They don't allow me to read on the tram, especially you, with your hair swinging

left-right.

You’re tossing it onto the page I am reading, splaaash, all the words vanish

and I have to look up at you.

What would Jane Hirshfield say – why did I stop reading

in the middle of her poem To Judgment: An Assay?

You change my life with your hair

“as eating an artichoke changes the taste/ of whatever is eaten after”, says Jane.

Hair is of a rather odd nature, seemingly dead: you can cut it, you can burn it.

Yet, still grows.

And then my lively fingers comb it, get entangled in it, their life gets entangled,

someone else’s life does, they change their taste.

Suppose I suddenly wish to see your face as you’re tossing your hair.

At its best I can only hope to see

the flash of your hands, that will come out of the blue

to raise your hair, comb it with the fingers,

and then let it mercilessly splash  

across the pages of my book,

like foamy water from the bucket thrown out into the street at the end of the shift

at the barber’s.