Shock of Hair! A poem by Thomas Rogers Muyunga Mukasa

Shock of Hair!

Needle thin strands flow over shoulders,
they are as many as grass in a field,
this is putting it mildly,
they are also like waterfalls,
frozen deliberately for display,
the hair parts somewhere mid-scalp,
shoulder-length,halo, mane, or waist-length,
every shake of the head sends ripples,
whose movements set the hair in place,
or displace it from sides into the face,
each line of hair stands out daringly,
only to disappear somewhere in this shock,
the wearer seems unaware,
the looker mesmerized,
I saw one with groomed hazel hair,
wistfully touching that of the blonde,
the blonde, kept making furtive looks at the brunette,
there were those with in-between hair,
these ones had all the eyes on them,
they in turn wondered how to groom an Afro;
indeed it was a hair shock, this shock of hair!

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Thomas Rogers Muyunga Mukasa (pen name: Tom Mukasa), currently lives in San Francisco, CA. There he is attached to the UCSF HIV division's Community Advisory Board as a volunteer reviewer. He has worked for over 15 years with the marginalized and people living with HIV/Aids/TB in Africa. He also spent most of his time training and following up 152 groups he helped organize into what he termed the 'anti-poverty' class. The 'anti-poverty' class is that class a step or two shy of middle-class. Three greatest moments he recalls were a child headed family able to successfully pay for the land and house their late parents had left behind. They were to be evicted but it did not happen. The children went on to complete high school. The second moment was of a mother living with HIV establishing a chicken poultry farm 8 miles outside of Kampala, Uganda. She saw all her four children complete university. The third was of a woman in her late 20's who havin
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