They Whispered Cold Stone:

I saw the eyes darling,
They were bright and full and gibbous,
The leaves danced 'round my ankles,
Cold and restless to go to forever.

Jackfrost past the creaking gates,
One hung rusted and askew,
It was twilight dreading the equinox,
And they whispered cold stone.

Her name was there,
I saw it twixt these rheumy old tears,
The flowers of every year I spent in my cups,
Dead heaps of nothing once beautiful.

Spring is such a short time,
Yet it felt like endless,
You get to know in time,
Even memory isn't that.

Whisper cold stone when the flowers turn,
When ashen and stars rule what was blue,
Soon enough the snows come to bury,
And only the whispers of stone still stand.

Even stone knows Spring and Winter.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford
(C)10/13/2003

Author's Comments:
Sorry for the maudlin, it's just that I'm a child of Summer,
and I hear the leaves ticking.

Fingers of the Witch:

Isn't it strange,
Once a year,
The morrors all crack,
A green fog comes along,
A great bright glowing amber orange moon,
The light turns pale and ghostly,
All the beauty sinks in,
All the ghastly creeps out,
Realease the inner demons,
Rattle bones and commune with the dead,
Steel hard red fingernails,
Exclaim the gnarled green fingers of the Witch,
The black kettle grumbles burbling on the hook,
Swung hard over the fire,
In the purple burning center,
Of the cold white bricks,
Up the chimney with soot and cinders streaming trails,
Her broom screams cackling into the night,
Black familiar screaming like a woman,
Claws sunk to the utmost in ancient wood,
A trail of smoke straight up the sky spiraled,
As she spells ballistic without letters,
Parting a cloud of vampire bats,
Misted fog drifting with purpose,
Glowing-eyed sheets and such like twirling,
A cackling vile gesture,
Flung in the face of Luna,
She knows the time draws nigh,
Every gnarly gourd and gristly bone,
Floating in her cauldron,
Screaming spirits dance in the pentacle,
Soon the black candle will burn red and green flames,
Leaves are fire on the trees,
Children shuddering cowered abed,
No one sees the flying pain,
As the tears of missing forever,
What has died another season,
Wiped instantly away to vanish,
Upon the one trembling tip,
Of the only ungnarled spot left,
Upon the fingers of the witch.

AquarianM

By: Daniel A. Stafford
(C) 10/13/2003 in the hour past midnight.

Author's Comments:
The season of the new is passed again,
The season of the harvest,
Of reaping and death before rebirth,
Is at the heart of every witch this time of year.
She remembers her time of Spring and Summer.