The shadows of our footprints
follow us everywhere from the court,
the pavement, the dance, the street,
ink stained register of our birth,
and the stumble to grave,
invisible to us unless
in melting snow, bed of dirt.

The powder on the factory floor
leaves the forensics of our existence.

Watch as trees bend
to cover the crime,
wind and lighting conspire
to cover the crime.

The little black dog on a leash
being hastily pulled away
as his hind paws kick up snow
in a frenzy conspiracy to hide the tracks
while other tracks are exposed in
the freshly trampled white
too numerous for even limbs to hide.

The angles of shadow staircases and flues
declare the evidence of their guilt,
their conspiracy with death.

An iron rooster crowing northwest
in the embers of the day
exposes rooftop crosses
and a receding skyline,
caught in the smoky cyclone
that reveals two once tall towers.

Two shadows on the pavement
walk towards each other
one holding onto the long
rail of a stop sign while
the lady on the third floor
arranges three flower pots
on her tenement window sill
in the enclosing concrete footprints
that surround her and every one.

you see my darkness as a burden;
he helped me wear it like a crown.

She hoped that monsters were just shadows sneaking around corners, but the shadows turned around and gobbled up the monsters. The shadows were still hungry, they are never satisfied, always lonely, always wanting more.

They kept creeping in the dark when no one could see them, looking for their next friend, victim, meal.

“Come to the darkness” they whispered to her. “We will accept you. You need no words with us. We understand you.”

Throughout her life, she tried to run from the shadows, always running to be in the light were she could keep an eye on the shadows. Unbeknown to her, the shadows were always there, right behind her, attached to her like a starfish to a rock.

Over time they leisurely engulfed her.
She did not even notice...
Slowly the colour faded from her world...

It felt like the shadows were running into her like a stripped faucet with water running into a sink. She could not stop it. The water rose and began to spill over the sink’s rounded edge. She could not breathe. And then it happened, the shadows were finally drowning her.  She tried desperately to reach for the surface, gasping for air, but the shadows were pulling her down into the abyss. “Don’t fight it” they whispered sweetly in her ear, caressing her soul. She started to panic. The more she fought the shadows, the heavier they became until she did not know where the shadows ended and she began...

Finders find and the founders await
The dark fears and the light blinds
Shadows abound as the dark gathers
Life greys in feathers of light
Dusk is here and night renews
Dawn will come with the world anew
Clean away what the light has seared
All is not light as the dark views

cc013119

The barren   landscape sends me shivers
Further enhanced by the total obliteration
The presence of ghosts still lingers
So many years after the detonation

All this desolation pictures
Like a scene from the apocalypse scriptures
A pale nuclear shadow projected eternally
The perpetual loss of harmony

A remnant showing us our absurdity
Was vaporised by the obfuscating bright
The ashen picture is the last goodbye
Relic of the tremendous light
My moods darken I want to cry

This is the last trace of a human being
a son of someone
prevented from further ageing
That from fate couldn’t run

Like a permanent echo of the disaster
a visual silent scream
like a photograph of a dreadful dream
a shout that sends a warning to us all


As we wish to forget how the balance is frail
It’s easy to disregard the detail
and be united by the same fate
that destruction at an even greater scale
it’s yet a threat  not out of date

Swaying to and fro,
     weathering breeze and gale -
          silently, leafless.

Standing ***** like sometimes I,
     casting shadows twice a day -
          never sleeping in the night’s, darkness.

Birds tend to rest upon their lofty branches,
     but for a moment -
          others a seasons, length.

Fluid from the sky drains to its roots,
     nourished by the abundant ground swells -
          growth spurts upward and, full.

The dull green color will never change,
     its hue will be recognized differently -
          during clouded, skies.

Its death may come as, lightning, STRIKES!

I try to search but all I find
Is only what I want to see.
Dark corners hide inside my mind;
Shadows shade my memory.

I still remember the numbing pain
And all of the stinging tears
That fell more often then the rain
Throughout my tender years.

Recalling why remains hazy.
How did I come to know such pain?
Those shadows are what drives me crazy...
Yet they are what keeps me sane.


Yvonne Denise Springer
Copyright ©2002 Yvonne Denise Springer