The Widow's Walk

Memory in widow’s weeds, with naked feet, stands on a tombstone.
— Aubrey de Vere

The widow walks on glass.
You can see her panties
if you monkey under
or her beating heart
like a muskrat’s or a toad’s.
She carries it aloft
though ravens lower talons to it.

Or gulls, for water creeps
and clots, waves and washes
the sandy periphery.
The widow jumps from
the glass, her waist
at twenty inches nipped
by whalebone or the glass,

she jumps headlong and longer
through our viewfinder
trained on iron pickets,
the wind sylvan through her hair.
The glass cracks, artsy cracks,
the hourglass of her
whipping with the rhythms

of a fire in the chimney
you want to pour her into.
Instead, ravens beak
through the shards
where she struts still,
either a miracle
or a TV episode that’s final.