Early March, 84 degrees, back to the sun,
yellow warmth like a palm

on my scalp—so many months of shaggy winter
hair chopped off Saturday & I'm still
uncertain of the ramifications.
A single brown leaf, jagged hard-edged curl,
skitters across the sidewalk & leaves me

blinking, dumbfounded.  What connection
can I find between it & the stubborn weedflower

sprouting from the bark chips at the base of the tree
from which that very leaf dropped?  What happens
when my hair grows back?  If I hold my pen
upright long enough I can watch its shadow
track slowly across the page.  The woman

who cut my hair handled me so roughly
I rejected all hope in a new dawning of human kindness,

but cut so briskly, so accurately,
that my faith in human perfectibility was restored.
When it was all over, she parted my hair on the right

& everything changed for me.  Refreshed, I faced a world
where I would make none of the same mistakes.

I was a new man.  But already my hair
grows thicker & I don't feel so certain anymore.

My brief flowering is already coming to an end.
What answers there are need to be decoded,
patterns of sun & leaf, a sprouting weedflower
too stupid to understand no one wants it,
& too pretty to believe it's not beautiful.