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Shadow of Grief

Shadow grief...


Ideas casting shadows across mindscape.
Figures of phantoms and reality.


Covid-19 stark, glaring.
Imagining 27 kilo bases, unthinkable rising death statistics.
Shadowed faces, masking tight lips.


Emotions responding
Tapping survival instincts
Ramping up heightened sensitivities
Shadow-fear lengthening penumbra of horror.

Numbers are people.
Ghastly shadows stacking up one on another.
Mute our collective grief, people do die everyday,
Do they die at this rate per day? Dancing headlines--
Yesterday’s toll, the bells don’t tell. Today’s dead swelling.


Some draw air deeply thoughtlessly exhaling---
Others fighting drowning sipping---at last breath becomes air---forever.
The lonely longing digital shadow arms embracing loved ones across the chasms.
Human nearness and touch a misty memory.
Dark multiplying gliding shadowy specters of terror and aloneness.
Young and old slipping beyond reach.


Suffocating lungs do not really breathe. Mechanical ventilators are insufficient.
Shadowy promises of more resources that don’t appear in time.
Starved vending machines of time cannot dispense what’s required.
The hospital sundial points the exact time: a time already too late.
Time pulses while more pass, and even more wait in cue.


Beauty is encrusted in the shadows of this great horror.
Delicate shadows may someday fall across calmer minds
Lengthened shadow of time is needed, a much longer span.
Memories of loved ones lost may beckon rekindling glowing memories.
Now we just stare. Today is just too raw.


Internal shadows stirring our inner worlds churn in chaos.
Too much has changed too quickly. Securities lie smashed.
Who we are sliding away. After all we survive, at least now;
Why us? They were us, but now no more.


Searching shelter the dregs of another draught bitter on our tongues,
Resilience glimmers only in the mirror in the corner;
Flickers in masked-faces---shadows of what we were.


Today's struggles shift so slightly into hope-filled triumphs.
Spring unfolding, we still await that flicker of hope:


Shadow terror fading.


---by Lee Denzler April 7, 2020

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