01/03/2026
N**E - Michael Leunig
From the dream inside our mother’s womb,
We come into the crowded noisy room
Of life on earth.
Our birth is rude.
We come completely n**e.
The soul is raw.
Our skin is bare.
At first we feel the air
And there and then the naked breast is found.
All of life is soft and warm and round,
The ni**le and the lips so pink and ripe and new,
The newborn mouth knows what to do,
And skin is pressed excitedly to skin
As memories of feel and touch begin
In loves’ first blissful primal kiss.
And every kiss forevermore will be a bit like this.
For skin holds memories of touch,
The sight or feel of nakedness awakens much.
And skin begins to feel a need for skin
The stirrings of the memory within.
The milk and rapture of the mother’s breast
The love of skin to skin will never rest;
By grace and innocence compelled:
The need to hold, and to be held.
Just to hold a hand or stroke a brow.
The tingling of the naked touch returns the soul unconsciously somehow
To warmth and nudity with mother at the start,
When we were happiest in our naked little heart
Than we would be for evermore.
And so we touch ourselves,
Or touch each other and explore
The beauty and the miracle of skin;
The sensuous memory unbeknown within.
To kiss grandmothers’ cheek,
To feel a lovers’ hand upon your arm
The hand that rubs our back until we’re calm.
To taste the new-found lips, the strange caress.
To yearn for total nakedness.
Of self and other.
A bright reincarnation of a sacred time with mother.
Far beyond the realms of love or joy or sin.
Oh the wonder and the longing in our naked skin.
