The New Widow Susan Okie She’s back among us. Lately, I’ve seen her—sailing her boat at low tide, pushingher shopping cart at the market(scallions and a box of whole-grain cereal).Her hair has grown out as if she’s tryingnot to try so hard. Her eyes, clear, level,signal, I’m fine. The caw of the fish crowis short, gruff, a bark rather than a word.Out on my dock, I need to wind a mufflerover ears and cheeks against the raw windblowing on shore. I’ve lost the passwords.I prefer to take my mornings alone, watchingripples on Assateague Channel as the tide runscrossways to the breeze. But seeing her,the new widow, has made me want to touchsomeone’s skin, to know what to say.A fisherman’s motor drones. He’s standingin his boat, hovering in the current,checking traps. Up channel wait the darkislands, thick wooded, out of reach. Susan Okie is a poet, medical journalist, and physician who lives in Bethesda, Maryland. She helps teach first-year medical students at Georgetown University about how to talk with patients. She is the author of Fed Up!, a book about the childhood obesity epidemic, and the coauthor, with former-astronaut Sally Ride, of a nonfiction children’s book, To Space and Back. Her poetry has appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association and Passager. “The New Widow” appears in our Spring 2012 issue.