25th August, 2025

POETRY

Once the Night

by Beth Brown Preston

Once the Night Once the summer night fell across the sky like a dark cloth,
or like a black evening dress thrown over heaven's starry bed.
The hoo-hoot of an owl's complaint echoed from the branches
of a maple tree in the front yard. All else was silence.
The neighbor's unruly dog lay hushed beneath the porch.
And a gentle wind, so unlike the fierce winds of winter,
combed the leaves of the maple like so much hair.

We hid our grief inside talk about love.
You do not understand: my life always has been a puzzle,
a rune, a card player holding an unlucky hand.

You drank what remained of the red wine
knowing it was time to remember our dead.

What I meant to say is: the music of your voice filled
that stillness. And, in a moment of sudden, yet quiet revelation,
a presence I knew to be my dead father arrived to sit beside me.

There were so many words I could have used to escape
your labyrinth, your prison of language.

I lean into the hour of yet another sweet farewell.

Beth Brown Preston is a poet and novelist. A graduate of Bryn Mawr College and the MFA Writing Program of Goddard College, she has been a CBS Fellow in Writing at the University of Pennsylvania and a Bread Loaf Scholar. Recently her work has been recognized by the Hudson Valley Writers Center, the Sarah Lawrence Writing Institute, The Writer's Center, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, PEN, and by Cave Canem. Her work has appeared and is forthcoming in Another Chicago Magazine, Atlanta Review, Callaloo, CALYX, Chiron Review, Hiram Poetry Review, Sandy River Review, Seneca Review, Tuskgee Review, World Literature Review, and many more literary and scholarly journals.