My Mother Worries About My Hat

Every spring my mother says I should buy a straw
hat so I won't overheat in summer.

I always agree but the valley's soon cold, and besides
my old Borsalino is nearly rain-proof.

She's at it again, it's August, the grapes are sugaring.
I say, Okay, and pluck a little spider from her hair—

hair so fine it can't hold even one of her grandmother's
tortoise shell combs.

Copyright Credit:
Poem copyright ©2015 by Richard Jarrette, “My Mother Worries About My Hat,” from A Hundred Million Years of Nectar Dances, (Green Writers Press, 2015).