Challenging Poetry

new habits

when I change, I do it cell by cell,
forming a new face
with the stately leisure of a riverbed
moving mud into a bend,
hollowing out a new curve with
subtle persistence until a watcher cries:
the river has changed!

snakes have it easy,
changing skins with no more thought
then I take when shedding clothes
to show fresh, bright skin beneath.
they are new born, and slip away
to marvel at the day
and slide down new paths, free of the old
drab skin and the patterns
it followed.

I don’t see it in the mirror
as I glance day by day,
but every seven years, my face changes,
cell by cell, and I look on the world
with new eyes.

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