This question was asked by Will, a friend of a friend’s kid.
The answer is sponsored by cursory googling and semi remembered science lessons.
Hair grows out of your head
Like wires, or like flexible pipes:
Shining, spidersilk tubes.
It’s transparent like glass.
What’s inside it?
A colour.
Whatever your body decided to make.
Maybe buttercup yellow or orange or chocolatey brown
Or black like the wing of a crow,
Or the colour of leaves at the start, or the end, of the autumn.
The colour of sand at the beach
Or the colour of sunset.
Growing out of your head just like pens full of ink
Ready for you to start writing.
When you’re old, and your stories grow longer,
Your hair will begin to turn white.
And it is most beautiful, then:
All those delicate tubes, full of light.
Tom Juniper Poetry 