On My Mother Turning 30 in 1957

My mother ended      
her 29th year tra-la-la-ing            
on  feckless gams           
     
smack dab into the brick wall      
of the big three-oh--    
old at thirty?  What fool  
told her that?              
                 
Each night the laying on of hands,    
the transsubstantiation    
of  Pond's Beauty Cream:    
   
Hail, Lois, full of grease,                
the lard is with you    
backed by a money-back guarantee.              
                 
I remember how she wept    
gathering tears within                
torn tissues that fell               
                 
like gouts of snow                  
snuggling there about her feet    
Was that the day when
                
the little jars of emollients                
with their madison avenue incantations                
and the magic mirror, mirror on the wall
      
denial-in-a-jar began to lose their power?    
tubes of lipstick sentinels             
all a-tumble in desuetude  
powders and puffs all poof, away!               
                 
Had she asked                
i would have said that                
the jumble of... things
cannot raise youth from the dead                
                 
and were never necessary  anyway                           
and that the dark clouds of age                  
gathering there  at the horizon      
     
of her eyes were but promissary    
notes for answers            
yet to come.              
         
She did not ask                 
and the years passed          
like dancers  dancing till they dropped          
                
and the abandoned accouterments                
of beauty one by one disappeared                    
until the surrender was at last                
   
finalized and done,    
hiding from the world disguised       
in the body of an old woman with broom        
bent back and sharpened tongue    
          
who hated men                 
until all that remained          
was a final paper flower day                
   
folded like an origami memory                
and neatly placed away              
next to the faded jar          
   
of pond's beauty cream          
all in ghostly disarray.          
           
             
Written 16 Jan 2024