One-Day Wings
Sky Burial
Sky burial is a sacred Tibetan ritual where the body is returned to nature, offered to birds of prey as an act of release and renewal.
They say it frees the soul.
But grief isn’t so easily lifted.
Daughter of the Plains
Ochre
soaked skies, sunrise
woke her –
blue grass
seas lilt behind
stained glass
at dawn.
On morning’s grace
she’s borne.
Ryan Stone
Night Leaves the Latch Open
The sky forgets its thunder,
clouds fold their arms—
somewhere,
a moth dreams of moonlight.
Your breath slows.
The world blurs
like ink in rain.
Stars peer
through curtain cracks,
gentle voyeurs
to a silence
all dreamers know.
Let clocks keep time
without you.
Let the weight fall
from your shoulders,
like moonbeams.
You’ve done enough.
Close your eyes.
The dark knows the way.
It will carry you now,
wherever you need to go.
Ryan Stone
Southern Cross
Some nights,
when the wind shifts
and the silence settles deep,
I step out barefoot
onto the cold veranda.
Above the gum trees—
the Southern Cross,
low and steady,
like it’s waiting for me
to notice.
It doesn’t blaze,
just holds its shape,
a quiet thing
pointing the way
I’ve always known
but needed to remember.
Not a map.
Not a promise.
Just a reminder
that home
isn’t something you reach—
it’s the walking,
the choosing,
the light you carry
when the dark won’t lift.
Ryan Stone
Drought Town
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, a wheeze,
then my pickup spews steam. It dies in a ditch
under a burnt-orange sun. Tiger snake chunks
graffiti the hood’s underside, one blind eye bulging
from the torn head. It must have sought shade
or wiper water—sliding up from the parched earth
miles back. Now it’s just one more dead thing
in a land of dead things. This is the summer
of red dust. It swirls and the road ahead blurs.
– Ryan Stone
first published by Eunoia Review
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 he stopped,
until I stopped
hiding behind he. I felt small,
watching the cosmos churn
while I lay on the coach road
one summer night,
speaking of big things
and nothing.
Ryan Stone
first published at Algebra of Owls, November 2016
Republished for dVerse poetics – Poems That Could Save Your Life – this friendship saved mine.
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
Dreamer
Each night
feathered wings gift
wild flight—
a slip
from chains, set free
to trip
and roam,
’til dawn’s siren
call home.
Ryan Stone
Dying Light
From my porch
I watch thunderheads
battering high noon
into bruised twilight.
I see you climb
from under eaves,
awakened
by a pressure change.
As the storm inhales
you leap and spin,
leap and spin
your web — knowing
your time to build
is fleeting.
Ryan Stone
days of stone 