Skin - Dermot O’Logy

Skin covers us from head to foot
It starts out smooth, without a flaw,
then wrinkles like a well-worn boot.
It’s sad, but that is Nature’s law.

Some think that law can be defied:
they hanker for a surgeon’s knife
then end up smooth but slitty-eyed,
so they are stuck like that for life.

An unread book has pages, smooth.
A book, well loved, looks less than new.
There’s no point hankering for youth
when youth has gone. It’s surely true

that you are wedded to your skin
and your skin is attached to you,
so treat it well, stay off the gin,
the cigarettes and vindaloo.

One movie star from Hollywood
had lifts and tucks and tweaks, it’s said,
until her navel reached her chin
and nipples sprouted from her head.

So treat your epidermis well
as though it were designer stuff.
It may be saggy, what the Hell,
it covers you when things get tough.

Dermot O’Logy