THE OLDER WOMAN

I’d only dated younger women
Or now so it seems
In my endless search
For the mate of my dreams.

I’d looked around
Yet never had found
The one totally right
For me.

The older ladies
Had always been there
Yet small chance had they
That I might care.

Then one day I spied
One who was so fair
Appearing as it were
From out of thin air.

She’d been a friend
For over a year
Yet no older woman
Would I let draw near.

Many tiny wrinkles framed her lips
And surrounded her eyes,
Those footprints of age
I’d learned to fear and despise.

But finally one day
It became so clear
But only because she
Allowed me,
To linger near.

The wrinkles were the echoes
Of hundreds of laughs
The tracks of thousands of smiles
Not the gradual erosion
Caused by Life’s harsh miles.

Each time she laughs
Her smiles these tiny lines erase
As a youthful joy
Beams from her face.

One instant I see a girl of two
The next a young maiden comes peeking through
As she peers out of now youthful eyes
I see the youthful soul I didn’t recognize.

She’s many ladies all packaged as one
And only I suppose
Because of all the years she’s lived
Does she have so much to offer and give.

She’s never flustered and ever so neat
Not too thin, yet still quite petite.
How did someone so clever, yet sweet,
And this older man ever happen to meet?
****