Which?

 

Which?

The film strip of my life:

the constant change, albeit slow:

was I all of those?

That youthful face, hardly;

neither lines nor traces,

none of my history there.

Or the newly married

with all his questions answered

before most arrived;

can he be my truest self

before he has questioned yourself?

And then, with the first signs of grey

and a modicum of success writing poetry;

was he the arrival; I suspect he thought so,

though the years were already picking up speed

and his dreams beginning to look ragged

in their flight.

Now this face, growing gaunt,

age seldom recognized in the mirror,

but seen with shock in the updating

of passport and license photographs.

Time sculpts beauty away, individuality too;

but stripped of self-importance, pride diminished,

there, at last, inside the scribble of age, is my bared self.