The Wheel Keeps Turning

The shortest day of the year
she looks in the mirror
new eyes awake.
There she is fifty
looking fifty.
Disappointment bites again.
Her inability to avoid
another stereotype bristles.
Jowls, lines, dark rings
jump out like talking points
in a used grad school textbook.

She hears Tom Petty on
Sunday morning TV, “If
you’re not getting older,
you’re dead.”

Smiles have layers,
laugh lines or worry wrinkles,
wisdom or wreckage,
depends on your perspective.
Either way the wheel
keeps turning. Time always wins.

Ziji Salaam
December 2009