Liberation & the Sacred
Fall 1997 Vol. 14 #1
Fall 1997 Vol. 14 #1
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Hairy skull, thick flesh,
you are older than I am,
and younger. Your body,
crippling a little each year,
has within it
a constant turning.
I turn your head,
feeling the bowl of it
in my hand.
There is a head
inside this head,
and another, and another,
and inside each head
a voice. The hair falls
from all of them at once.
We are quiet together,
listening to the scrape
of razor against scalp,
thinking of the one who,
2500 years ago, first
did this to himself,
first cleared the underbrush
with hesitant hands, first
scraped leaf-rot and humus,
scored and pierced earth
and stone and didn’t stop
until he hit bedrock,
then walked away . . .
In us today.
∞