Even Prompter

It's Me Again

It’s Me Again

Mirrors serve only to reveal
the extent of my self-deception,
as this wrinkled brow,
these sunken cheeks,
my falling jowls and tired skin,
speak pure eloquence
of the passing years,
age gathering, prepared to pounce
upon my dreaming image,
formed so long ago
when time withheld its verdict
on my careless youth,
choosing immortality
in the face of reasonable
opinion and debate,
a stay of sentence indefinite,
midst the harbingers of death.

The smoke of memory clears,
eyesight once myopic
sharpens to present my presence,
a crazed mosaic of all those agèd faces
I knew when I was young,
considering them a race apart,
creatures old forever,
an alien breed unconnected
with my innocent self.
And now reflection speaks the truth,
that I am one of these
and always was.
It’s a welcome home of sorts.


Line count: 30
Free verse
For Promptly Poetry, Week 11 2021
Prompt: Compose a poem using all three of these words: smoke, mirrors, deception.