Tag: poem

  • Pulling Back the Sheet

    Pulling Back the Sheet

    It started as a scribble in my yearbook and ended with an apology, of sorts: I wish I’d been more, held your hand when it mattered and even when it didn’t. Ink lasts longer than schoolyard dreams, wilted before their bloom. Notes we wrote lend breath to ghosts, long after pens fall still. In this…

  • Tidesong

    Tidesong

    Warm sand between our toes, your hand belongs in mine, until our songs are sung; our instruments unstrung. Ryan Stone Written for National Poetry Month 2016 @ The Music In It – Aging.

  • Days

    Days

    Sometimes she’s wildfire, burning through the night; some days she’s a winter storm, ice and fury unleashed. Sometimes she’s a shadow, neither fully here or really there; some days she’s untamable, wild as rolling seas. Sometimes I hold her close, as the world starts coming undone; some days we fit together and I feel that…

  • Self-portrait

    Self-portrait

    And these are my failings: a wild smile always leads my mind to the kiss hiding behind it and sometimes to plot the shortest route there. Did I say sometimes? I lie a bit, too. And I tend to zone out to small-talk – there are enough idle words in the world. And I can’t…

  • Adrift

    Adrift

    The last leaves are golden, most have already flown. Branches hang bare beneath ashen skies. Not so different from when you climbed, hand over slow hand, waging a war inside your young mind. One leaf breaks free, hangs on a moment, before leaping into the maelstrom. I imagine a short fall, sharp jerk and silence;…

  • Death in Suburbia

    Death in Suburbia

    Sometime past lunch when the housework is done a translucent lady sheds her husk. In her mirror the tricksy sun cajoles grey to gold, teases with wistful strokes. Like a vodka-chased pill she slides down a rabbit hole until soft fingers feel almost like strangers. With a methodical parting and functional probing, she dies another…

  • The Weight

    The Weight

    One drunken night, he lay on the coach road and she lay beside him. He pictured a truck descending–wobbling around corners, gaining momentum. They spoke about crushes, first kisses. He told her of an older woman who’d stolen a thing he couldn’t replace. He tried to describe the weight of lost things. She listened until…

  • I’ll not tread lightly

    I’ll not tread lightly

    Remember school days and how we would play like there was no tomorrow? Now the castles we made are the price we must pay or flounder in oceans of sorrow. Roaming wild and free, building houses in trees as worlds waltzed to discordant tunes– like a zephyr through grass, gilded summer days passed, left us…

  • En Passant

    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…

  • The Long Road

    The Long Road

    I drink all day and then strike out along that winding road, where shadows flit by leafy bough and twilight waits for no-one; where failing light births fickle fiends who writhe and tempt the absent mind. In deepen wood where mildew clings to night’s cool breath, a parting kiss for seasons long since flown. Ryan…