Alison Cassidy - Mutton Dressed as Lamb

I noticed three servings
yesterday at the local café -
sixty something retirees
nibbling on entrees
of empty, idle chatter.

The first (the bossy one)
wore a generous head of hair
(or was it a wig?)
Bootlace brown and brazenly ‘bouffant’,
it failed somehow to compliment
the loud and overcooked face
that scowled beneath it.

The second had ‘done’ hers herself.
A Decore ‘natural’ blond
trying (unsuccessfully I fear)
to mask the pale pink pate
that peeped from between
a stand of meagre stalks.

The third was ‘tipped’
(a suburban salon for sure)
in red and Munroe blond.
Her foundation, applied
generously and myopically,
served only to emphasize
the murder of ‘crows feet’
that ravaged her face.

Their ‘other halves’
were balding, bespectacled and paunchy.
They didn’t say much -
Out voiced it would seem
by the generous servings
of mutton dressed as lamb
bleating beside them.

Alison Cassidy

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/mutton-dressed-as-lamb/