Tag: thoughts

The Walk

I wake a full hour early
for the rare gift
of a walk in the woods
with my father.

He is a silent giant
among misty ghost gums.
I tell him, Watch!
See how fast I can run.

He doesn’t yell when I trip
and fall, but lifts me
with unfamiliar,
calloused hands.

At the end of the trail
I study my grazes—jagged
and bloody. He tells me
he’s leaving my mum.

On the walk home
I gaze at the gum trees
and fragmented clouds, thinking
they should look different somehow.

Ryan Stone

first published at Poetry Nook, 1st place Week 185

42

The Journey Home

She tells me her pain is a squall,
sudden and vicious, like a flash

storm whipping in from Bass Strait
to batter King Island.
Do you remember our Island, Garth?

Her doctors build shelters; nurses
batten hatches, but this tempest

won’t blow over. She says her pain is a vulture now,
circling the desert on threadbare wings.
A glass of water if you please, Garth?

With beak and claw, it slashes and rips
nerve endings, drinks color from her eyes.

The pain is no longer squall or vulture,
she whispers, but a flutter of pages.
One last story before bed, dear Garth?

I don’t tell her that I’m her grandson—
not her brother Garth, stolen by war.

She’s a thin sheet stretched over an empty
bed; a gull’s cry on the wind.

– Ryan Stone

first published by Eunoia Review, June 2019

9

In Passing

After all the years, the heart-shaped
promises, a Ponts des Arts love lock
one Spring, it has come now to this —
a sterile room, too-small-for-two bed,
plastic flowers, faint urine smell.

Standing bedside, she strokes and hums,
remembers a warm night by the sea.
The setting sun kisses white hair
golden. Tremors become twitches,
become silence.

Ryan Stone

38

Riders in the Night

Outside, in the distance
a wild cat did growl
two riders were approaching
the wind began to howl. -Bob Dylan

Hoofbeats on the tundra!
Beneath a mage’s moon
she draws her shutters closely,
prays morning finds her soon.

Thunder shatters silence,
a rapping at her door
tears the night asunder–
a wild cat’s chilling roar.

All along the cornflower
rows, shadows dance with glee,
seeking answers as the wind
howls by a lone oak tree.

Dawn finds an empty homestead–
bleeds in through broken panes,
across spilled dill an’ fennel
and spattered, rusty stains.

Ryan Stone

first published by Poppy Road Review, August 2017

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