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144 the widows’ handbook October 26, 1991: Outside Saratoga Springs Sandra M. Gilbert Unseasonable heat, as I slip toward Eastern Standard time, below a rank of rusting east coast trees not far from where six years ago we quarreled, kissed, gave thanks. Sun cooks a small polluted pond you’ll never see, coated with curled-up leaves the local sculptor wants to use as models for her ”floating baskets.” The water’s dense and black, as if this lake were what they call a tarn; the trees lean in, companionably blackening themselves. Back home, in burnt-out Oakland, an older widow asked if I “felt a presence.” No I don’t. I always hated Halloween, the fat dead pumpkin with its silly mask of life, the kids pretending to be ghosts, the mockery of skeletons. Down here among the shredded leaves, the rocks are only rocks, the shreds just shreds, and the fish that leap in the murk probably don’t know they’re “leaping.” Your eyes are gone that might have loved the last quick lights in these Berkshire trees. Something turned you into a stone of yourself. memories, ghosts, dreams 145 What baskets of wishes can I even dream of fashioning to float next week across the chilling waters of All Souls Night? ...

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