The brilliant leaves, gold and ruby red,
Fluttered down in the chill wind
As I laid white lilies and peonies against
The heavy stone. Names spoke
To me in their distinctive voices.
I had come this November day
To say a kind of goodbye -
Thinking to release you
From my tears that had been
Like dew rising up each morning.
Rain merely rain now, not tears.
I waited there, searching for the words.
I held on to missing you as I stood
Under the arching branches of ancient
Elms, Japanese maple a flaming
Image before my eyes -
In the end I could not let you go,
Absence the last of presence.
Bettie Anne Doebler is retired from many years of teaching English. She now devotes herself to writing poetry. Thirty of her poems have been published in a book, Book of the Mermaid, and in 1994 she published a book of literary criticism, "Rooted Sorrow:" Dying in Early Modern England. She has suffered from strains of depression, both in her family of birth and her own close family, particularly with the suicides of her daughter and her husband.