The Oaken Skin is a poetic form intended to express pleasure with the concept of nature which grew out of the performances of The Veneration of Clouds. The rules of the form are applied by poets to produce individual poems which can be recited. The poem is two to three eleven-line stanzas. Use of assonance and metaphor is characteristic of the form. The eleventh line of each stanza contrasts the underlying meaning of the fifth line. The eighth line of each stanza presents a different view of the subject of the sixth line.