Aunt Yvonne Combs Her Hair

“Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:”

from “Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats

When Aunt Yvonne takes down her hair,

waves crash tenderly upon her shoulders,

mingling black and grey. 

She smiles like a painting,

as if she knows secret sorrow

or infinite longing -- or abundant joy. 

You might think you could share her secret

if you looked without blinking

and listened between the brush strokes and her words.

You would be wrong.

You ask questions and she answers,

her brush speaking sparks,

her voice singing syllables

like tones tinkling between piano keys,

dropping into twilight like evening dew. 

She invites you in with her slow laugh

and when she pauses to punctuate,.

you lean into her secret.

until she starts strumming again

her black hair afire with diamonds.

Still you stay, watching her strum

drawing her on with your questions.

as she drew you in with her music.

She whispers sweetly

of how the weeping willow fills the window.

She paints poetry with her brush

gesturing at the rain barrel scented with rose petals, autumn leaves, pine cones.

You hear the secret approach

and draw it nearer with listening nods.

She hums calmly of cool evenings

and brushes nature’s scents into her hair,

tempting hummingbirds to nestle there.

Her curls crackle like fluttering wings

that might have lifted her

if she desired or needed flight.

She reached a hundred and stopped.

Throwing her wild hair over one shoulder,

Aunt Yvonne let her fingers part it in the center

then took up her comb to shape it upward

binding, twisting round her fingers ninja-like —

quickly and silently and softly --

deceptively demure, dangerously subdued.

Aunt Yvonne has told her secrets

but you must have blinked.

You imagine a bit of birdsong,

escaping with each unraveled tendril

as she drifts about her day.