Burning/In Transit

Next to me on the bus are two strangers in matching black bucket

hats.

To my untrained eyes, neither are older than thirty

Yet still the man welcomes gray into the black of his hair

Happily, perhaps, he counts the silver splittings

Each night in the bathroom mirror before

Retreating into the sheets and hours later into a dream.

Happily, perhaps, he contains his bleeding age

Happily he sleeps it away.

I wonder if in a few turbulent years he will fear their encroaching,

If it hurts for him or his love to pluck them out for being

Coarse or unflattering or chaotic or wiry,

For still sparking at their frayed ends with the fires of youth.

But it is beginning to smell like something is burning,

And it is turning heads and twisting noses.

JJ Robeck