A Widows Walk

In the windows,
Widows crooned and nearly disappeared,
Hiding swollen eyes in yet to be finished baby blankets,
Ever the while,
Brushing but a stray hand over a cheek,
Like wiping a flake of falling skin,
But instead reveling in long past touch,
When he would reach from lidded eyes,
In a lovers shade of dark,
And press kisses to her forehead,
Kisses that were tears,
Each inside out.

Night became further night,
Now an uncomfortable strain of dark,
When shadows reflected objects behind them,
And the pulse stepped to the periphery,
And the garden shakes with a rumble of insects,
Each prying at tender stalks,
Corn bent lightly with the weight of dead eyed crickets,
Snakes treading endless circuits through stiff bladed grass,
Elk sleeping shyly,
Trembling at every insect sniffing,
The tender sides behind their ears,
And snorting soft nose tissues,
Exhaling what becomes hot morning fog.

The hot fog beads the windows,
That downward upon,
Belie a five stranded streak,
Much like the weight of a widow’s sigh,
As she all but trumpets her angst,
Mending broken old hearts,
With a nip of watered down grain alcohol.

It was those infernal ovens of night,
That sat between endless shades of sunset,
And an old mans yearning for the fertile soils,
That stretches the burden of blame,
To a careless and barren length,
With two dry hands finessing the twine,
And a lazy leg swaying the hammock.

Sunflowers made heavy cloven beats,
Upon windows long tainted,
By whorls of lonely dusts,
And low scratching branches,
Even a limb of lichen,
Brought surely up from the moist and sunless sill.

Was the fog any less for closed eyes,
As the widow crumpled to the mass of sensation,
That was the swaying of the vegetation,
The rutting of swine in dwarfed hemlock,
Muddy bricks collapsing under wind and rain,
Loose white laundry howling in the nightly tempest,
Each fallen leaf shuddering like breaking glass.

As the windows digress,
Into the hunt of night,
That bares its black teeth in stare,
Sating the whine of feral pups,
Reared in the background of pitch black absolute,
Runts reared on spongy wild mushroom,
That lightning starts their heart,
And their race to daylight.

And the widow pitched,
At a gasping lean,
At the front door splayed like a ribcage,
A trail of wet frightened animals,
Peeking through the bright white of lanterns,
Lapping heavy cream from black fire lit saucers.

Nuzzled pups feed,
Finches fall from posture and sink bellow their tiny legs,
A kitten lags skittishly,
With two front hands on the window ledge,
Only to be startled by a deafening thud,
By a lopping sunflower,
Beating pensively in a breeze.

The widow stood,
Motionless behind a stoic stance,
Merely to confront the facade of night,
That seemed so suddenly,
To take the face,
Of a million wilted loves,
Those gone in a trembling rush,
Much to the tone of this selfless dark…