POET'S HAT

A compliment: "You are on the side of the poets" (AKH, 201016)

POET’S HAT

I might very well be tempted

Getting compliments like that

To sashay my way around the town

Wearing my natty poet’s hat

It’s not the kind of headgear

Favoured by American yoof

Sporting an obvious label

Implying you might need proof

My own battered poet’s hat

Is an object far more sedate

Headgear far more dignified for

My advancing girth and gait

Such titfers once were seen

In old smoke-filled drab jazz bars

Worn by waistcoated older men

Plucking battered one-string guitars

Beards that could hide ferrets

Would be growing on their chins

If you offered them a Gauloise

They’d confess all of their sins

But at the drop of a hint or pantie

They’d read out one of their rhymes

Another barrel of old hogwash

Lamenting the changing times

Clad in black they’d try so very hard

To seem like they’re way too cool

After staggering off into the night

You’d ask “Who was that old fool?”

Martin A W Holmes, October 2016