Doug Stone

Conversation among the Ruins, 1927

–after the painting by Giorgio de Chirico

The sky is clearing now.
but it was their storm with
her slashes of lightening
answered by his roaring
voice of thunder that tore
their fragile world apart.

Still, she tries to explain who
she is but he’ll have none of it.
“You’re no daughter of mine,”
he growls. “I am who I am,”
her voice flickering like a bulb
that has lost the will to light.

Then the years become the
silent distance of their lives,
each looking at a different ocean,
yet each wondering: if those doors
were still open, could they go back
into the wreckage of that room and talk.

Doug Stone lives in Albany, Oregon. He has written two chapbooks, The Season of Distress and Clarity (Finishing Line), The Moon’s Soul Shimmering on the Water (CreateSpace), and a poetry collection, Sitting in Powell’s Watching Burnside Dissolve in Rain (The Poetry Box).