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Honor Fleming: Redwing, 1888
Katharyn Howd Machan

I thought they were done, the fireflies,
heat heaping upon our hands
as we worked to garden, to save, to call
summer’s brightness to stay alive
as sky kept to blue, no rain.

But tonight: July far into ending itself,
myrtle seeming to sing demise,
a flash! Then three, then—blessed—seven
as I kept counting and praising life
for giving my breath hope.

Dear friend dead as June began,
a woman strong with love and laughter,
my days void with all of no:
impossible that she could leave
the world that needed her.

Small lights moving through black air.
Surprising brilliance leaf to leaf.
Suddenly I find again
what her spirit gave to me,
these wings against time’s dark.

—
Katharyn Howd Machan, a longtime professor in the Department of Writing at Ithaca College, has served as coordinator of the Ithaca Community Poets and director of the Feminist Women’s Writing Workshops, Inc. Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines, anthologies, textbooks, and collections (most recently Dark Side of the Spoon from The Moonstone Press in 2022 and A Slow Bottle of Wine, winner of the Jessie Bryce Niles Chapbook Competition, from Comstock Writers, Inc. in 2020), and she has edited three thematic works, including Adrienne Rich: A Tribute Anthology with Split Oak Press. For body and spirit, she belly dances.

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