Thirteenth Samara

scaring the daylight from my mother’s eyes.
Samara looked at me as if I were
a silhouette of some slight waterspout
effusive still after the temperature
had plummeted below the freezing point,
some living afterthought she could anoint

with holy chrism oil. “Tell Samara
her husband speaks to me in Manitou.
And tell Samara that Nathaniel leaves
her flowers, their yellow petals yet unfurled—
behind the garden shed, beneath the cedar.
He waits until that time when time has freed her.”

(complete poem to date here)