The Blue Hat

By WYATT TOWNLEY

The forecast was wrong.
The bald guy smiling
but wrong. The blonde
with swinging hair

wrong. Their software,
their reading of currents. Rain,
they said, rain for days.

We wore the wrong shoes,
postponed the garden,
the walk in the woods.
Overhead: blue—and red
tailed hawks make their arcs;
sun and wind cross
in a tango of shadows.

The forecast was wrong.
And that prognosis?
The doctor sat down.
We had the chat.

Now lose the umbrella
for the big blue hat.

 

[Purchase Issue 12 here.]

Wyatt Townley is a recovering dancer (now yoga teacher) and the former Poet Laureate of Kansas (2013-15). Her poems have been read by Garrison Keillor on NPR, featured in Ted Kooser’s syndicated column, and published in journals including The Paris Review, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, and The Yale Review. Her books of poetry include The Breathing Field, Perfectly Normal, and The Afterlives of Trees.

The Blue Hat

Related Posts

Hall of Mirrors

November 2023 Poetry Feature: Virginia Konchan and Gabriel Spera

GABRIEL SPERA
Gracefully we hold each other / architects and optimists / always at arm’s length like / congenital dreamers / tango masters slinkily coiled / bright candles in a hall of mirrors / whatever I propose you propose / to conquer repeating and repeating / the opposite.

a golden field of wheat

Thresher Days

OSWALDO VARGAS
The wheat wants an apology, / for taking me this long / to show my wrists / to the thresher boy. // Finally a summer where he asks how my parents are / and my jaw is ready, / stretched open so he can hear about them, / easier. // I may look different after, / I will need a new name.

People gather in protest in front of a building; a man (center) holds up a red flag

Picket Line Baby

AIDEED MEDINA
White women give my father shaded looks./ Bringing babies to do their dirty work,/ mumbled in passing. // I am paid in jelly doughnuts / for my day on the boycott. // My dad leads my baby brother / to the front of the grocery store doors / for a meeting with the manager.