Weekend Poem

Lice

The school sent notice of a lice alert

We were to dutifully check our children’s heads.

The kids were spooked:

Tiny burrowing bugs, would it hurt?

The little girl had attached a post-it note to her math book

A morning reminder in kid scrawl: wet your hair, put it in a ponytail

I can spread along your pale stripe of part

The bronzed roots swished to and fro

Like the swaying grasses of coral reefs.

Is that a nit or just last night’s white rice?

I will buy the special shampoo

I will scrub your scalp until it bleeds

You’re a good little girl.

You listen, you follow the rules.

Hurry home from school

Don’t wear your best friend’s hat.

Don’t borrow that brush,

Always use your own comb

There’s only so much I can do

To scratch that itch

As you trundle off through the drifts

Of snow to the bus

Don’t be fooled by the silence of snow;

The muffled layering effects

Hide the festering truth.

For the living multitudes lay in wait

To strike:   

To get under your skin,

To grab you by your hair,

This teeming world of imminent infestation,

The ones you can’t see

And the ones that are already there

3/4/18