happy is how I look

I have posted and removed this poem several times. I don't know the protocol for such things. I could well be annoyed if people posted my paintings without my knowledge... or would I be flattered? I don't know.

I think this poem is a gem. I first heard it on a David Whyte CD. It is by Fleur Adcock, and strikes a chord with me as I contemplate my life here.

Am I in love with a place?

Well-meaning friends suggest I could have a facelift to look younger, more beautiful. They think that then I might attract a young man into my life. I see the woman in the mirror occasionally and I know that she is younger, more beautiful... and happily independent although alone. I know I am a "passable woman", and here, in my rocky mountainside retreat, looking out over the Liri valley, (OK Zacchi, yes I am living with my four-legged friend), inexplicably happy is how I look.

Weathering

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.

Fleur Adock

*****


Photo of wrinkles added for Sarah... how do you take a photo of yourself without getting a double chin? Ah well, it's all vanity anyway. Here the folk who lived through the war look at your eyes, it's the younger ones who see the wrinkles and the age spots!