Years of Masks

We can do better

Hope that when masks come off, others don’t come back on, for now our mouths are covered, leaving us to detect from eyes, smile from frown, thin-lipped from generous, warm from cold from angry.

Masks predate this cruel pandemic far back to ancient times, covering feelings and intentions beneath stiff upper lips or poker faces, worst of all fake smiles so duplicitous you are gutted before

you ever see the knife, or patriarchs behind adoring gazes, racism behind political correctness, invisible attacks under cover of “nice”, the targets of which know full well what is going on despite cover words: strife unseen or unspoken by the complacent or complacently complicit. So many knees on so many necks gone unnoticed, the uber-rich throttling plebeians for eons now, however well disguised. Hope we can do better than normal, like the masked and giving souls feeding the hungry, comforting children, treating the sick, standing for love, emanating hope as fireflies do light, in the darkness all around us.

We can do better than before as so many have been showing us. Covered faces make us discern more carefully invisible intangibles, things we did not really notice before deaths opened our eyes.

~ Wry Welwood March, 2021