Ellen Stone

When you moved to Kansas City

I wonder if you miss the Flint Hills
driving west, the way they glowed
on fire in spring, sweep of rose-light
when twilight fell, the land a swell
of small waves coming in, tide of rest,
a bed of coals. Old friend, you sit
inside your house, pray for your son
whose mind’s a ball of fury. I wish
I could roll through Kansas City like
thunder grips the sky there, tendrils
of flame flashing overhead, find you
and fly towards the western fields,
maybe see the prairie that is left
and stand in it until we’re swallowed
by the switchgrass and the bluestem
and we feel braced and insignificant.

Ellen Stone advises the Poetry Club at Community High School and co-hosts a monthly poetry series where she lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her poems have appeared most recently on Verse Daily and in the anthology, Choice Words: Writers on Abortion. Poems are forthcoming in Mom Egg Review, and in the anthology, A Tether to This World (Main Street Rag, 2021). Ellen is the author of What Is in the Blood  (Mayapple Press) and The Solid Living World (Michigan Writers’ Cooperative Press, 2013). Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart prize and Best of the Net.