(haircomb)

I am trying
to master
my hair comb.
It’s something
I’ve yearned
to do for decades,
just because
of how it sounds:
putting your
hair up in
combs.
Sometimes it works,
other times not.
It’s tempted to
wiggle free on
my walks,
as every
hair ornament
I’ve ever owned
has done.
I weed through
the basket
where they all
lie, a monument
to failure.
I am letting
go of all that
hasn’t worked
in my life.
Especially my
tendency to judge
it, to call it
by its mean playground
name.
Failure.
And not experimentation,
exploration,
what got me
from there to
here.

3/11/99

?same poem or not?

I have always
loved tortoise shell,
though, of course, now it’s plastic.
I twist my hair
and slip in in,
again and again.
I am learning
to learn, and to
appreciate its
necessity.

3/11/99