Skins
Age 10 slough. Age twenty slough.
Age thirty slough.
Age forty and fifty slough
and so on.
Age sixty was a mighty shedding,
the polished scales
rattling in the very teeth of death.
Wriggling skins, some actual skins,
much metaphorical molt,
ephemeral epithelial layers of self.
Shadow buzzards;
those gormandizing birds
that exfoliate entropy,
they that aid the slip-sliding away
of all pivotal and transitional days,
they now sing my late peeling songs.
Enough. Basta!
This year my skin is stuck to word-bones
and only a starving raptor
could peck away this pelt and sheathing,
and not yet
not while I still have skin in the game.
Copyright © Eric Ashford | Year Posted 2022
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