Blue Masks
Greg Keeler
I was going to call this Weathering
the Storm, but considering the way
death makes clichés of us all, I’ll fall
back on the blue masks that muffled
our meanings and made us distrustful
of one another. We tried to smile
with our eyes but with eyes, kindness
can be mistaken for rage. In the early
stages, I’d leave mine in the car and have
to retrieve it when I saw the sign on
the door, or someone in the store
glowered at me. It didn’t take
long before I was glowering at
others who’d forgotten theirs.
Greg Keeler is a poet and painter living in Bozeman, Montana. His most recent book is The Bluebird Run.