Dan garcia-Black10 Sep 2004

"Stroking his brows of sandy shade,
that earliest smoothness
with mustache and hair graying."

The poem starts here for me.

"A belief, a certainty?"

Everything you are trying to say in the first 2 1/2 lines should be told in this line.
Love the last stanza.
But criticism aside. It's a -10- as is.