too much coffee, too little sleep, a love of words…
I start at the sound of each car passing
on midnight streets outside;
hoping it’s you,
knowing it isn’t.
Dreams fade with your warmth
as reality slowly intrudes:
it would be enough
to fall into your arms
and know I’d wake there, too.
I am only real
when you are near,
but you never stay
and the grey morning is close
and mine alone.
Ryan Stone
It’s a fleeting moment–
a red sky at twilight,
rushing to the long night;
the last russet leaf
clinging to bough
as autumn inhales,
breathes out.
You know this, you’ve felt it
in the grey light of dawn,
in that pause
between waking and finding.
You’ve heard it whisper
through the dry grass
of summer–a promise
tossed on the wind.
Yesterday’s smoke
blows over fields,
tomorrow hides
inside dreams.
This hand in your hand
is the one, the only
true kingdom
under the sun.
Ryan Stone
– after Longfellow
The wind whispers, the wind sighs,
the dawn light brightens, a magpie cries;
amongst the gum trees tall and green
a girl becomes a faerie queen.
And the wind whispers, the wind sighs.
Morning settles beneath silk skies,
her reign flits by like dragonflies;
deep shadows dress the naked hill
in dusk, as faerie wings fall still.
And the wind whispers, the wind sighs.
Night throws a cloak; a barn owl cries,
another answers, stars blink like eyes.
The queen is gone, won’t come again;
these woods forever will remain.
And the wind whispers, the wind sighs.
– Ryan Stone
first published at Poetry Nook, May 2020
midnight wind,
howling through the caverns
of my mind
Ryan Stone
beyond the gate
where sea meets sky
—tomorrow
Ryan Stone
train whistle
sounds grey in the night,
smoke and dreams
Ryan Stone
fireworks explode
in an ink-black sky
—my name on your lips
Ryan Stone
Despite
the mist, the lack
of light,
they fly
true south, those geese,
while I
remain,
earthbound by age
and pain.
Ryan Stone
– 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
A shift in focus—
This whole, bright world reflected
In her dark window
Ryan Stone
days of stone 