Mirror and Old Age
We have a relationship with mirrors all our lives and naturally the image in the mirror reflects the growing up then growing old process. In childhood you make funny faces in the mirror and over time the mirror gets it's revenge
Looking into the Anti-Wrinkle Mirror
An old person looking in the mirror and seeing a younger version is a common theme...more to follow
My Mirror and Me
Mirror, mirror on the wall
You're not playing fair at all
I'm really now upset with you
For giving your distorted view
You show my hair is turning gray
It's just the way the shadows play
I know that you're not hanging straight
To make me look so over weight
The way you show a double chin
Is just the way the light comes in
I think I'm fine, but you're so wise
To put such accent on my thighs.
I wish you'd try to be my friend
And tell me I'm a little thin
Just tell me I look good in jeans
And frilly shirts and pretty things.
Please don't let the wrinkles show
I'd like to have a pretty glow
I see you won't respond at all
So I'll just tear you off the wall.
"When are you going to accept the passage of time?"
Here's the reverse...young man sees old
Mirror
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful-
The eye of the little god, four cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.
**
If you want more look up James Merrill who also wrote a poem called Mirror and Matthew Arnold's poem "Growing Old"
John Gorka said in his song People My Age
People my age
Are showing some wear
There's holes where their teeth was
And their heads have gone bare
Their brains are shrinking
Faces sinking into fat
And as for the mirror
We won't be looking into that
Old seeing young
Young seeing old