After the Rain

some days
getting up is enough.
feet on cold tiles,
kettle humming,
a clean shirt pulled over last night’s ache.

you don’t have to shine.
not today.
just breathe.
just be.

let the storm pass without explanation.
let the sky rinse itself clean.

there’s no deadline
for feeling okay,
only weather,
moving through.

and when it does,
when the clouds crack open
and a thread of light finds your skin,

stand in it.
face to the sky.

you made it through the rain.
that’s what matters.
that’s the kind of strength
the world forgets to clap for.
but I see it.

I’m clapping.

Ryan Stone

May 29, 2025 6

Dragonflies & Raindrops

It starts with a single languid drop,
beating a hardpan drum.
Cicadas warble a scorched-earth vibrato,
rushing skyward, the long-dry undone.

Rusty tears trickle their bullnose percussion
on verandah iron and brass. While the red dusts
of torment yawn and drink deeply,
thirsty as fire-kissed grass.

My hard-bitten mongrels, in Waratah shade,
flick ears laid unseasonably low.
Drought threatens to claim what Tigers have not.
Limp tails tell tales of woe.

Resembling slender men, brown withered stems
raise limp hands, tattered and burned.
A chorus begins, Magpie trills and woodwind;
life to the outback returned.

Movement staccatos; even dragonflies pause
from their wild tumbles and dips.
A long-absent lover, in the final refrain,
bestows a moist kiss on parched lips.

by Ryan Stone

* Tigers -> the venomous Australian Tiger Snake

Click here for audio

First published in Of Words and Water 2014

May 4, 2024 75

Drought Break

The first splash,
a drum crash
on hardpan.
Tin roof hiss,
a slow kiss
that grows
into rushing
percussion.

New voices rise,
warbles and sighs,
from beneath the shelter
of tree ferns–
a chorus begins,
magpie trills
and woodwind,
as sound
to the outback
returns.

Ryan Stone

Another bite at dVerse quadrille #33 – Sound Off!