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Hidden Behind Plastic Shields and Masks


Hidden behind plastic shields and masks
they smile at me but only with their eyes,
there is love in each iris, lash and wrinkle wink.

Who silently steps in the space between
being neither here nor there?
He watches her laboured breathing
as tubes that had filled her lungs with life
are now removed.

I’ve breathed in and out without a thought
for sixty-seven years but not now,
I needed a machine but not anymore.
Alone now and strangely calm -
this is how it ends, the final cut.

He looked at her gravely
and slides beside her under covers of night.
I feel his presence as a chill -
wintery, I’m not dressed for this
journey.

A lantern held aloft in the forest of firs
underfoot pine needles and snow
the smell of resin and the crack of footfalls on icy ground.

He smiles and I find myself smiling back
a new doctor without a mask, weary eyes
that have seen this all before and see too much
I am weightless as a white feather drifting skyward.

Ian Hartley
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