The hymn of skin

In the March 3, 2010 issue of JAMA, there is a poem by Sarah Wells called ’Hymn of Skin.’ While I enjoyed the whole poem, my favorite part is:

Plastic surgeon of the heavens, how I delight
in a furrowed brow, crow’s feet, age spots’
wrinkle me up a dozen times to show I lived
hard, good, funny’after all beauty, being what it is,

is only skin deep’may my soul seep through
dry scales of later hands, resting tranquil in my lap.
O omniscient dermatologist, what ingenuity,
past hurts evident in scrapes and scars’

a clumsy stumble down uneven concrete stairs,
knees and ankle raw and dripping; pockmarked cheeks
from teenage zits’all healed, in the end, but not forgotten.
How often we need reminders of where we’ve been.