On an Autumn Day She Rose and Left

On an autumn day, late in the season,

the colors faded and fallen, bare limbs

raked clear the clouds to let the sun through,

and she rose and left, unseen in her going.

Her morning table, arranged by her bedtime habit

of setting it out, was ready for him, for his day,

but the plate was long empty, no bacon frying or coffee perked,

no odor of breakfast lingering; not even the juice glass

was in its place, chilled and waiting in the icebox.

Her apron, worn thin through decades of breakfasts

and early morning risings, now hung behind the door,

its long strings dangling behind a frayed hem,

an apron starkly lit by the morning light’s

illumination, yet shadowless and flat, a cardboard cutout

dark and silent in this empty house this autumn day.

Missing, though, was the great coat she wore, gray wool,

and practical, sensible for the changing weather

grown cold and raw, and we found her footprints,

small and faint, slow steps leading to the pond

beyond the house, reed-hidden among the cat-tails, tall

and bent, spent, white filaments, like hair, blown and clinging,

and the scarf she wore, too we found, red and gold,

delicate, draped over a low branch, cracked, now, and old,

barren in this late autumn season, to be cut and burned

in the winter months ahead in our need for warmth,

the cold of solitude and loneliness too much to bear.