morbid poem a day

SUNBURNS

Seven years, they say it takes,
for every cell in the body to be replaced.
I've often thought about the path it takes--
does it start on my feet, my fingers, my face?

Or is it more like tossing one hundred rocks
in one hundred lakes: the ripples working the locks,
laying another layer of sediment in all those rocks,
my face just the current face of my body's many clocks?

And when, sun-burned, dried and dead,
my arms, my neck, my face are shed,
could the ring of window-white around the red
tell me anything but one day you'll be dead?