Our Masks   We were masked all along, and it took wearing masks to know that. Now we look like what we always were — midwives & bandits, care givers, surgeons, sneak thieves and desperadoes. Who doesn’t love a costume — we’d all die of shame if our souls were bare! Today, let’s write a tragedy, featuring pallbearers with masks made of smoke, and three playboys with masks made of wasps, and in the last scene we wear masks of love and longing, crimes of passion, spirits with a special spark of life, of danger. Learn your lines. The past is never prologue, just over. Show time — as the curtain rises, the house goes dark.     © Michael Fleming Brattleboro, Vermont August 2020