KATHLEEN SMITH
Argus 1985
When your hair is unpinned and floating
like fine white mist
on the lake in November,
I see the young woman.
She is still there…
no matter how disguised.
She ebbs and flows with the moon.
But when your hair is unpinned and flying,
you flirt… you tease… your eyes snap…
your heart rises up and fills your mouth
until laughter overflows and tumbles out
making its way through the room…
pausing to caress the air, to smooth the pages
of a book.
When your hair is unpinned and free,
there is no hiding the spirit.
The threads of life are entwined with
the ivory strands… and when unwound,
they release lover’s knots of scarlet,
disparate patches of mourning locks,
glass beads of childhood games,
smoke and haze of days remembered.
But… it’s merely comfortable,
you protest.
And so it is.
You should unpin your hair more often.
