If Your Skin

For R

If your skin were fine sand
I’d burrow

to the bone
planting apples for the morning

If your skin were slate
I’d chisel leaves
and branches
bowed with yellow blossoms

If your skin were moss
I’d drift in the tendrils
sleep between your ribs
with the drowsy snails

If your skin were oil of cobalt blue
I’d scribble fingers
with long strokes
up and down the breathing of your spine

If your skin were field grass
I’d rake the cuttings gently
sucking down
the faint odor of rain

If your skin were rivers
I’d bob for crayfish in the pools
rescue quail and white peacocks
from the flooded banks

If your skin were air
I’d conjure bats to glide
mercilessly
through the waves of tiny flying eyes

If your skin were ice
I’d wrap you in the womb of a wolf
stroking her belly
with oil of mulberry and eucalyptus

If your skin
under my hands
almost iridescent
in this dark room
reached warming

your sealed, secret, supple
skin…