Life In The City

I was riding the bus from Santa Monica one day, and I met a woman. She was getting old, but she was strikingly beautiful. While her hair had turned gray, she had it attractively styled. She wore clothes a younger woman would have chosen, and wore them with style. The only thing that really made her seem old though, was she had a hard look to her face. I saw her read a book, and when she got to a passage that caused her to look at it with disdain, it made her seem even harder. I so much wanted to ask her questions. What happened to you? I wanted to ask. What made you hard. So hard. Did someone break your heart? Was it shattered into so many pieces, the only way you could put it back together was to turn it into stone? I wanted to ask. But then I remembered a poem, and one passage of that in particular, and I suddenly appreciated her beauty at this time of her life. In this stage of her life. I realized that even though she had lost some of the joy of youth, she still had a beauty of spirit that even her hardness couldn't hide. And in the end, I decided not to ask her any questions. I had reached my stop.

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face--

W.B. Yeats

Labels: Travel