Sunday, February 25, 2007

Your Hair Is A Metaphor

When your hair sticks out like that
To one side, along the edge
Like the sharp edge of my desk
Which I'm always hitting my knee on
You kind of remind me of old pictures
Of my grandfather, now late
He was harder
More worn
Not like your soft carelessness
and he had on an old warn stetson
which should have fallen apart years ago
if not for the dust of a hundred head of sheep
holding it together
tying him to his home and his profession
You smile
slightly cocky and definitely embarrassed
as I reach up to try and fix it
disturbed by the thought that I might fall in love with my reincarnated granfather
I wonder if he had that same smile
When my grandmother first reached up
To fix his

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Genuine. I like it. Definitely one of my favourite of your poerms.

Tamarack said...

There is, out there, some memory of a grandfather; and you seem to summon it up here. I remember my dad, way past the time it was fashionable, wearing his Stetson -- the old one, at our "ranch;" or the new one, to work in the city. Funny how we remember people that way -- like archeologists -- by their artifacts.

One Poem and One Day At A Time

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