About My Brother

Some cracks start small as fissures
In a family
and widen into gaps
decades long
and a continent wide
Until the person you once knew
becomes a stranger
or an unknown soul
Connected only by blood
and DNA.
and the uncomfortable canyon
becomes normal
-not a place you dwell in,
but a rim you live on
and every now and then
gaze across and wonder
about the person
on the other side.

~kathie adams brown (May 16, 2010)

One Single Impression Prompt 113: fissures

Throw Away Your Mask

Do I really need the finer things in life?
Are the finest things material and manmade?
Will a fancy car, the right house, the right address really
Make me happy,
Fill the gap, span the great divide?
Are diamonds really a girl’s best friend?
Or is it all a mask,
A finely woven web
To deceive ourselves
That we are alive
and not dead?

The natural world around us
Gently sings her song
Calling me to come and play,
Calling me to run away,
From all the entanglements
And fancy trappings
Of a culture built on consumption.

Throw away your mask,
Don your woodland garb,
Come dance a moonlit dance
Amoungst the trees!
Hear the merry brook,
Singing you her song,
Hear the whisper of the wind in the trees!
Throw away your mask,
Don’t let it make you hide
Throw away your mask
And find yourself outside!

~Kathie Adams Brown (4-20-10)

One Single Impression Prompt 112: Mask

My poem for OSI Prompt 116: Trembling can be seen at Sycamore Canyon, Disaster in the Gulf