LESS THAN PERFECT

I knew her well, a long time ago,

Look at her now!
Like others, a spring chicken once,
Now winter lingers always on her brow.

The brevity of human glory,
The ominous land of old age,
The grim simplicity of life
Chronicled on crumpled page.

Accusation; more hideous than crime,
The fact that beauty has no height or width
The very likely sleeping truth
That all people - love may merely be a myth.

Look again, where to find new wrinkles,
Genuflection; serfdom in her eyes.
The silent echoless cavern of her mind,
Her truth; a rearrangement of her lies.

Her love is but a mirror of the lover,
The keyhole found, but the key is wrong,
Her wailing, piteous and shrill
Was once her maiden song.

Knowing too little, feeling too much,
That’s her lot, as all her sister peers,
Memories, embellished self-deception,
Once smiling eyes, now well of bitter tears.

She swims a sluggish river known as treason
Certain in doubt that doubt will come again,
In ever shifting battleground of fear
The ink of malice in ever moving pen.