Katharyn Howd Machan
Albino Raven
Who paints the picture for his tarot card?
Who dares to turn deep sacred black
into a mockery of flight?
White, white, white the woe
of widespread wings, raw caw:
who can raise a brush to touch
a canvas to be reproduced
a thousand times, a thousand fortunes
to be laid out by wise hands
that know love’s heft, death’s promise?
Surely there’s a grave mistake.
Surely these are feathers wronged
by some far god’s miscalculation.
Pan among us as Spring springs?
Loki laughing with warm winds?
But here he is, full male and pale:
a bird perhaps the King of Ice
would welcome as a marriage gift,
but we who need dark midnight’s call
must push away into a dawn
where fingers rest, and beaks and claws
fold carefully away with color
we trust will change our lonely world.
………………………………after Heather Fawcett
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Since 1977 Katharyn Howd Machan, picking up where Rod Serling left off, has taught creative writing at Ithaca College in the Finger Lakes region of New York State. Her specialty courses, besides in poetry and memoir, have been Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy, Women and Fairy Tales, and first-year seminars called Fairy Tales: The Hero’s Journey. Her poems have appeared in many magazines, anthologies, and textbooks, and in 40 published collections, most recently A Slow Bottle of Wine (winner of the Jessie Bryce Niles Award from The Comstock Writers, Inc., 2020) and Dark Side of the Spoon (The Moonstone Press, 2022).
Author’s Notes and Backstory: “Albino Raven” arose from a tarot-card prompt, John; my spouse Eric and I use decks not in the usual “reading” way but as inspiration for poems. Also, my dear friend and green witch Suzanne holds Raven as a spirit beast, so I thought of her as I composed.
Editor’s Comments and Image Citations: Photograph of rare white ravens on Qualicum Beach by Mike Yip. Qualicum Beach is a town located on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada.
