The Watchers

The sky greys, blood framed as it leeches edge in.

Drifts often tailed across the flat worn ground. No

one watches even I gaze without sight.

My breathe catches, phlegm lines my mouth bruised and

blistered. Guarding our shelter I lean and

catch my flagging attention she dozes

fitful and sick. Has she long? I wonder.

The ashes are still warm. Though enough to

warm a bevvy? Most likely not. Our hide

lets my eyes grasp the gap, all passers, to’ers.

But no fro’ers seldom see those now.

Them in the wood take their toll. She stirs, a

cry; my eyes drawn up, instinct, questioning

how? No birds seen since the long night. So why?

When the sickness came first we did not See.

Months rumoured a new illness. Places

with a name we knew not. All seemed vague and

distant. Which shrunk the problem. Made sleight it

becomes fiction. But like a day dream we had

to wake. Which we did to a creeping shroud.

Slowly obscured the world we believed we

knew. Through it’s dense weave contrasts grew. Life or

death, withdrawn or at risk, shielded and key.

We had leaders then. Blind they be. Listened

hearing nothing, threatening only that

which sung their song. Sated a thirst for the

apex. We belittled it. But no sense of

scale allowed our leaders to scale it wrong.

They full of empty rhetoric unmasked

grew silent. Following the science in

fits and starts, senseless or unconcerned. They

only arse covering, hung back. The cities

like a slide revealed our demise hollow,

eaten out. A ‘donut’ too sweet on the

edges. Hole at centre remodels our true

being, broken from within. Grow disquiet

as idle hands, eyes, desires, breed envy

and hate. This was long time back. Not stopped,

slowed, seized, without any maker to

oil or note the stop. Now is the time to

clean, wash, purge, hands first and with a count, palms

knuckles, nails, back, lines, are scoured with stone,

safe saved, then the outer garb and any skin

or surface on which particles may fall. Last

is mask renewed. This time the only

time I see my face and only me. She

does not see me. Only her sees her and

I see I. I know her eyes and the bridge that

links but the rest is felt. That instant is

each eve when the mask is shed is the one

time I see self now a stranger glimpsed

in fragment. Because we no longer make.

Things ran out over time. Firstly parts so

The machine stops! Later fuel, lubricant,

oil, not because we run out. Because too

few need. So no one will make. So fewer

will need and soon we are impoverished.

We can laugh. What makes man less feared? A

mask. How do we know? By their masks. If you

love them reveal it by not two. Whom it

may concern know them not. As love is blind.