‘Can you raise your head?’ I ask.
He sits, towelled in green beside the radio
as I raise the comb and scissors into the air.

The hair that used to crinkle in curling scripts
around his crown, unheeding of sweet cedar,
grooming oils, is soft as spider’s web, like down,

impossible to feel. ‘Mind the sideburns,’
he instructs. What I lift in the comb slips and slides,
the scissors barely grasp the ends, indifferent

to the rites of neatness. This hair wants to let be,
extrusions of frail growth lie close to his pores,
stopgaps against escaping ethers.

But I nick and trim, attempting body, bounce
and sheen, while on the radio Albinoni’s cellos,
those grave bows, play for us, the forsaken.

Clippings collect along his shoulders, weightless drifts
criss-crossed with metallic strands, like Chinese script
dismantled from the page. Against my will, this fluent

reading of the inevitable, symbols combed from feeble
months. I gather the cuttings, ask my unfleeced father
to hold still, adjust my face before he turns.