Woman Reading

A widow sits under

a spruce tree

and reads her beloved Kafka.

Today, it is “A Dream.”

She’s in the hills

and the sky is hazy.

She hears a bird

and calls it a bell-bird,

for it makes a sound

like the bell-bird in Bundoora.

She’s only sixty

and thinks she’ll remarry

if she can find someone

like her late husband who,

unknown to her, would

gently raise the pillow

on which she slept and kiss

the thin line of her lips.

She looks up from the page.

There’s a motley crew of birds

shrieking at the gate.