and purposeful.

Elvis glanced and me, said "Hello, Dan" in a kind but lofty and dismissive voice,

Leaving me acknowledged,

Yet neither declined nor encouraged.

I followed the trio into the temple of night,

A place oddly mixed with finely-appointed rooms and crumbling bare-concrete empty spaces.

In the empty rooms were crumbling statues,

Cheap concrete replicas from the look of it,

Chipped and barely standing in places.

There were high ledges about the perimeter of these empty places,

A black cat seemingly trapped on one high ledge,

Mewling.

I climbed a statue that threatened to topple at every move,

Rescued the ungrateful beast,

Which promptly dashed away into unseen corners.

Finally I made my way into a softly lit room,

And the three spirits in flesh were there lounging,

About some unearthly business I never learned of.

The place was carpeted finely,

Rich tapestries all about,

Clearly that had not been seen by human eyes in at least a decade,

Perhaps more.

Elvis glanced at me briefly,

A glimmer of momentary observance with no depth,

As if I were a distant acquaintance,

And I sat in a chair nearby,

Watching.

Whatever they were conversing,

It was not audible to me,

Hidden,

Not for my ears clearly.

Elvis stood up as they were leaving,

Stepped over and silently handed me a lamp that no longer worked,

Having its form but robbed of its function.

I briefly elated,

Thinking the King had given me some odd gift,

Foolishly,

For attached to the bottom was a tag,

A note with a hand-scrawled name,

Not mine.

"Servant, a service to the King,"

I thought.

I took it in stride,

A deliveryman for a musical nightshade,

And opened my eyes to yawn.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

© 09/29/2018

Memoir: A Cigar With The Lost Sugar Queens Of Old Havana...

The night is one of quiet celebration. Appropriately, it is the evening of the Autumnal equinox.

The air is cool in the high desert of Temecula; A light jacket perfect. The stars shine above me as aircraft slowly blink their way across the sky. The palm trees are still sentinels in pooled light of amber streetlamps. It is quiet except for crickets and car tires in the distance.

I just achieved the two certifications that have saved my new job and launched my second career. I had only nine days left to spare.

I have tokens for marking the months of hard work it took me to achieve this.

I just finished a very fine cigar, the best I have had in a year. It was bought from Bob - at least that is the name gives.

Bob is the fellow who sounds and looks as if he is from India, and runs the strip-mall smoke shop down the hill. His shop is small, but he built an excellent walk-in humidor for his shop. He is rightfully proud of that humidor. He assured me that this cigar from one of his top humidor shelves is truly excellent. He was quite truthful, and I will tell him so when I see him next.

The other token is the first novel I have read in two years. Most people who know the younger me would be slack-jawed in shock to read the sentence immediately preceding this one.

I just picked the novel out this evening, and it is different from my usual fare of science fiction and fantasy. It is a story of a woman of Cuban decent, and her sugar-industry heiress grandmother who fled Cuba as a teenager immediately after Batista fled the island.

It is written in a poetic and romantic style, and jumps smoothly from the late 1950's era of the young woman fleeing Cuba to the days of her Journalist granddaughter returning her ashes to the land she loved.

"Next Year In Havana" is the title, and I am in love with it after the first chapter.

The book is paper in my hands, a tactile joy I have missed. 

The cigar was so good that it was painful to have finished, and I was loath to put it out. It was completely synchronistic for the tone of the book I am reading, on several levels.

So is this writing poetry? What I am giving my reader in this moment?

I would argue that poetry is the art of putting heart into writing of the small poignant moments of life. It is the art of bringing those moments to life and magnifying them for the reader. 

A piece of the story is all I can give, but let it be a piece that you can look at in words with your heart's eye and maybe fall a little bit in love with.

Yes, I am living this, loving this moment, and laying it at your fingertips.

Perhaps the air here in California tonights smells faintly of the ocean after the afternoon breezes from San Diego have finished their journey up the Temecula valley.

Just as one of the characters in my book is scenting the warm salty air of Cuba upon her return to the land of her immediate ancestors. 

The rest of her journey awaits in the soft paper of the pages in my hands.

The rest of my journey awaits me on Monday morning.

For this weekend, however, I will have my feet in Temecula and my heart and mind in two very different times in Cuba.

All I have to do now is turn another page...

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford

© 09/21/2018

Compassion is the greatest sign of humanity.