On the Matter of Form

I spent my youth in careful thought

Of shape and measure, worth and frame,

Believing virtue might be found

In lesser breadth, in smaller claim.

I learned to weigh myself in glances,

To read each silence as decree,

And held my form to harsh account

As though it stood for all of me.

How quick the world instructs the eye

To judge the vessel, not the soul;

How readily we mistake the part

For evidence of the whole.

Yet time, that patient tutor, shows

What youth is loath to understand:

That flesh obeys a different law

Than pride or fear would have it stand.

The body shifts, as seasons must,

Unmoved by shame, untouched by blame;

It bears us through our daily lives

With neither malice nor acclaim.

If worth were measured by the form,

Then age would rob us of our due—

And yet we know the deepest truths

Are those no mirror ever knew.

So let me meet myself with sense,

And grant the grace I once denied:

To live within this changing shape

Not as a fault, but as a guide.

For I am more than what is seen,

And always was, though late confessed—

A thinking heart, a living mind,

In human form, like all the rest.