The night my mother shaved her head

I was elsewhere, probably laughing or fucking,

trying to forget the biweekly veins hooked to her forearm.

Always her luxurious hair fell about her fragile face,

small, diamond-shaped eyes peering out from this cave.

It was her sex, the way it swayed as she turned, catching light,

it was her childhood: her grandmother

would brush it hundreds of times before bed,

and braid it like an Alpine girl,

twisting and clipping it to the top of her head.

When she sat down on a stool in the bathroom,

on her sixtieth year, husband behind her,

she smiled, wanting it all to come down,

hitting her shoulders, her back, the floor.

It was time to see the all the infantile

curves of her cranium, the stripped accoutrements,

the true color of her eyes without the frame.

When it was over, her husband took a picture.

She upturned the corners of her mouth,

the white towel still draped over her shoulders

dusted with her dark, prized shedding.                       

It was the first time she got back to the earth,

healed by plants turned liquid poison,

causing her face for the first time seen,

and her body was warm, smooth, like a woman

just emerged from the womb, more whole and certain.