Poet's Spotlight with Stephen Mead

Spotlight – Stephen Mead
___________________________________________

The Hair Cut

Some music is visible,
Growing slowly from roots.
So, a movement, your hair grew to you…
Was going around like that
Near to towing an orchestra?
Or was it more an extra limb,
Breathing, braiding legacies?
It’s not that I see you as Samson.
For one thing, the sex is wrong.
For another, even if bald you’d be
A rhapsody.
Call me nostalgic. I still love how
The tied beads, as if by training,
Swung round from your pig tail
To strike me like a meteor…
I know it was accidental but, going back,
Did you find it hard to be recognized
Always by long locks?
When the trademark went
What were you shucking?
Beauty as weight? Blonde as a noose?
Was it ritualistic, a passage-rite, liberation,
A kicked-habit?
Whatever, whatever.
Enough questions. Enough.

So, a first visit, feeling like misfits,
We went to the hair dressers, that salon
Of the mod. Blow dryers? Mousse?
How could one admit to not having
The tools, being new to the tongue?
Poor Hans, man of the shears,
Nearly did a wig flip.
My sister, you’re iconic.
I knew this while watching, inwardly
Feeling every snip, & you, & you,
Facing the prophet mirror, witnessing
The act, what a Mozart conductor,
What a lost piece by Stravinsky
Finally revealed…

Of course, going home to wash out
The gel, the starch spray, (put out
That cig), the aerosol nets, ‘til
You were you were your own hair again

is what really proved the myth

Back to the Spotlight