The walk into town would prove fateful that day.
His mind wandered idly while finding the way.
His footsteps were brisk like the chill in the air,
Past Wellington Gate, north of Denby town square.

He paused for a time as the hearse passed him by.
It’s dark, somber outline contrasting the sky.
Stood still as it turned in through Wellington Gate,
Down that last dusty byway of sorrow and fate.

A pair of dark geldings, black plumes on their heads,
Subdued in their gait, now transported the dead.
Their hooves beat dull thuds on the cold, frozen sod
Alerting Old Scratch and most certainly — God.

Pine box in the hearse lay there stark and austere.
Poor soul’s final journey, last ride anywhere.
A small group of mourners attired in black,
Followed the hearse on its lonely, sad track.

His thoughts traveled back to concerns of his day.
The business in Denby that brought him this way.
His footsteps trudged on toward the town just ahead.
On past the bleak garden with its fields of the dead.

And the day passed by quickly as he made all his rounds,
Attending to business before leaving the town.
Then an overdue visit to friends from the past,
Would leave his mind reeling, now shaken, aghast.

For Nell Reed had returned from her trip far away.
Nell Reed had come home, never more would she stray.
The scene he had witnessed at Wellington Gate,
The coffin, the mourners, celebrated Nell’s fate.

Then a blow to his middle, sharp twist like a knife;
Twice now he’d lost Nellie, his one love in life.
Nellie, oh Nellie sweet child of his youth,
How could he accept this, admit to its truth?

She now lay in her coffin, pale, cold, not a sigh.
No words could she speak, not a single goodbye.
No explanation of the times in their past,
Of un-answered questions, he could now never ask.

He then found himself back at Wellington Gate.
Fall shadows had lengthened and the day had grown late.
Dead leaves of November swirled under his step,
Invited him follow to where Nellie now slept.

The despair that he felt huddled there by her grave,
Made him seem as a man now most surely depraved.
Harsh pleas for the answers to questions long asked,
From someone once cherished, now part of the past.

Where had she been while he fought in that war?
Why did she leave, did she love him no more?
And when he returned, mind and body all scarred, 
Could she not stand beside one so shattered, so marred?

He cried out in frustration, old sorrow and pain,
As he knelt by her grave there on Evermore Lane.
And the day turned toward evening, but he did not see,
Trapped there in his sorrow with no place to flee.

Then he sensed someone else, just behind, but nearby.
A young man with Nell’s features, especially her eyes.
In his fist was a letter, tinged yellow with time,
Nell’s neat tiny script penned on each faded line.

“She told me about you and what you once shared.
She asked me to find you, to tell you she cared.
She wished you to have this”, his voice held a plea;
“Her last thoughts on this earth were of you and of me.”

“The letter was written a long time ago,
When I was a child, before I came to know.
The man I called father, in the days of my youth,
Was only her husband, their well hidden truth.”

“He raised me and fed me and treated me well,
But he never did love me and I always could tell.
This letter from mother should bring you at last,
Escape from the ghosts that have haunted your past.”

The son placed the letter in his father’s right hand,
Waited a moment, made a half-hearted stand.
But he turned then and left, back through Wellington Gate,
To his own sad beginings and his own earthly fate.

And his father, by the morning, lay frozen and dead,
On Nellie’s cold grave with the message unread.
He never did view those last words meant for him,
It grew too dark to see, as the cold night set in.

He succumbed to that cold and to Nellie’s mute call.
He died where she lay on the last day of fall.
Such a story is told of this man and his fate;
It gets whispered while passing by Wellington Gate.