Aging Face
With mirrors the aging face became personal.
It hung before only on the heads of others,
but with realization that the still surface
of a pond returned the image of the seer,
when polished metals revealed a clear and troubling truth,
when a silver-backed square of glass
served up serial images of hard fact so precisely
denial was impossible,
the aging face became a self portrait
in intimate time, like a film frame
on a reel of a fresh spring field
which, between glimpses,
had been raked by a ruthless gardener
determined to turn new life into that
which can only be remembered
Jim Culleny
11/16/15