Ingénue

Ingénue

Raindrops –
steel drums, belting
roof tops.

Loud beats
unheard beneath
white sheets

where two
hearts shed one last
taboo.

Ryan Stone

March 27, 2024 29

Dusk

Dusk

Twilight
sheds her mantle
for night.

They come
together, meld,
succumb.

In eyes
deeper than time
she dies.

Ryan Stone

March 27, 2024 64

The Grey Mornings

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

March 23, 2024 28

Wedding Poem

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

March 19, 2024 72

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