Hair - Prose

HAIR

When I was a child

So full of pure light

Somebody I loved

Looked at a hippie

Sauntering smoothly

Smiling his own song

And said, dismissing

“Just look at his hair…

Looks like a woman.”

I was sad. To me

It looked really cool.

I wanted my hair

To flow like that, too.

But I cut it.
For forty years

I cut my hair

On the strength

Of that one

Episode

And the myriad lessons

Along those strange lines

That followed it.

But now…

I have shed that cocoon

That safe net

Those holy teachings

That live within a paradigm

That has both great worth

And tremendous limitation

I wandered far out

Into the mad world

Faced my holy Fear

And got my hands slapped

More than once

By something Bigger

Than those teachings

And now

A middle aged man

My own hair grows long

And I saunter just like

That young, lone hippie

That I once both saw

And recognized as

Somehow resembling

Me

Four decades ago

I’ve come full circle

The Medicine Wheel

That I have now walked

Returns me back to

That young soulful child

Who’s now a grown man

My hair like tendrils

Pick up energy;

Dogs wag tails at me

Young children know me

And babies do too

And even the birds

Those closest to heaven

Nod their feathered and

Joyful approval

While above us all

The great blue giant

Is still quite willing

To slap my young hands

As much as need be

But there exists a

Kindliness  I’d once

Sadly forgotten

For I am but a child

New in the vast world.  

--Aspen

March 2016