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Saturday, October 13, 2012

The Hat



She said
How do you like my hat?
It was a catastrophe
but I couldn’t tell her that.
I said
It’s perfect.  It’s so you.
I especially love the tartan trim
the fuzzy little lamb grazing on the brim.
She beamed
as I knew she would.
Sometimes a lie is best
when the truth is not so  good.




Her hat in fact looked like
a three story house with lots
of windows but no floor boards.



She was just a kid with room
to grow and had been
working on her hat for hours.
With needle and thread
she tacked little straw flowers
In places where real flowers
never could grow.
They were all in a row
and in between
she filled up the spaces
with faces of people
she never would know.
It was an act of contrition, that hat
looking very much like a Picasso.





An abstract confession of other people’s sins
she was too young to have any of her own.
Cubism gone astray, you might say
accidently bumping into Claude Monet.
And, judging by those people
dancing on the roof
cavorting with Chagall along the way.







It grew on me
and so much so
my lie became the truth.
Day by day her hat
spoke to me in Tongues
as she kept working
adding flying buttresses, French doors
a balcony with a railing
a velvet ladder with golden rungs
so you could climb to the top
and see in the distance
a sunset, an ocean
a ship sailing.


by Leo


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