My Aging Face
My aging face is like the
moon
craters and pock marks gone
amuck
moon shoe footprints stamp their
exploration all over my laugh
lines
I revel in the newness of my
oldness
that I suspect in the mirror
I watch how crow’s
feet mosh in a collective
concerto, cliff dive off
the razor sharp Jemez
of my cheekbones
wrinkles will do
the backstroke into
the pools of skin
skinny-dipping under
each squinted eye
I dry
like baked sand
red clay
evaporated
water
I wouldn’t exchange this skin
for any other, no other skin
could tell my story
sing a psalm for mothers
my arms shape a cradle
my skin spoons my lover
no other skin can spell
the havoc and strife,
the strain of stretch marks,
the clumsy cesarean scar mark,
the way the rolling landscape of
my belly can
the way the slow descent of the
valley of the breasts can
the Panama Canal split of skin
can
the gorge of discolored puckered
skin can
no other skin can tell my story
like it can
I want time to ravage my face
roughen my cheeks like the
ruins of Macchu Picchu
I want my eyebrows to grow out
into
a single bird,
like the one that flies
the face that frames Frida
I want Plato to play about
my drooping chin
dropping in to carve
out the deepest of manifestos
a map of Hellenic proportions
I want gravity to play
croquette upon my forehead
stop for tea around my two lips
and spill its wrinkled secrets
bleeding the edges of my lipstic
pursing the peck of all my
kisses
Time do what you will
to my body, play savage
chords upon my biology
ripen my theology
feed my voracious hunger for
poetry
insatiable poetry
kissing poetry
drinking poetry
licking poetry
color divinity
upon the tops
of my hands and
between my legs
grey my hair
down there
until I see
God
the dark star
of menopause
Autumn of my ovaries
Indian Summer
Winter slumber
silly solstice of the womb
Years of knotting my daughter’s
braids and buns
fixing up buttons, tying shoes
and typing memories
will have tangled the joints of
fingers, disjointed discs
worn out wombs, curving
a spine like a smile
hunching an old lady
into happiness
My aging face is like Port
the long wait of faith
a goblet of ripened wine
a porous cork and
a dying of blush in the cheeks
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