it's hard to think of a poem about brushing the newyorkparty lifestyle from your hair, when you compare yourself.
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| 1 We two sit on our bed, you between my legs, your back to me, your head slightly bowed, that I may brush and braid your hair. My father did this for my mother, just as I do for you. One hand holds the hem of you hair, the other works the brush. Both hands climb as the strokes grow longer, until I use not only my wrists, but my arms, then my shoulders, my whole body rocking in a rower's rhythm, a lover's even time, as the tangles are undone, and brush and bare hand run the thick, fluent length of your hair, whose wintry scent comes, a faint, human musk.
2 Last night the room was so cold I dreamed we were in Pittsburgh again, where winter persisted and we fell asleep in the last seat of the 71 Negley, dark mornings going to work. How I wish we didn't hate those years while we lived them. Those were days of books, days of silences stacked high as the ceiling of that great, dim hall where we studied. I remember the thick, oak tabletops, how cool they felt against my face when I lay my head down and slept.
3 How long your hair has grown.
Gradually, December.
4 There will come a day one of us will have to imagine this: you, after your bath, crosslegged on the bed, sleepy, patient, while I braid your hair.
5 Here, what's made, these braids, unmakes itself in time, and must be made again, within and against time. So I braid your hair each day. My fingers gather, measure hair, hook, pull and twist hair and hair. Deft, quick, they plait, weave, articulate lock and lock, to make and make these braids, which point the direction of my going, of all our continuous going. And though what's made does not abide, my making is steadfast, and, besides, there is a making of which this making-in-time is just a part, a making which abides beyond the hands which rise in the combing, the hands which fall in the braiding, trailing hair in each stage of its unbraiding.
6 Love, how the hours accumulate. Uncountable. The trees grow tall, some people walk away and diminish forever. The damp pewter days slip around without warning and we cross over one year and one year.
Li-Young Lee |
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