Transcending Age
Owning the face we get
starts with amaretto cheeks
beneath storybook eyes,
silken strands draped across the brow,
curious noses,
innocent lips.
From childhood to adulthood,
upon canvases so pure
strokes the brush of time,
dipping into the palette of reality,
layering change upon change.
Colors,
some untainted,
others muddy,
drying,
cracking,
flaking.
What of these changes?
At some point…
One’s personal artwork
retires to Life’s attic,
propping itself against walls that shelter memories,
some good, some bad,
but all when faces partook of mirrors,
expressions in perpetual insecurity
needing acceptance by the reflection,
often never reaching approval.
Unexpectedly…
from the hovering security
of one’s last breath
comes the inner image
void of layered masks,
personage of ethereal essence
finality needing no other depiction
as aging transcends into the ethereal world of
Elysian fields.
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We all looked a lot better when we were children. But some children were gifted with some form of ugliness by their creator, bad genes. Upon reaching adulthood, ugliness had already started to creep in.
By middle age, only about half the population could say they were aging gracefully. And as we reach the pinnacle of life, very few escape the ravages of time on skin and bone.
From a distance, my bone structure and the color of my eyes, with a receding but still, head covered with white hair, I'm told, make me a handsome old man. But my paralysis created seborrhea, sagging skin around my eyes with redness instead of white and drooping eyelids, up close, reveal my age.
Ron