Waking on Cathedral Hill
for Claire & Sarah
The wild turkeys woke me.
I did not know they were turkeys
at first. There was wind
and I thought something had come loose
where I was temporarily staying.
Understand: I couldn’t see anything.
It was later I spied them—four hens walking
the neighborhood, nonchalant and regal.
This was before it began to rain in a way
that discouraged being outside
and the wind had picked up even more.
Where they sheltered I can only imagine.
Last night we sat in the bar ranting
and raving about war and how to find time
to write when in the thick of it: the headlines
and children under the age of eight
with chalk-covered hands still needing
their crusts cut off, the despair.
One of you was drinking a drink
with a hip name I have forgotten.
I suppose we might have annoyed
the few other patrons with our enthusiastic rage
and gesticulations, our poetic phrasing.
It was a Thursday in April
and they may have wished to milk
their whiskeys in peace and quiet. I don’t know
and didn’t care, then. There was so muchto get in in the time we had
that included me who would, soon, follow
the river road south, back to where I was
currently found, while the two of you
walked mornings where there were lilacs
and then those lilies that only bloom
for one day, but stunningly.
KELLY R. SAMUELS is the author of two poetry collections and four chapbooks—the most recent Oblivescence (Red Sweater Press, 2024) and Talking to Alice (Whittle Micro-Press, 2023). She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee with work appearing in River Styx, The Massachusetts Review, Denver Quarterly, Faultline, and RHINO. She lives in the Upper Midwest.
