Women Without Facelifts - Cynthia Poten

[Larry Robinson]

Women Without Facelifts
 
Their smiles are strikingly similar.  Without
vanity's masks and the veil of self conscious,
their wrinkly lips are lithe and unabashed.
Released at long last from image anxiety,
their glances are permeable, resonant, maps of
song lines and good will.  The feast is in the
moment -- amusing, inevitable, tender or harsh
and all that's galling isn't worth the trouble. 
Silence is power, grief a B Minor blues, and
sensuality? -- think evergreen branches awash
in warm summer afternoon rain. And to laugh!
is to vanish away into never and always,
cells and cymbal selves circling and winking
like fireflies, like frost breath, like stars.
 
 	- Cynthia Poten