Reflections

As the steam clears
I catch my reflection
in the bathroom mirror
I can only stare
youth and vitality
no longer looked back at me
old eyes
under a verandah
of greying hair
peer at me
hot water running
mirror steams up again
now I can imagine
youth and vitality
like it was yesterday
until I walk from the bathroom
my hips and knees
confirm those old eyes
under a verandah of greying hair
are a true reflection of me.

Free Me

Free me
from the material world
in younger years
yearned for more
not one internal smile
or genuine fragment of happiness
came from things
reflecting on my need for greed
a right old dingaling I was
singing now from poorer page
as I rapidly age
simple life
love of wife
family and friends
enough to get by
bread of life and shelter
my happiness is priceless
money didn’t buy.

Andrew Ballard lives in Adelaide. He was a petty officer medical in the Royal Australian Navy for 11 years, following which he worked for medical companies selling devices and instruments, then as a support worker in mental health, and a support worker and first aid instructor in aged care. Diagnosed with Systemic Mastocytosis, he took early retirement, with digital art, and lawn bowls, becoming activities. With 2020’s COVID year then also impacting, especially on the bowls, he turned to writing, and since last November has seen his poetry published by TAMS, The Australasian Mastocytosis Society, previously in ‘Poet’s Corner’, and in the US in the New Jersey Mignolo Arts Group’s journal and the New York poetry journal ‘Open Skies’.

Readers’ original and unpublished poems of up to 40 lines can be emailed, with postal address, to [email protected]. Submissions should be in the body of the email, not as attachments. A poetry book will be awarded to each accepted contributor.