When it comes down
to the question of religion,
I declare that I believe
in hair.

I believe paradise is founded
on how hair falls
over shoulders or stands up
in messy regimentation
upon rising.

I believe
the hairs that I find
on the couch cushions
and pluck and lint-roll
from the pillows
are relics worth venerating.

I believe that the hairbrush
is a bishop’s crook
and the act of cutting hair
is all about
transubstantiation.

I believe in mysteries, and
that any single hair
whose origin I may not recognize
may yet be the hair of a prophet
and while its presence may be unfathomable
in my life, it stands as testimony
to the pervasiveness of Truth.

I even go so far as to believe
that a once full and now empty scalp
is sacred in its sweaty gleaming glory
as the exposed and vulnerable
seat of Power.

Mostly, though, I believe
that hair created us in order to move
through the world, that it was meant
to wave and toss
and grow and grow back
no matter how many times it is cut,
and only tumbles from its roots
on its own once it has found its true place.

So when I see that soldiers
has shaved the head and beard
of an enemy combatant,
or that a boy’s locks have been cut
by a frightened teacher
to make him fit somewhere
he does not belong,

I run my hands through my own mop
and say to it,

forgive them,
they know not what they do,

and then I say

they know not what they do,
but hair grows back,
and hair lasts far longer
than the dead bodies of those
who would see it as ordinary
and not as divine.