The
Long Shadow of Time:
I feel it in every cool breath,
The ones I can see and not just hear,
In the slow turn of the stars I so adore,
In the disappearing green,
Like a flood of ennui in a field of stalks of gold,
The barest hint of purple twilight coming behind me,
The long low visual hush of fall fog over hugging the corn,
The way the geese are in ever larger vees overhead,
Or the growing blackbird clouds,
The death of green leaves and flowers last week,
In a hard night time freeze,
The slant of sunlight in disappearing afternoons,
The incessant insufferable inevitable ticking of clocks,
Every last tale of another year gone,
I sing with the mourning birds,
I could fall into the sky and hear stars whisper,
Or maybe spend a season in the headstones,
Crying over those I lost,
Candles with ice and snow coming,
How many more springs will we see,
Before I'm dusting pyramids in Egypt,
Specks on the wind that outlasted me,
Like all my personal legends,
Forgotten and fallen off the world,
So I write and I pray midnight mysteries,
Beg Eternity for a stone in it's pool from which to croak,
Pray that it's not the lilly pad,
Floating transient and lost,
Somewhere under the long shadow of Time.
AquarianM
By: Daniel A. Stafford
(C) 10/09/2003
Return My Colors
I saw them waving in the breeze,
Those threads and dyes of freedom,
Pursuit of life, of liberty, of happiness,
Red of courage,
White of purity,
Blue of truth,
They stand for freedom,
They do not belong,
Upon the collars of intolerance,
Upon the poles where heads hang,
In the circle of a lake of tears,
In the halls where our lives are pried open,
Like a clamshell overfed on statute pages.
I want my colors back.
I want those colors to bring tears,
Because they mean a home where one is soveriegn,
Upon the lands we've worked to earn,
Where spies are some dark shadows across oceans,
Or figments in story books,
And no one is disappeared without a trace,
Just upon the say-so of fear's hounds.
I want my colors back,
To wear with pride,
Because they represent a place of good hearts,
And live as you are.
AquarianM
By: Daniel A. Stafford
(C) 08/28/2003