Face Value

Image borrowed from Bing

Face Value


Perhaps if we’d known then about the masks,
it wouldn’t be so hard to accept now;
but the dressing rooms were hidden from us,
locked behind the clothes racks in the closets.

I believed in the value of faces:
the good and bad, true and false, black and white;
the land of the free and the golden rule.
Masks were for Mardi gras, minstrels and plays.

But one day I found a skeleton key
that opened the door to the hidden room.
An old sign said: All masks are free. Take one.
Write your name in the book on the table.

And there they were – volume after volume,
Names, dates, masks they’d chosen and worn. Today:
Truth Mask - tall tales will tell of US debt,
Mitch McConnell and Barack Obama.

I smiled, and wiped a tear as I wrote:
Howdy Doody mask: “Hey Kids, what time is it?”
I didn’t bother to lock the door …


Ann Grenier

Posted over on her site Knot in Line
Listed as #33 over on Magpie Tales 74