One of the intriguing things I noticed while I traveled up and down the Eastern Seaboard coast were the old and beautiful homes that stood just along the water’s edge. The homes all have stories to tell, particularly the ones near the whaling ports of Gloucester and Fall River, Massachusetts. I often wondered about the wooden fences that adorned the top of homes so close to the ocean. This fenced-in area is commonly known as a widow’s walk. It was given that name because wives of the men who went out whaling or fishing in the cold and foreboding Atlantic Ocean would pace back and forth along the fence enclosure waiting and searching for their loved ones to come from their ocean travels. Many husbands never made it home; thus, the poem The Widow’s Walk was born.

The Widow’s Walk

The widow agonizingly walks briskly, then slowly.
She is painfully worried and sick.
Staring at the Atlantic Ocean, pea soup fog, dense and thick.
Buoys’ bells eerily ringing through salt-seasoned air.
Her body shivering in the moonlight’s reflected glare.
The pace of her walk hinted of what she felt inside.
A widow she soon will be, the widow’s walk has company.
Perched high on the roof, the walk has quickened many a heart,
stating the whalers and sailors were soon to depart.
Children would cry in night terrors dreamt.
The sounds of creaking ceilings above and knowing just what it meant.
Black is not the color of choice.
In each wife’s tone you could hear a sad and lonely dread.
The ocean has taken and will not give up its dead.
A woman walks silently, stiff, and scared.
Buoys’ bells eerily ringing through salt seasoned air.
The widow walks but no one is there.