A Bit of Skin
 
 
Across an aircraft aisle
a mother, young, in jeans
beside her children, leans
to pick up a dropped doll,
and at her reach, the blue
of her brief jacket lifts.
My glance furtively shifts,
acknowledging the view:
 
only the small of her back,
but lovely, olive, then
a realization—skin— 
and I shyly bend to my book.
That teasing notion, touch,
transferred from eye to hand
six miles above the land
has shifted me to such
 
an adolescent state
when skin was everything
ecstatic, every sting
relieved by a hot date,
but now it’s not so clear.
The mother across the aisle
indulges space with a smile
I can only describe as pure.
 
That too is skin, as is
the hand that holds my pen
depicting this little scene
like notes for an altarpiece.
Often I think our skin
is deep enough for love.
We wear it like a glove
until we wear it thin.
 
Outworn, its aging nerves
relay in the faintest brush
with other skins, the hush
of the advancing years.
This is our passage, bound
by all the laws of flight
through turbulence at night
until the wheels touch ground.
 
And as we disembark,
dragging our offices
or households past the eyes
and uniforms, the dark
above the parking lot
does not distinguish skin
from skin, woman from man,
who’s loved from who is not.