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.