Cutting Hair

On the day to cut your hair

the sun has shaken

its shaggy mane of light

over the near ocean

over the trees behind our house

after a night of hunting

after birds have refilled the trees

and death has slipped

into the deep woods, its memory

scant as a snail’s thread on the patio.

 

I wrap you in a cape and snug it with a clip.

How careful I must be, rounding

your good ear with scissors, the ear

my tongue loves to kiss, apricot-sweet,

and loves, too, the bad ear and its ghosts.

I thread your hair with a comb to gauge

length, silver in my loom.

 

I cut your hair in rhythm, remembering

the day you shaved what was left

of mine, how we walked

on a trail through the marsh, through

tufts of fog and I was slow as soup

of low tide, slow against your arm

remembering what it was like

not to lean, to be bright in my bones.

 

I see light differently now

painting the branches

behind our house, early, before

you’re awake. It’s more the gold

of afterlife, I think, a glimpse

before bodies take on all

that death.

 

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