“A Woman’s Face” by Carole Stone

This poem is part of CavanKerry’s series for National Poetry Month.  Every day in April, we post a poem from our community of writers.

A Woman’s Face
by Carole Stone

I look into the mirror to see who’s there.
Is this a trick a magician plays?
She looks like me but with wrinkles and gray hair.

I hardly recognize this woman who stares
back but I’m not ready to give up the ways
I look into the mirror to see who’s there.

Have I reached the stage where I prepare
to live with whoever I am these days?
She looks like me but with wrinkles and gray hair.

I search for my former self everywhere,
on the dance floor where she sways.
I look into the mirror to see who’s there.

Not the woman I was with my fashion flair,
so young and ready for nightly soirées.
She looks like me but with wrinkles and gray hair.

I won’t let myself fall into despair.
It’s tough when, like desire, your face decays.
I look into the mirror; I see who’s there.
She looks like me with wrinkles and gray hair.

CAROLE STONE is the author of two books of poetry and seven chapbooks as well as many critical essays on writers, among them George Eliot, Edna St. Vincent Millay and Sylvia Plath. A recipient of fellowships from The NJ State Council on the Arts and residencies at Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers in Scotland and Chateau de Lavigny in Switzerland, she is Professor of English Emerita, Montclair State University. She divides her time between New Jersey and East Hampton, N.Y.