The orange-head

Red! they said

A shock of a lock on my head

when I was born in a family where it wasn’t the norm

I compare with my hair a ladybird landed up there

At crimson shell and cardinal dome I stare

Then baulk at the sight. My hair is not red, it’s not right

It’s not natures bold warning, a red-light in the night

No colour of stop, luftballoon pop, stain of a fight

Brown! I said

But knew it not true: a shade in stead,

One not so ‘exotic’: camouflage, façade, though slightly quixtotic

For strangers, the world, all joined in the lark

Complicit, conspiring, compliments in the park

Of how lucky, how lovely, how wonderfully RED!

A nod of recognition from another ‘red-head’

Taunts of hot-headed anger, prowess in bed

Yet one day the sun changed colour through smoke

A cloudy day of reckoning awaited when I woke

My sister and I so different in visage, the dark and the fair

Proved shockingly familiar in the genes that we share

A likeness disliked by us both: the early onset of aging hair

Grey I’ll not say!

Not give it its due

It’s even less me than the other darn hue

From the ashes: resolve. I relent. My eyes closed I see

through eyelids when the sun hits my face – its me

It’s there again at the end of the day

when the clouds glow I’ve found my way

It’s streetlights at night, a monarch, my jam,

Now more smoke than flame, it is who I am

Orange! I say

It’s always been there, my hair

Now speak its true name, my name, the one and the same.