A CHILD OF THE SUN
Copyright 1986, S Hartwell

I came out of the sky to you,
A child of another world,
A ghost, a wraith, an angel, immortal,
I came to help you learn to live.
I used my nature to see your future,
My nature which brought me here,
From my far earth, I came
Out of compassion to yours,
Out of your sky I appeared.
But let me return home sometime,
For your strict earth governs your nature;
It will mould mine until I cannot return.
I come to you to watch and to help,
Let me return for I am a child of the sun.

Stay!
You were lost without me so I stayed to help,
Casting no shadow in your light,
Feeling no heat or cold,
Causing no breeze with my breath,
Then I returned, for a time, to my home,
Where my world revitalized my nature.
A lone figure I stood against the broad empty skyline,
Casting no shadow under my sun,
Drawing no breath of the still air of my world,
Having no other besides me,
I returned to you,
But let me return from your strange unnatural world,
For I am a ghost in your world of substance.

Stay! you said,
And your breeze moved my hair.
Casting no reflection in your waters,
Remaining dry in your rain,
I was an alien magician,
But I felt my nature change.
Perhaps I had remained overlong in your world,
So I returned to my home.
You called out to me,
My breeze brought your words across the aeons,
My seas glittered gold beneath my sky of green,
And I sighed.

Stay! Oh Angel of another land, please stay!
So I stayed and I shivered,
A sunbeam caught a faint shadow and I felt my magic wane.
Felt nature changing
And I feared being trapped in your heavy world;
I am a child of the sun - let me return to my home.
I left but my seas brought your callings to my feet,
And I stared out across the waters into the seas of space,
And for the first time I felt lonely,
I who had been alone since the dawn of my world.
Spared the need for food I was hungry.
I, who had never needed companionship realised I was alone,
And was discontent with my flitting world of light.
My suns rays renewed me, made me strong again,
I felt its warmth for the first time,
But I was no longer content with its beauty

So I travelled on a sunbeam to you.

Stay! you said,
Shattering the peace I had brought within me,
And I lost something of myself.
I shivered in your breezes,
I drank heavily the waters of your planet
And saw for the first time my face,
As it hung distorted in your waters;
Trapped in the glass of a mirror;
I felt weighed down by your griefs.

Stay!
So I stayed.
Trapped by solidity,
My stomach empty,
My body scorched by your sun,
Frozen by your winter.
I breathed and my nature was altering.
I looked at my failing flesh in a pool,
And drank heavily of your mortality,
Learning to live like a man.
My nature failed me.

Stay!
I must stay here now,
I stayed too long before
And became too like you.
Your lives unlike mine are finite,
Time dictates a beginning
And an end.

Stay!
And I thought of a beautiful gold-green empty world
Far out of the reach of man,
And of me.

Stay!
Learn how to die like a man.

THE OUTSIDER
Copyright 1986, S Hartwell

Treat me kindly human, for I am not of your world,
And my stay among you may be brief,
Not born flesh of human flesh, but held trapped in human form,
While my mind knows what it is to fly and longs to be free.

My soul is stirred by different drums,
And my eyes see sights beyond human perception,
When they look inwards to me soul.

And when I sleep, I fly,
And speak mind to mind,
With others of my kind,
No longer prisoner in the walls of my skull.

So treat me gently, human, for I cannot be one of you,
And you may think me insane,
My heart and thoughts lie not with mortal man,
But this heavy human body holds me surely as a ball and chain.