For thirteen years, since I moved to this town
in the center of Michigan, the same woman
has cut my hair. In the same salon, the same
chair. Giving me mostly the same haircut
each month. Her own hair changes color and shape
constantly, like the deciduous trees leaning
over the river in the park. Different
every time I look. She is kind,
and tough in her kindness. She hates
parking tickets and jury duty, institutions
and people that take our time and money.
If we let them. She loves above all else
to remodel her house, to bring new light
with new windows, to knock out walls
for new air. And her favorite of all:
her woodburning stove, which fills her street
with a smoke-sweet smell on fall nights
and all through the winter, when it is always night.
She sits beside it for hours after dinner,
she told me once, and drinks red wine.
When I drive past her place and smell it,
I think of her sitting there, staring into the glow.
She invites me to lean backwards over her sink,
so far I’m afraid I can’t swallow, and rinses
the oils from my hair with—not tenderness,
exactly, but comforting skill, and nonchalance,
like a baker working dough. When I sit
in her chair, dripping onto the black cape I wear
like a mysterious hero or old-fashioned hospital patient,
she shows me pictures on her phone—
new quartz in the kitchen, white dining room chairs
she worries are too tall. Once, she caught her husband—
a handsome UPS guy, a hockey ref—dancing
while he painted their bedroom walls, shaking his hips
like a backup singer. She showed me the video
she took before he realized she was watching,
So I could show people how dumb he gets
sometimes, she said, smiling. And I thought
of how dumb can mean mute, silent.
The way her husband dances in silence—to no music—
in the video. And how the trees outside the salon
were blooming just then (it was April) in silence.
And how she was looking at her husband
dancing in her hand, her obvious tenderness
toward him, her love a dumb thing, glowing.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 23, Issue 6.
Jeffrey Bean is a Professor of English/Creative Writing at Central Michigan University. He is the author of two chapbooks and the poetry collections Woman Putting on Pearls and Diminished Fifth. Recent poems appear or are forthcoming in The Southern Review, Colorado Review, Poets.org, South Dakota Review, and Cherry Tree, among other journals. www.jeffreybeanpoet.com
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