days of stone

Tag: ryan stone

  • Letter to My Sons

    —

    by

    Ryan Stone
    in

    Boys, When the fire comes—and it will—don’t run.Stand your ground. Feel the heat. Know what’s worth burning.Not everything you carry needs to be saved. You’ll be told to move fast, talk loud, win more.Don’t listen to that.The quiet men are the ones you want near when things fall apart. If your hands shake, that’s fine.So…

  • Magpie Morning

    —

    by

    Ryan Stone
    in

    Fifty soon.Strange how that numberfeels both heavier and lighterthan expected. I wake before the house stirs.Kettle on.Dogs at my heel—the old one careful on the tiles,the young one waiting for the daylike it might break open just for her. A magpie sings on the powerline,low and fluted—not calling,not warning—just there.Like me. The track behind is…

  • The Weight of Lost Things

    —

    by

    Ryan Stone
    in

    Set against the dry pulse of the Australian outback, these poems chart the fractured terrain of boyhood, brutality, young love, and the loyalty of dogs. Fathers vanish, mothers soften, dogs die, and the land never forgives. With language as lean as the paddocks it describes, this book explores what gets buried, what remains unspoken, and…

  • you left before the bell

    —

    by

    Ryan Stone
    in

    we were sixteen,all collarbones and restless hands,kicking gravel behind the bike shedslike we knew the world owed us somethingand we weren’t afraid to ask for it. your name lived in my throatfor years afterlike a word I never learned to sayout loud. we never got a proper ending—just a Tuesdayand a late noteand a suddensilence.…

  • Coal Town

    Coal Town

    —

    by

    Ryan Stone
    in

    Birds don’t stop in this town. I see them fly past, black peppering blue, going someplace. I’ve given up dreaming wings. This town will know my bones. Condoms sell well in Joe’s corner store – boredom breeds but breeding’s a trap, a twitch in the smile of those steel-eyed shrews who linger late after church.…

  • Dissembling

    —

    by

    Ryan Stone
    in

    captive cicada, rattling terrible music in the granite hill Ryan Stone

  • Drought Town

    Drought Town

    —

    by

    Ryan Stone
    in

    This is the summer of red dust. Everything sucked dry—hollow as cicada husks, wedged under eaves and porch stairs—waiting for a wind change. On the road out of town, empty grain silos loom, perched like headstones over wheat-field graves. Harvesters sag, tyres cracked like the asphalt. Rotting carcasses litter riverless beds—tongues swollen, flyblown, unslaked. First,…

  • Night Dancing

    Night Dancing

    —

    by

    Ryan Stone
    in , ,

    Dusky pink moonlight Cherry blossom arabesque Dreaming tomorrows Ryan Stone

  • Tidesong

    Tidesong

    —

    by

    Ryan Stone
    in

    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.

  • Self-portrait

    Self-portrait

    —

    by

    Ryan Stone
    in

    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…