Masked in Plain Sight
Persona,
the mind of the self, is perhaps
what is least seen
when we go to our daily bouts:
We hide our thoughts from all, on ladders perhaps a little too tall,
weebling and wobbling and toddering and doddering,
there are too few of words to make that describe these faces we take.
These masks, these faces, these hearts, these places,
are all things we contain within us, our own secret crazes.
But we cannot, no we should not, no we ought not
express our hearts to outsiders.
For if we do, our company of foreign states about us
look down to laugh, and chortle, and to walk those lines of dangerous must.
But Hark!
as poets of Romantic
yore might say,
we retain intimacy in our own special ways.
If we cannot give our hearts to all, and remove the mask to all bared faces,
then we wear the mask in public until we reach private mazes.
Indeed, our most special thoughts and places.