Shedding My Skin

Found in my
garden:
translucent, marked
with diamond shapes and lines.

A neighbor tells me,
“It’s the skin of a garden snake.
I know. I worked in gardens.”

I hang it on a tree branch,
marveling at its fragile beauty,
wondering why it was left behind.

Days later I think about
my eighth decade transition,
wondering if J had shed a skin,

a layer of life
that no longer defines me,
that belongs to another lifetime.

I was the child in the picture on my desk,
the one with curly hair that
became straight when she cut it.

Someone told her:
“If you cut it really short
it’ll grow back curlier.”

Now I wear straight salt and pepper
to match wrinkles born
of eight decades on the planet.

I’ve shed a skin:
my ideas about
how my life would turn out,

dreams that remained dreamy, unrealized
transparent
like the skin I've been shedding.

The Brooklyn ways of being,
followed me to Baltimore, Bloomington,
Boston, and over the bridge.

I’ve shed the too-tight skin,
bad fit for the big life
growing inside, unseen, untouched,

its magic working silently,
creating the being I hardly know,
the being I wake up with each morning.

Days ahead fill with anticipation
as this skin begins to feel like it belongs
to whoever I've become.