Tag: time

Magpie Morning

Fifty soon.
Strange how that number
feels both heavier and lighter
than 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 day
like 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 long,
marked with all the right things:
mud, fire,
boys with scraped knees and full bellies,
a wife who still sees me
when I go quiet.

The years haven’t made me wise,
but they’ve made me slower to speak,
and better at listening—
especially to my sons,
who keep handing me pieces of myself
I didn’t know I’d dropped.

There is more life to come.
I can feel it humming in the floorboards.
Not louder—
just steadier.

And if this is the halfway mark,
it’s a fine place to pause.
To stand with the sun
not at my back
or in my eyes,
but warming my chest.

The magpie sings again.
Not a beginning,
not an ending—
just the middle of a good song
I still get to hear.

Ryan Stone

Magpie Morning
12

you left before the bell

we were sixteen,
all collarbones and restless hands,
kicking gravel behind the bike sheds
like we knew the world owed us something
and we weren’t afraid to ask for it.

your name lived in my throat
for years after
like a word I never learned to say
out loud.

we never got a proper ending—
just a Tuesday
and a late note
and a sudden
silence.

I still remember the smell of your school shirt—
faint perfume, pencil shavings,
a crushed eucalyptus leaf you kept
in your pocket for luck.
(you said your Nonna told you it kept snakes away.
I said I didn’t believe in that.
I lied.)

I’ve loved since.
proper loves.
wild, bruising, grown-up ones.
but none that remembered the way
I drew hearts in the margins
of science notes
and spelled your name wrong
just to be careful.

you were the ache
before I had words for aching.
the door left slightly ajar
in every room I ever left.

I saw someone who looked like you
last week—
older, tired,
still a little
wild in the jaw.
my chest folded in on itself
like a paper crane.

I didn’t stop.
I didn’t speak.
some memories
aren’t meant to be
put back
into real time.

but still—
on certain dusks,
when the light’s low
and the wind comes in smelling
like warm bitumen and chalk—
I think of you.

and the bell
that never rang.

Ryan Stone

28

Unburied Hatchet

Until I saw those wasted hands,
brittle as chalk, I hadn’t thought
how fast the years make ghosts.

I heard them once called brawler’s paws.
For me, they were always more:
cobras, poised to strike.

But his brawling days are gone now;
I could kill him with a pillow,
if I cared enough to try.

Thin sheets press tightly to a bed
more empty than full, his body broken
like the promises of childhood.

Haunted eyes betray last thoughts
of a dim path, spiralling down.
He hopes to make amends.

“Forgiven?” he croaks,
barely there, as always,
and I’m wishing that I wasn’t.

With the last rays of day as witness,
I turn my back with purpose
and hear the silence roar.

In a late-night bar I catch my reflection
swimming in a glass of bourbon;
but I’m staring at a ghost.

Ryan Stone

Click here for audio

First published in Writers’ Forum Magazine issue 163, April 2015 – first place

154

Pulling Back the Sheet

It started as a scribble
in my yearbook
and ended
with an apology,
of sorts:
I wish I’d been more,
held your hand
when it mattered

and even
when it didn’t.

Ink lasts longer
than schoolyard dreams,
wilted
before their bloom.
Notes we wrote
lend breath
to ghosts,

long after
pens fall still.

In this cold place
I see your face
as it was behind the gym,
where your lips
once tasted

of blackberries
and sunshine.

Ryan Stone

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72

I’ll not tread lightly

Remember school days and how we would play
like there was no tomorrow?
Now the castles we made
are the price we must pay
or flounder in oceans of sorrow.

Roaming wild and free, building houses in trees
as worlds waltzed to discordant tunes–
like a zephyr through grass,
gilded summer days passed,
left us flayed under Cheshire moons.

Wooden sword fights and valiant knights,
pirates, the Pan and his Bell,
faded from dreams,
rowed ungentle streams,
to where the real monsters dwell.

I’ve climbed faraway trees, seen fair Honah-Lee,
never never thought I’d grow old.
Now the pied piper calls —
as the last curtain falls,
leafless, I’ll trip into the wold.

Ryan Stone

image

74

The Sculptor

On Sunset Strip the lights have dimmed
And silent now their siren’s call.
A fading starlet’s eyes are brimmed
With tears–one more forgotten thrall
Who keeps her locks of platinum trimmed,
Awaits her call to glory,
Lays bare her soul to cheat decay
And rewrite her life’s story.
He sculpts her in immortal clay,
In meadows cold and hoary;
Holds time’s determined march at bay
From fields of faded glory.

Ryan Stone

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28

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