There is the trilby-wearing soul,
who sits in libraries, his fingers
brushing brittle pages,
coaxing bones from the spines of history.
He almost finished writing a novel,
his hat tipped rakishly,
a witness to the changing Times,
forever a critic.
The man beneath the straw boater,
now tends to his garden,
his trustfund-life measured
by rows of tomatoes and beans.
Once a maestro of summer picnics,
sunglasses beneath a sweat-soaked brim –
fertile memories now disolved
into quiet afternoon lemonaid.
A cowboy hat, wide-swept,
adorns a retired traveler—
a man whose hands
remember reins and saddle horns.
Though the horses are gone,
his posture still echoes
bluffs brushed by the breath of twilight –
his hat, a relic of freedom
shading sun-creased eyes.
The bowler belongs to another—
an accountant wearing precision like armor
against chaos, tallying figures, balancing worlds.
On Sundays, he plays cricket,
his hat casting shadowed arcs,
chasing the jagged sweep of a stroke
before returning to the order of ledgers.
And then there’s the beret,
perched like a bird on a man with paint
on his fingertips, his mind still alive
with light and color.
The streets he sketched, a blur now,
but his hat remains – an artist’s signature,
a small rebellion
against the grayness of days.
Each hat carries its own history—
a baseball cap shielding a veteran’s face,
a homburg clinging to another century.
They carry these coverings
as reminders,
as anchors,
as badges of lives
fully and beautifully worn.