To His Dying Skin
Every
30 seconds, your skin loses half-a-million cells. --TV commercial
My skin grows
thin. My boundaries erode.
Like autumn leaves my cells drop free,
Flutter to the lawn, skid across the street,
And pile in the ditch behind the mailbox.
Inside, carpet
mites cheer as I pass.
A shower of skin-scurf rains down.
It is manna in their desert. They hosanna
My disintegration. They imagine me a god.
Cumulonimbus,
my epidermis snows us in.
A million flakes a minute fill the sky.
I stick, accumulate, drift into dunes.
County plows rumble and blink their orange lights.
The 2River View, 4_1 (Fall 1999)