shaving her hair
(for my sister)

she is shaving her head, guiding over bone electric clippers
which are like holding a hornet’s buzz in her hand.

her already-short hair is hanging in the air like down,
like the smallest pin-feathers found under black wings,

and when she has finished the garden spills over with silence
she shakes the tremors from her hand and ears like water.

her strangely revealed beauty, her exquisite skull
show no trace of the penitent, but a delight in air’s cool glide;

she pauses to run a splayed palm over what is left
loosening the prickling stick of stubble clipped from skin,

as from the head of statue smoothed by years of prayerful touch
a soft-shorn spiralling from her long-healed fontanelle.

then with a broom she sweeps the black down of her hair
into the black soil of the flowerbed, and I hold my breath

for she looks for a moment like a buddhist child-monk
sweeping the possibility of insects from her path.