Snowdonia

Not that the hair is blond,
but that it is not brown.
My mistake.

Not even once to settle
curiosity, or hiding on the legs
beneath my clothes.

The same way a violet
is not really blue and so
can live in two fields at once.

Or more.
Now I think I understand
the litany of jokes–

a visible absence
positioned on my head,
a station in the arc

of vanishing.
Not hard then to imagine
dropping one more notch below

to white, which means a hollow
follicle, a life of exhausting
chameleonism.

See. We’re happy again.

“Snowdonia” is reprinted from Internal West (Zoo Press, 2003).