To a True Beauty

We look into the mirror quite dismayed;
our youth annihilated, flesh betrayed.
This fresh-faced child looked long enough to see
an ageing father staring back at me.

We sigh at age, almost out of duty.
We fail a faulty measurement of beauty,
but our despair in age is surely learned.
The beauty of the young is quite unearned.

Beauty cannot be twisted, old or fat?
Then we must see with better eyes than that.
Somehow we forget as we grow older
how beauty’s in the eye of the beholder.

Lady, we must recalibrate our eyes
and learn to see the beauty of the wise.
Please know that when I stand and look at you
I’ll not see what is old but what is true.

If struggling to play the hand you’re dealt,
recall true beauty isn’t seen, but felt.
John Keats equated beauty with the truth.
Look deeply in your mirror for the proof.