On Attire

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My sense of fashion has been, at best, mixed,
jeans and wolf t-shirts, running shoes, frizzy hair.
Looks I admire tend to the wild side:
dreads, long gray pony tails and beards on men, 
on aging women that certain look that sets us apart 
from the sweater-set crowd with their blue tidy hair:
kinda hippy and free, unconventional,
still Being Who We Are.
As we pass, we exchange smiles,
and toss our manes.

I met an old hippy over in Coombs.
We recognized each other by our hair,
both long and frizzy. He told me
in Haight-Ashbury, back in the day,
he wore Puss In Boots leather boots, 
with buckles, right up to his thighs.
Those were the good old days.

I so admired them, back then,
those paisley/patchouli hippies on Fourth Avenue,
so serenely living outside all the rules,
while I lived my cramped, married-woman existence
just one block down. 
But soon enough, I was free,
chewed my leg off to escape the trap,
bought my first pair of jeans,
grew my hair long,
began to live.

My running shoes carried me far,
through ten years in Tofino,
among other refugees from the 60's,
heart and hair equally wild,
completely whole,
drenched in joy and sea-spray.

Now I consort with trees, wolves,  
druids and dying things.
I drape myself in old man's beard,
wear moss slippers and clothing made of bark.
As Old Woman of the Woods, I come into my own,
talk to owls and decorate my hair 
only with feathers.


For Susan's prompt at Mid Week Motif: Fashion
I poached the old hippy in Coombs from a much earlier poem. He still looks way cool!