The Forest Of My Hair Poem by James Tolan

I'm 28 years old in the flesh
but in a mirror all I can see
is a boy after his first crew cut,
five years old and wondering
what happened to his hair,

disbelieving it would ever
grow back, as the barber
and his grandfather promised,
while he wept, silently,
trembling air through his lips,
pointing at his hair
strewn across a tiled floor.

My grandfather unwrapped
sour balls for both of us, and,
leaving his Falcon behind,
walked with me to the woods.

These woods, he said, are yours.
They were mine, but I give them
to you. I am old, and it is only right
they should now belong to you.

I have lived most of my life
in the absence of that
gentle voice, and those
woods of mine were clear-cut
years ago, but my hair,
I wear it long in honor of him.