I think if you're lucky as you're writing a poem,
you find that the poem becomes a little vehicle of some kind.
And I do think of poetry as sort of a cheap public means
of transportation.
I like ending up in a different place at the end of the poem
whether it's one I'm writing or reading.
This poem started out rather simply
as just a bit of a notion about the fashion, that
was very prevalent of men wearing hats
in cities, especially.
A fashion that held sway pretty much until the 1960s
when John Kennedy became president.
And you might remember Kennedy did not wear a hat
and often in winter did not even wear
a top coat, which added to this look of,
I suppose vulnerability.
And people acknowledge the fact that Kennedy put the hat
business out of business more or less
because people wanted to look like him.
So the poem it, excuse me, starts as a meditation on that.
It's called, "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 ballpark swelled with thousands of straw hats
brims and bands, rows of men smoking and cheering
and shirt sleeves.
Hats were the law.
They went without saying, you noticed a man in a crowd
without a hat.
You bought them from Adams or Dobbs who branded your initials
in gold on the inside band, trolleys criss-crossed
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 hat check 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 and women 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 bear headed into the winter streets, stand
hatless on frozen platforms.
Today the mailbox is 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."
[APPLAUSE]