What would Zorro do?

Sitting in the hairdressers' chair on the last Friday of summer

I refuse the black mask and flat-brimmed hat

but allow myself to be reverse wrapped in Zorro’s black cape -

the many mirrored reflections of my fellow caped crusaders reproach me,

forcing me to wonder what the masked avenger would make of it all.

 

Perhaps El Zorro would fall into a slough of despond,

despairing at the absence of waving swords and cracking bullwhips,

or perhaps he would get excited by the technologies of the future,

and (after carving a “Z” in the wall) gallop off into the night

to find an adult education class in

“how to use chemicals, heat and aluminium foil”.

 

I don’t know about my caped companions but I’m betting

El Zorro would choose night classes over self imposed exile in the marshlands,

I can imagine him swashbuckling through the glass doors of the salon,

loudly proclaiming that he has come to join the fight

against the (newly imagined) injustices of the 21^st century -

age, desire, ambition.