It Must Be The Hat

Why the hat?
Why do we always wear a hat?
What’s with that, I asked,
with the hat?
He looked at me with eyes
as brown as the hat, wise
as the Good Book.
“Look,” he said. “Look,”
and touched the brim
of his brown hat.
“It’s not a whim,” he said,
“of man or God, that
I wear a hat, a hat as brown
as any clod of clay.
It reminds me, in a subtle way
that, like this hat I, too,
am like that bit of clay.
Anyway,” (he looked at me
and winked an eye,
and raised his pointed fingers
to the sky) it keeps the sun off
and the rain.
And otherwise I can’t explain it:
the hat, I mean.”
He tipped the visor up,
and scratched his head.
“Of course it just might be,” he said,
“we never get a chance to put it down
before we’re yet again
run out of town.”

©2017 Walter William Melnyk