From Where We Thought of Other Places

What are late nights for

but worry? The gravel drive
absent of the one car.

She works at a scarf
for colder seasons.

He said she was a—.
Said he was leaving her to it.

Thoughts of flatter places
with no birches, fields still
not full throated, but soon.

She walks only so far
so as to hear if the baby cries.

The lake is oil.
The mosquitoes, thick, loiter
near the ear. Little tune.

The goldenrod won’t bloom
for another two months.

When this is due.
And that is due.

And she will count out too few
ones, smoothing them
on the table.

In her grandmother’s garden:
delicate peonies.

Later: a different, windswept snow
that covers windows with a different light.

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Kelly R. Samuels is the author of two full-length collections—Oblivescence (Red Sweater Press) and All the Time in the World (Kelsay Books)—and four chapbooks: Talking to Alice (Whittle Micro-Press), Words Some of Us Rarely Use (Unsolicited Press), To Marie Antoinette, from (Dancing Girl Press) and Zeena/Zenobia Speaks (Finishing Line Press). She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee with work appearing in The Massachusetts Review, RHINO, River Styx, Denver Quarterly, and Court Green. She lives in the Upper Midwest.