Read Poem: SOFT SKIN, by Susan Tuttle

I remember
my mother’s skin
as she aged,
so delicate and soft,
like stroking clouds
or the down
on a new-born baby’s head;
a touch of Heaven as she
neared her entrance into that
august Palace above,
a reminder that soon she
would be far beyond my touch.
Far beyond my presence.

Now as I stroke the underside
of my own arm
and feel that same softness,
that same delicacy,
I wonder how
I got to this place
of endings,
my own body slipping
down the road of no return,
never enquiring if my spirit
wants to accompany it.

Greedy in its desire
to follow its own path,
my body bows to years that
my conscious mind discounts—
uncaring of the years yet to come,
the things still to accomplish—
pulling me where
I do not want to go,
where I cannot imagine
myself venturing,
not for decades to come.

If ever.

How strange
and somehow fitting
that both the beginning
and the ending
encapsulate themselves
in delicate softness,
when death—
unlike the space in between—
is so harsh,
so heart-stoppingly feared,
so final.

Do we simply come from
the softness of nothing
to slip into
the wonder and bustle of life,
then vanish back into the
nothing of softness?
I do not want
to be beyond the touch,
beyond the present.

And still my skin softens.
It softens.

Author: poetryfest

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