Mirror Image

A sly and silent senile shape

With seeping strength and thinning pate

Was looking at the mirrored mess

That recently he looked at less

 

The sullen, sombre face he saw

Was not the one he’d seen before

With youthful laurels on his brow

As splendid as a sacred cow

 

When girl of sixteen years he’d kissed

And tasted on a teenage tryst

With birdman’s daughter he had been

His caged, wing-clipped, canary queen

 

At sixteen years himself, so coy

He was her bashful, blue-eyed boy

Who looked for learning outside school

Which broke the birdman’s golden rule

 

A shy and silent sparrow then

A poet, without page or pen

To birdman – father of his love

He may have been her precious dove

 

But he was no canary bird

To court his daughter was absurd

So situation he would sort

Their romance he would soon cut short

 

A shy and silent senile eye

Still sees sometimes when passing by

The features of his stolen youth

In mirrors of distorted truth

 

And where his lovebird is today

And whether she would turn away

From his reflection in the glass

He’ll never know, so sighs, alas!