This poem was published in the Atlanta Review's Spring 2006 edition:
Remembering
The gourd mask hangs on the wall,
round mouth hollow, speaking nothing
but what one hears beneath the ear drum,
like the sharp red feathers of the Mardi Gras mask,
longer black plumes rising from the eyes
as question marks: who do you see?
I take each mask from the wall,
one for you, one for me—
peer through holes into the mirror:
we are changed. Another looks back
through feather and gourd, shaped
by them, something different
than wife, than husband—
a dark chimera, a luminous being.
There are alleys angled within,
numinous as an Orleans night,
bright trumpets, somber trombones:
any turn taken a new music,
how the blues began, like us.
Is it only a question of laziness,
that we become so little of ourselves?
Or fear, the mask we can’t see
beyond.
Bending the tri-fold mirror around,
we are reflected in endless variation,
each face beckoning, sighing,
relenting.
We are always more, never less.