I've got skin in the poem

 

 

Old skin turns color of serious sin

at the slightest bump or rub,

its print a bruise that earns sympathy

and almost-hidden disgust

 

An aged, wrinkled hide finally wears

a kiss of tan in defiance

of history of burn, blister, peel

suffered by thin, Irish skin

 

After decades it sports a white paperlike

texture marred with purple explosions

of bumps, bruises caused by a sneeze

with contour lines, a watershed topographic map

 

Time’s come to appreciate not just the wrinkles

of exotic elders photoed in magazines,

but to cherish our own abrasion of years

shockingly reflected in the morning mirror

 

 

 

© Sharon Lopez Mooney, ‘I’ve got skin in the poem’, originally published in The Tipton Poetry Journal, Issue #53, ed. Garrison Harris, Zionsville, IN, USA, Summer, 2022