I’ve discovered a thick bell

inside of me

that elegiac poetry rings

a terribly deep booming

knell

It has always been there, I can tell

but I had forgotten

I think it is in all of us

a human ache, a fathomless

well

Being dead while alive mutes its swell

wraps the bell in fog and distance

and it must be one of the Mysteries

that you have to be alive to feel

its peal

that resounding shake of loss in your core

that throws all semblance to hell

Depression… could its fog be protection?

from all we have lost and are losing?

But a quelling that keeps us dead

In the face of death

And life

A society that does not realize it is in mourning

that grief is appropriate

that an elegy is going unsung

yet still death is

come