Thanks for a Hat

Bought long ago in a morning street
to warm my head under the Alpine map,
brought back to England and our soggy skies:

hung in my favorite inn where good friends meet,
One Christmas when the yobs were in the bars:
Pinched: gone for weeks: but then - o glad surprise! -

my friends, seeing me hatless, incomplete
(adrift like a wrecked ship, no mast or (anchor?) oars)
searched, questioned, found it.

I get a double prize -
My old hat back -
and the kindness in their eyes.


-John Wain, Dec/Jan 86/87
as copied from the handwritten original on the wall of the King's Arms.