Widow

The young widow
walks weeping down the trail,
the one adorned by star-shaped maple leaves,
flower-shaped dog tracks,
u-shaped horseshoe prints,
and now, by the unmistakable footprint shape
of the new hiking boots
she gave herself
as a birthday gift
last fall.

The first fall
since he fell
last winter,
when she dropped to her knees
and groaned
upon hearing the news,
the bad sad news,
now indelibly printed
in her memory.

Those tracks
won’t wash away 
when rain, snow,
or gusts of wind 
visit this forest.

She didn’t stay down,
supine or prone, 
as the fallen trees,
and he,
remained.

After a while,
she stood up and walked,
stepping over tripping hazard gnarly roots,
among tree trunks stripped bare by creatures’ claws,
sore and exposed as freshly cut stumps.

In the spring,
as maples leafed,
her hair grew long.

In the summer,
she birthed their son.

And in autumn,
for her birthday,
she gifted herself
a pair of hiking boots
to hike the trail,
to visit the standing trees,
and the fallen trees,
to listen to,
and to learn
the brook’s lullabies.

The young widow
sings these songs
to the boy who bounces on her back,
babbling in the baby backpack,
as they amble by the bubbling brook,
with the woods as witness.