Mother’s Hands

Advertisement for Myers Gloves, by Margaret Watkins (Canada), 1920s.

Mother’s Hands

Strong enough to lift me
each time I couldn’t rise. Soft
as cotton wool, washing
dirt from scrapes and tears
from eyes. Firm enough
to model clay
and boys, to bowls
and men, yet fine
when stroking ivory keys–
Für Elise and Clair de Lune.
They’d curl through each long evening
around her only vice, in a holder
like Audrey’s, that never left her side.
I’m thinking of her hands now–
strong and wild and free; missing
her hands now, as I watch ashes
blow to sea.

Ryan Stone

Written for the 20 poem challenge at Ekphrastic, September 2016.

First published at Ekphrastic, September 2016

May 1, 2024 46

Roulette

Awake!
A slate grey, cold
daybreak –

blood clot
sunrise, I take
a shot

and miss.
Life must hold more
than this.

Ryan Stone

April 29, 2024 39

Ethereal Planes

Above fields, bright paper planes fly
While dark the shadows dance below.
Like dreams released come morning’s rise
Above fields, bright paper planes fly.
In silence waits the blackened sky,
The final pitch, night’s all star throw.
Above fields bright, paper planes fly,
While dark the shadows dance below.

Ryan Stone

April 28, 2024 26

Stand To

A silent witness crests the hill
where bloody rain once fell.

The sob and clubbing fractured now –
hearts beat on distant shores

where brothers wait with shaking hands
to charge into the dawn.

Across the Sea of Helle they came,
from many different ports,

to lay down cold on foreign stone,
enlisted on some other front.

Flags hang low and I am borne
by a bugle’s mournful calling,

as first light joins eternal flame
“stand to!” cleaves the morning.

Ryan Stone

April 25, 2024 8

Numb

In empty spaces
echoes fade to silent grief,
whispers on the wind

Ryan Stone

April 18, 2024 13

After

funeral flowers
wilting in quiet corners…
so hard to let go

Ryan Stone

April 16, 2024 5

The Journey Home

She tells me her pain is a squall,
sudden and vicious, like a flash

storm whipping in from Bass Strait
to batter King Island.
Do you remember our Island, Garth?

Her doctors build shelters; nurses
batten hatches, but this tempest

won’t blow over. She says her pain is a vulture now,
circling the desert on threadbare wings.
A glass of water if you please, Garth?

With beak and claw, it slashes and rips
nerve endings, drinks color from her eyes.

The pain is no longer squall or vulture,
she whispers, but a flutter of pages.
One last story before bed, dear Garth?

I don’t tell her that I’m her grandson—
not her brother Garth, stolen by war.

She’s a thin sheet stretched over an empty
bed; a gull’s cry on the wind.

– Ryan Stone

first published by Eunoia Review, June 2019

April 12, 2024 9

In Passing

After all the years, the heart-shaped
promises, a Ponts des Arts love lock
one Spring, it has come now to this —
a sterile room, too-small-for-two bed,
plastic flowers, faint urine smell.

Standing bedside, she strokes and hums,
remembers a warm night by the sea.
The setting sun kisses white hair
golden. Tremors become twitches,
become silence.

Ryan Stone