The Tragedy of Hats

is that you can never see the one you're wearing,

that no one believes the lies they tell,

that they grow to be more famous than you,

that you could die in one but you won't be buried in it.

That we use them to create dogs

in our own image. That the dogs

in their mortarboards and baseball caps and veils

crush our hubris with their unconcern.

That Norma Desmond's flirty cocktail hat flung aside

left a cowlick that doomed her. That two old ladies

catfighting in Hutzler's Better Dresses both wore flowered

straw. Of my grandmother the amateur hatmaker,

this legend: that the holdup man at the Mercantile

turned to say Madam I love your hat before

he shot the teller dead who'd giggled at her

homemade velvet roses. O happy tragedy of hats!

That they make us mimic classic gestures,

inspiring pleasure first, then pity and then fear.

See how we tip them, hold them prettily against the wind

or pull them off and mop our sweaty brows

like our beloved foolish dead in photographs.

Like farmers plowing under the ancient sun.