My Mirror Image

 

Today I looked in the mirror

And I saw an old man

And unlike the distant past

There was nothing grand.

 

Maybe, except of course,

The conviction of my age

And this was a little disconcerting

At my senile stage.

 

I shuddered to think

Of days so long ago

When very little was beyond me

And I was on the go.

 

Back then I could run

And I could hop and skip

But now, for the present reality,

All that was clipped.

Braggadocio was gone:

One of my names long past

And trying to look like back then

Was an impossible task.

 

Lines were setting in,

Not of the youthful kind

For these had long passed away

With the passage of time.

 

But definitive lines

That arrive with old age

And with such lines the memory

Of a long-passed stage.

 

It was my mirror image

That I dare not deny

When it said to me, “You are old,”

And it wasn’t a lie.

 

The one thing, though,

My mirror could not show

Were the years of experiences

I had come to know.

 

My mirror-image

Is the reality that I see

But even at this present stage

There is more I can be.

 

For one, I can share

How I managed my life

With the help of Almighty God

In the midst of strife.

 

 

The many times I fell

But never declined to rise

Just like the proverbial vessel

On the swelling tide.

 

I could tell of the highs

And chronicle the lows

When I could adapt very fast

Though now slow.

 

Mirror image changes,

The physical one, I mean

But one still remains oneself

Whatever the scene.

 

Don’t be dragged down

By the image you see

But when the physical declines

See what more you can be.

 

Be a benefactor then

Rather than a beneficiary

And spare someone the suffering

You were forced to see.

 

Stewart Russell © September 18, 2024