The Leather Dress Poem by Gordon R Menzies

If I look hard at the old woman's skin
I can see beyond the surface there
where the weathered wrinkling shimmers
like the surface of lake water in autumn
and the age spots there drift like leaves
and the things she knows swim deep
and the things she's seen now sleep
and deep, deep down l can find her Self
when my eyes like the sun touch low
glittering below like sunlight on sand
like river stone lost below the foam
where the dancing girl that still lives in her eyes
swims and laughs and hides in the depths

And here's what I know in the seeing -
someday she'll cast off this leather dress
she's hidden all her best secrets in,
and when we think she's there in the box
folded up like an old worn garment,
she'll be lost in the glittering, laughing still