Posey
Can there be sadness without joy?
What clown is that
mumbling incoherent gibberish
at her waving feet?
Who was the fool on the hill?
A kindred spirit?
A lost waif?
An orphan gypsy
searching for her tribe?
Searching.
Who is she?
Does she know?
Has she ever known?
Who is she?
Can I tell?
Can you?
I’ve known her so long;
yet, really, never known her at all.
Nor, maybe, she.
Or kept it hidden from us all.
Kept it hidden all these years.
Kept it hidden, say,
too well?
Too many layers deep?
Not merely clothed in costume,
not only caked in greasepaint,
not simply called by stage name,
but cast in borrowed character
for whom life was the stage?
She’s not well
said the dowager,
and who was I to know?
Who am I yet?
And who are you?
And who is truly well?
Surely not the dowager.
Surely not her kin.
Surely not whoever might pronounce.
(For is not mere pronouncing much the same?)
And, yet, pronounce we do,
pronounce we must,
for wellness waits.
And does it really matter?
What if it was a ruse?
What if a clever plot?
Or merely fathoms deep to keep from knowing?
No harm was done
(or, if so, not with malice);
no harm that she devised.
Our legacy is long.
And paid she not the price
in grieving unavenged?
It will be now.
It had been since
had she but known
(for all it might have helped).
That is our loss.
And so is she.
The secret’s too well kept.