Maiden Shave

(published in Poet Lore)

A crook of pale purple plastic
Shaves nine years of innocence
While I stand by
More than merely witness.
 
My daughter has seen
Towers falling from the sky,
Her president engulfing us in war,
A bushy-brow’d grandpa die.
 
Yet is she first in her class
To see three or four soft blond hairs
Growing wildly under each arm?
 
Though I squint to find them,
She wants them gone.
 
So I help her
Erase nature’s order
With her own.