Grey Hairs
Author’s Note
This poem was written as a quiet prayer, an offering shaped by love, memory, and inheritance. It reflects the ache of watching time touch someone who has given you everything, and the instinct to respond not with fear, but with devotion. At its heart, it is about love as covenant: the kind that chooses service, faith, and self-giving as a way of saying thank you.
Grey hairs.
It started with the first strand
mostly on the scalp,
but then in other places too.
I wonder how it all began:
the connection between the change
in the colour of our hair follicles
and the stretch of our lives here on earth.
How elasticity begins to fade.
How suppleness begins to come from a bottle.
How there are more lines than stripes.
The stooping over of the back.
The slowness of rhythm.
The distance in sight.
I wish I didn’t have to see it.
It aches to know I will see it on all.
How my thoughts alone cannot slow down time.
How your hand becomes smaller than mine.
How you tend to lean on me more than I do you.
I want to hug you, Mama
absorb all your pain and make it go away.
Have you dance that dance I know you love.
Go out and preach the gospel
as you have vowed to do.
You’re the reason, Mama,
why I do all I do
so your lines begin to fade
and your back stands straight,
your eyes gain back their sight,
and your head never bows down.
So let me serve the God you serve.
Let me worship at His temple
and offer myself as a burnt offering,
that He may see it fit to lengthen your days
and restore unto you
the joy of your salvation
the supple flesh of your youth enhanced,
the smiles on your face ingrained.
This, Mama, is a pact.
This, Mama, is love.
This, Mama, is obedience.
__ Laurel