Awake!
A slate grey, cold
daybreak –
blood clot
sunrise, I take
a shot
and miss.
Life must hold more
than this.
Ryan Stone
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
The Walk
I wake a full hour early
for the rare gift
of a walk in the woods
with my father.
He is a silent giant
among misty ghost gums.
I tell him, Watch!
See how fast I can run.
He doesn’t yell when I trip
and fall, but lifts me
with unfamiliar,
calloused hands.
At the end of the trail
I study my grazes—jagged
and bloody. He tells me
he’s leaving my mum.
On the walk home
I gaze at the gum trees
and fragmented clouds, thinking
they should look different somehow.
Ryan Stone
first published at Poetry Nook, 1st place Week 185
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
Ghosts at Dawn
Too thin –
you now exist
within
a pause
as dawn retracts
her claws
from day;
you fade, while I
must stay.
Ryan Stone
Shades
Her kiss
at dawn is what
I miss
the most –
as day break sings
a ghost
refrain:
love dims to dust
and pain.
Ryan Stone
No One
dawn pauses, explodes
in a flash of carmine fire
flaring in the east
flaring in the east,
Icarus ascends his throne –
blazing flight of one
blazing flight of one,
Labyrinth behind, no one
makes it out alone
– Ryan Stone
Written for National Poetry Month 2016 @ The Music In It – Being Alone
Whispers
I am he who worships Spring
in moonlit mountain shallows.
I am he who watches you,
insubstantial shadow.
I am he who brings night’s ship
safe to morning’s shore.
I am he who loves you,
your servant, evermore.
Ryan Stone
En Passant
It wasn’t a spectacular leaf:
rather drab, too long from tree.
Yet, the life it clutched
in its five trembling points
turned my strides into steps
into stasis. I watched
as it danced,
sucking more from a gust
than nearby leaves
better suited to flying.
It spiraled away
to a lazuline sky
while I remained rooted;
going nowhere.
Ryan Stone
The Wind Whispers, The Wind Sighs
– 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
days of stone 