My Summer Hat
by Maralee Gerke

Made of Mongolian sweet grass
by anonymous Chinese hands,
my summer hat fits me just right.
It crushes my curls and collects
the sweat from my face.

“You look like Van Gogh”, my husband
teases, “Except of course for the ear”
but I think I look more like Monet
“without the beard” as I tend
my small version of a French garden

Folded forward over my eyes, a half circle of straw
contains a world minute and miraculous.
Ants haul twigs along their dusty highways,
ladybugs inch up aster stems, and spiders
weave lacy webs over the pearly everlasting.

My hat encloses a world
that closes out the too much of everything
and embraces the expanse of anything
In summer I live a gardener's life
beneath my summer hat.



 

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