Angela Andee

I thought I had seen her face, And looked again in the direction of the milk store, There was our Angela ‘Andee’: An empty shell of the previous girl Who had bewitched our juvenile eyes And spun our little heads in a twirl. I had thought beauty to be everlasting, That age blurred it a bit but still spared it; That time stole its fraction but left the rest untouched; Yet my eyes now proved me wrong. There stood the legendary Angela, Her skin ashen pale and fingers the size of a tong. What had become of her rounded eyes That lit our lessons from class one to eight? Her bum and her butt, Those days her treasure stores, Had gone with age or disease or both, Or perhaps to the rigors of manual chores. Now I know that mundane beauties flee, That the glitter of yesterday may run absent today. I learnt that temporal glories, Just like Angela’s fabled beauty, May at once vanish with the wind. I trust not a thing of the world, All its illusory vanities I now must rescind. This same phenomenon amply explains Why tombs lie where good mortals stood. And this reminds me of my colossal loss Of treasured kins and long-time chums. The present shows so that the future may take At a faster rate, and in larger sums. So our once-upon-a-time Angela shook my hand And I cupped it in my unbelieving own, My eyes surveying the mauling Meted on her by the ravages of time. Why had nature chosen to trick her? I wondered aloud as I went home to write this rhyme; To tell the story of one Angela Andee Whose wear had doubly dazzled me.