New Poem: Hat

I went into O’Neill's on the Euston Road and said,

‘Did anyone hand in a hat thing?’

The guy said, ‘May have done, I’ll look.’

He looked under the counter and pulled out a box.

It was full of hats and scarves.I fished around in them.

‘No, none of those.’

‘What colour was it?’ he said.

‘Blue, light blue.’

‘What - a woollen one, was it?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘You said it was a ‘hat thing’, do you mean it wasn’t

really a hat?’

I nodded.

‘What? More like a balaclava?’

‘Yes, exactly. That’s right. A balaclava.’

‘Nope. I haven’t seen it. Maybe Danuta has. She was

on last night. When were you in?’

‘About fifty years ago.’

‘Mm?’

‘I’m just working it out...I must have been around

18 or 19, I was a student. Mostly, my parents left

me to get on with it but...’

‘You’ve come in here to get a hat...that...’

‘...every now and then my mother would look at me

and say, ‘You need a belt’ and she’d get me a belt.

And then one time she said, ‘You need a hat,’ and

she got me this blue hat.’

‘I haven’t seen my mother in years,’ he said.

‘The thing is, I was upstairs. It was a meeting. Some

kind of meeting.’

‘I should call her,’ he said, ‘but hey - I don’t.’

‘We were going to solve everything. Change the

world.’

‘And you left your hat.’

‘Yep.’

We looked in the box. I fished around again.

‘It’s not here,’ I said.