As it is now,
As it was before,
As it will be,
They come to see,
To touch,
All of them the same to you.
With scorn or love you take them,
Your gifts allow the choice.
Gifts honored before honor to the Cross,
Before the word reached us
Your gifts called and we came to you
In suspension of belief.
I see you looking in the glass.
No, do not turn to find me.
By chance your powers I can ignore.
Take no alarm: I only wish to observe
To report, as it were, on woman served,
The human made whole at birth by chance.
By chance, as on a train
You saw in passing
A girl and boy by darken woods kiss.
No comfort could beauty offer then,
For in those woods something moved;
Something came as if to call.
A tossing of your hair, a crossing of your legs,
Lipstick reapplied, a man’s flirtatious eye.
The first embrace, you hear and feel him sigh
As the darken woods slide by.
The girl and boy you pretend never meet again;
The thing in the woods blessed beauty avoids again.
Now know what you avoid comes to all
To transform, to move, to mitigate.
Yesterday it held a woman plain of form, of face.
It touched her here, it touched her there.
She laughed and sent it away to seek fairer form, fairer face.
Age to her seemed no disgrace.
She spoke to me of the poets she had read –
They warn of beauty’s trap, she said.
Beauty conquers all; beauty fades fastest of all.
Simple of form and face, lovers few – even young, she endured.
Balanced now – where desire lies she finds her place;
With love for one she surrenders nakedly.
Such grace she showed.
Can beauty compare?
Or at my touch will she cringe
As if a polished blade caressed her flawless skin.
Come beauty, come –
With age let us see what haughty beauty does.
© 2016
The conversation between age and beauty is ancient, yet each generation forgets the conversation always ends with age the victor. The poem playfully nods to that tension.