The Luxury of Thinking about Inconsequential Things

Today I thought about my hair
How much I like getting what my daughter calls
A bold haircut which I take to mean
One unusual for a person of my age
And weathered look, the lines in my face
Carved by a dozen chisels

For two hours my head is resting
in my hairdresser’s large hands, she
Paints color on thin strands, foils me
While she cuts another woman’s hair
On the other side of the mirror, I
Hear them talking about children

She cuts with small shears, eyeing,
Snipping, aligning, matching, scissoring
Every hair she’s met before a hundred times
Knows how each lies, curls to the left
Indulges the fiction of boldness, pomades
the finished look and folds the cape in fourths