Young Woman Fixing Her Hair Poem by Bill Galvin

She sits at a table facing the large windows,
In this brightly lit bookstore café;
Laptop open, she types scholarly for long minutes.
I sit in a low leather chair at a right angle to her,
With a half-wall jutting between us, eight feet away,
With laptop serving as, well, a place for my laptop.

The top of her blond head is all that's visible
From my perspective as she works;
Neither can see the other as we focus on computer screens,
Until I notice movement on the periphery of my view,
And see her stretching arms above the opaque wall.

Mostly blocked from me by chairs and table legs,
She turns sideways, runs both hands through her straight hair,
Then throws her two-foot-long yellow mane forward,
Bending toward the floor, to do her brushing maintenance;
In the low-angled late afternoon sun coming thru the windows,
Her visage is still not in view to me;
And it's not a private matter I was eavesdropping on,
Since she is in full view of the rest of the room in this café.
She leisurely finishes with elastic control of her ponytail,
Spins a quarter-turn, and returns refreshed to her work.

For time eternal and forward everlasting,
Artists and poets within us have been, and will be, intrigued
By a woman's primping and preening,
And uncomplicated acts like arranging of their hair.

Our appreciation being simply a tribute to womanliness.


3-13-2016