her hair has, in my mind, always been
as stark as her accent and
as delicious as the bohnenkraut
in the beans from her garden
to my ears

it shimmered, unashamed, in a new land,
a cultural relic of appreciation of age,
which is why, when grown, I was shocked to discover
from a poem, no less,
the secrets that lay in the nape of the neck
and sure enough she too
had a history, richly dark, in contrast
to her current color
that lay hidden from the cursory view
of a child

perhaps it took that realization
to enmesh her and her stories,
to see she was her history
embodied, alive,
like the arrowhead of a ray of time
and a line that lead, eventually,
to me

so that seeing the salt start to come through
in the mirror, I wonder what new story life 
will plot me in today
so I can earn my badge of hair
and wear it as proudly as her