Hymn of Skin

Updated 3/2017 -- all links (except to my own posts) removed as many no longer active. and it was easier than checking each one.


In the March 3, 2010 issue of JAMA, there is a poem by Sarah Wells called “Hymn of Skin.”  While I enjoyed the whole poem, my favorite part is:

Plastic surgeon of the heavens, how I delight
in a furrowed brow, crow's feet, age spots—
wrinkle me up a dozen times to show I lived
hard, good, funny—after all beauty, being what it is,
is only skin deep—may my soul seep through
dry scales of later hands, resting tranquil in my lap.
O omniscient dermatologist, what ingenuity,
past hurts evident in scrapes and scars—
a clumsy stumble down uneven concrete stairs,
knees and ankle raw and dripping; pockmarked cheeks
from teenage zits—all healed, in the end, but not forgotten.
How often we need reminders of where we’ve been.