The Lonely Woman

Standing alone no shoes on her feet thinking of strangers destined never to meet branches that sway on a soft gentle breeze below her a stream and a forest of trees surrounded by all they had planned to escape a new life together-one they would shape now as the sun sets closing the day she thinks of a war that took her man away moonlight bathes the green and gold with its silence too young left alone she shouts in angry defiance fallen autumn leaves crackle beneath her tread as they lonely young woman walks home to her bed bright stars twinkle like eyes in the sky rain starts to fall as if the clouds want to cry with only the stars to guide her on her way over hills and dales at the close of the day cloaked in dusk to a fire that crackles and burns all alone to her home she returns night stretches before her empty and hollow a lonely young woman drowning in sorrow kneeling to whisper a prayer before bed the one she had shared with the man she had wed alone, yet his spirit lives in her dreams through the night a man so good now gone from her sight a candle that flickers and a flame that burns bright lonely and sad yet she is comforted by its light her womb left empty and will now remain so childless and widowed such sorrow she's known flowers she lays on his poor lonely grave in memory of a soldier, so young and so brave time has worn his name from the stone knowing his body was never sent home. This lonely young woman.