I Do Not Have Dreadlocks

I do not have dreadlocks.

I may never have dreadlocks.

I did have a nose ring (for two months)

as I approached and conquered

thirty years of age

and I stood in front of coffee shop

audiences, many with dreadlocks,

and read aloud my poems
in the long emphatic drawls
of the spoken-word poet
(you will hear the voice's pitch
rise and fall at the end of phrases).

I now approach forty and

the coffee shop audience is no longer

(really no longer) my peers and

so I found myself this blog today,

on this last day of March,

approaching my fortieth birthday

with a short, straight bob, not

unlike my hair at age fourteen,

but with the inclusion of curly

white wires sticking out,

here and there, reminding me

that I am moving along the path

of life; halfway THERE.

And what I have now is this

blog and my Wednesday

mornings, solitary, of

coffee in a trendy bean house

here and there, there and here--

and these little poems,

that can only exit in this hour long

period away from the baby

and from the house and from

everything else that comes when you

are forty and do not have dreadlocks.