Poems

NIGHT STORY

By ·

She thinks about swans, the woman reading,
and a tall girl with tangled hair
touching the fur of a silent bear
who will become a prince. Needing

a cup of tea, she rises, moves
to put the kettle on for steeping
good hot black to prevent her sleeping
before the clock strikes twelve. Hooves

of a golden horse keep pace across
her heartbeat as she stirs in milk,
remembering a gown of silk
she wore one summer day. My loss

is nothing she repeats and then
she pours away the extra water,
waiting for her only daughter
who, hungry, might come home again.

Katharyn Howd Machan, Professor of Writing at Ithaca College, holds degrees from the College of Saint Rose, the University of Iowa, and Northwestern University. Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines; in anthologies/textbooks such as The Bedford Introduction to Literature, The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2013, Poetry: An Introduction, Early Ripening: American Women’s Poetry Now, Sound and Sense, Writing Poems, Literature: Reading and Writing the Human Experience, etc.; and in 31 collections, most recently H (Gribble Press, 2014) and When She’s Asked to Think of Colors (Palettes & Quills Press, 2009), both winners of national competitions. In 2012 she edited Adrienne Rich: A Tribute Anthology for Split Oak Press.

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