Rent control and stubbornness
Kept her there for fifty-seven years
Above Barneyu2019s, or where
Barneyu2019s used to be before
She and Barney became purple
Dinosaurs, at the corner of Sixteenth
Street and Seventh Avenue just north
Of the Village, just north of SoHo just
West of wherever she was mugged,
Just south, just east, just west,
Just north of where she just fell,
A brittle spindle of sparrow broken
Stumbling on curbs and cracks,
Blind to everything but home
Where she expired alone, on the floor,
Where she wanted to be, in her nest,
Anchored on the thirteenth floor,
Which we called the fourteenth for luck.