Blank Page, Red Sky

– for Billy Considine

My friend Billy is sitting before a blank page,
by the dim light of his study lamp. Billy the writer.
My guess is that he’s thinking more about the red splash
of sunset outside his window than the white page,
wondering how to capture a blood-soaked sky
in fresh words. Billy ponders a single word for days,
hangs success or failure on the choice. The torment
of writers, he once told me, is that all the best songs
have been sung. In a different office, a doctor
reviews the day’s scans. I imagine Billy
finding a perfect sunset metaphor
as a frantic doctor punches numbers on his phone.
Blood races veined highways faster than sound
flies through air. Billy’s crimson sky clots to grey
before his phone even sounds.

Ryan Stone