Photo I.D.

I once received two tickets
(My license was required)
Because the card I gave the cop
Had long ago expired.

Though stopped for turning from a lane
I shouldn’t have been in,
The license I produced
Was guarantee I wouldn’t win.

“But wait!” I pleaded with the cop
As she wrote up the ticket,
“I have my current license, too;”
She told me where to stick it.

So you may wonder why I had
A previous I.D.,
When underneath it, there it was –
The current, older me.

The simple truth is ten years’ time
Transformed my youthful face.
When opening my wallet,
All those years I could erase.

The judge dismissed the ticket
(Though I still paid for the turn).
I took away my younger self;
A lesson I did learn:

You simply can’t recapture
How, one time, you used to look.
A mirror should have taught me that;
A cop is what it took.