Chitra Ganesh, How to Assemble a Flying Car (detail), 2018, linocut on tan BFK Rives. Courtesy of the artist & Durham Press.
Swan Song
A dark night.
A long night.
Ice on the ground.
Snow in the air.
Wind.
A lone swan on the pond.
Me—at the window.
. . .
A darker night.
A longer night.
Ice on the ground.
Snow in the air.
Wind.
A lone swan on the pond.
Me—at the window.
. . .
The darkest night.
The longest night.
Ice on the ground.
Snow in the air.
Wind.
A lone swan on the pond.
Me—at the window.
You gone.
Ted Richer is the author of The Writer in the Story and Other Figurations (Apocalypse Press [U.K.], 2003; introduction by Christopher Ricks). His writing has been published in Literary Imagination, AGNI, Harvard Review, Leviathan, New York Quarterly, and elsewhere. His poetry also appears in the anthology Joining Music with Reason: 34 Poets, British and American, Oxford 2004–2009, chosen by Christopher Ricks (Waywiser, 2010). A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he is a former professor of English and creative writing at UMass Boston and also taught at the Massachusetts College of Art. (updated 6/2021)
In 2021 a TikTok of Richer reading the last stanza of his “Swan Song” went viral, garnering more than a half million views in three days.