hats

You already know I adore hats. I love furry winter hats the most,

but, I have been known to wear all kinds; straw, floppy, pointy.

(No, Pete, this is not my hair, it's a hat.) I just put my Zhivago hat

away for the winter, and felt a twinge of sadness. I'm afraid woolly

sock season will soon be ending, as well. Sigh.

Looking very dapper in his wool cap below, is my great grandfather,

Glenn. I don't remember him ever going out in public without a hat.

It just wasn't proper in his day. (I must have been born in the wrong

time frame, as far as hats are concerned.) So, in his honor, I can't let

this week's Theme Thursday go by without posting my favorite piece

of hat poetry by Billy Collins. I wish I had written it.

The Death of the Hat

.
.

Once every man wore a hat.
In the ashen newsreels,

the avenues of cities

are broad rivers flowing with hats.

The ballparks swelled

with thousands of strawhats.

Brims and bands,

rows of men smoking

and cheering in shirtsleeves.

Hats were the law.

.

They went without saying.

You noticed a man without a hat in a crowd.

You bought them from Adams or Dobbs

who branded your initials in gold

on the inside band.

Trolleys crisscrossed the city.

Steamships sailed in and out of the harbor.

Men with hats gathered on the docks.

There was a person to block your hat

and a hatcheck girl to mind it

while you had a drink

or ate a steak with peas and a baked potato.

In your office stood a hat rack.

The day war was declared

everyone in the street was wearing a hat.

And they were wearing hats

when a ship loaded with men sank in the icy sea.

My father wore one to work every day

and returned home

carrying the evening paper,

the winter chill radiating from his overcoat.

But today we go bareheaded

into the winter streets,

stand hatless on frozen platforms.

Today the mailboxes on the roadside

and the spruce trees behind the house

wear cold white hats of snow.

Mice scurry from the stone walls at night

in their thin fur hats

to eat the birdseed that has spilled.

And now my father, after a life of work,

wears a hat of earth, and on top of that,

a lighter one of cloud and sky – a hat of wind.

.

.