so i'm fifty now. older now. wiser sometimes.

more and more, i find myself. find myself wanting myself. wanting what's really in there. to come out.

as for the others, they may see me as old.

i see me as me.

found this poem just now. another moment of serendipity. they happen more and more ...

WEATHERING by fleur adcock

My face catches the wind

from the snow line

and flushes with a flush

that will never wholly settle.

Well, that was a metropolitan vanity,

wanting to look young forever, to pass.

I was never a pre-Raphaelite beauty

and only pretty enough to be seen

with a man who wanted to be seen

with a passable woman.

But now that I am in love

with a place that doesn't care

how I look and if I am happy,

happy is how I look and that's all.

My hair will grow grey in any case,

my nails chip and flake,

my waist thicken, and the years

work all their usual changes.

If my face is to be weather beaten as well,

it's little enough lost

for a year among the lakes and vales

where simply to look out my window

at the high pass

makes me indifferent to mirrors

and to what my soul may wear

over its new complexion.