New Age (Poetry)

In some cultures widowed women cut their hair,
hack through those fabled glories, tress by tress,
a frenzied near-scalping of themselves -
the uneven stubble their display and proof
of grief's all-consuming mood of craziness.

Just before you went away, I sensed a change
and, prepared for what was coming,
followed suit - stood at the bathroom sink
and watched curiously distant scissors chop
medium mouse-brown tails,
dropping where they coiled, twisted soft into
a flimsy nest inside a plastic bin.

It seemed an act of purging at the time;
a forfeit for dare thinking things would last;
a prelude to a close impending loss.

Now my skin shows white beneath the red-dyed tufts,
symbolic, smooth as river between reeds,
a different look, a wildness meant to mark
by pruning back dead wood and setting free
last year's ghost and what remains -
the still-growing part of me.