Hair

Hair

¹⁹ And she made him sleep upon her

knees; and she called for a man, and she caused him

to shave off the seven locks of his head;

 and she began to afflict him,

and his strength went from him.

                                                                Judges

Maybe the saddest sound of all isn’t

sound or what we can’t hear being

too far away from it in a chair

and the music and the gossip

is the ring around us we’ve stepped in

mostly willingly mostly though would we

for just us or would we just let it

all come down around us the way

drapes may when the wind pulls in

her breath and carries on

someplace else?  Like fingernails

or skin it’s something we’ve grown

and off it falls with a blade or a tooth

or a scratch and floats (I know

you’re thinking snow, though it’s not

cold anymore and spring is here

and the trees are turning green

and come to think of it aren’t they

quiet too in the middle of all that

coming through aren’t they breaking away

the sheath that’s been slipped over them

all winter long and they’re, from

the bottom of the root to this, pushing

out? And is all this soundless growth

without pain without burning without,

(being penetrated dry I can tell you

it’s fire) its own unknowable sacrifice?

Imagine it!  All this time it has been
growing and growing and you’ve had it
to carry around.  It is made by everything

you’ve breathed and eaten.  It is your sun

and you’re under it: the comb the soap
the occasional (daily) wine

the quiet water the voices in your head

you want it make it you say to the lady

make me sexy and so she does, she runs

her hands through her own hair

and then closes over you and lifts you
one sheaf

one skein
one wave
one braid

at a time and it stands up at once
and alone
and it doesn’t know this:
immediately knowing
the lonely fall it is on:

it’s been years at your back and holding on
it's time to let it go and it comes away
without a sound after the closing of the blades
and she lets it fall, and isn’t that falling after all

these rooted years committed isn’t that

soundless

falling off the saddest not-sound of all

and mostly because it was just that

uncomplaining soundless a good good child
who walks off after being slapped
with their beet-hand-print cheek
to make it on their own in the bald, bald world.