top of page
In Our Skins
By Tony Steven Williams
I could have been an ant,
an eagle, a cockroach, a cactus,
a lantern fish, a microbe.
Yet, here I am, in this skin.
I could have been sturdy, slight,
short, tall, violet, scarlet.
Yet, here I am, in this skin.
Was it God?
A reincarnation promotion or demotion?
Some weird, spiritual evolution?
An organic machine?
I don’t know.
But here I am, as I am,
what you see, in this skin.
And here we all are,
miraculously here,
descended from a single
source in Africa, they say,
now scattered in diverse,
crazy clusters
on the shallow crust
of our beautiful crazy planet
breathing a thin band of air.
A world that could end
any time . . . for us, anyway . . .
if we stuff up.
Yet here we are,
still, somehow, miraculously here
in all our skins.
Tony Steven Williams is a Canberra poet and short-fiction author with many publications in journals, anthologies and magazines. Tony’s poetic output is intentionally diverse both in form and material. He loves to wander from densely dark to fun and considers this a reflection of our rollercoaster lives. An occasional speculative fiction piece often sneaks in. However, in all his work, the environment and the human condition are very important to him. Tony has had two poetry collections published by Ginninderra Press.
bottom of page