To the Great Horned Owl, Who Arrives in the Wake of Death

When my grandmother died,
I was in Oxford,
getting kicked out of a pub.

You weren’t there.
It wasn’t love.

But when my mother goes,
I know I’ll see your shadow.
You’ll hover over me like she did.

There will be no comfort anymore,

just moon and stars and a world unpaused
and you, rabbit-mouthed and mottled,
blinking at me in Morse code,
as if just to say:
you loved her.

Samantha Fain is an MFA candidate at Bowling Green State University. Her work has appeared in Rattle Poets Respond, The Indianapolis Review, SWWIM, Utterance, and others. She tweets at @samcanliftacar.