Fedora

by Lee Sharkey

Every day the father lifted it from the closet shelf
The ritual attached itself to the girl’s sense of morning
Crowning the mysteries of dress and grooming
The father fierce and tall as a giant

The house kept its doors closed to the stranger
The father tip toed across the floor
Every morning the clock hands began the same passage
The father shaped the fedora precisely as he liked it

The father knew little of its history
Not the felt or the felt-maker
Not the beaver in its underwater cavern
Not the formidable Sarah Bernhardt
As Fedora or her androgynous Hamlet

Once a father stepped to a beveled mirror
Straightened his scarf
Buttoned his overcoat with pink fingertips
Adjusted a fedora’s brim
A rare sensuous gesture to console himself

He ran thumb and fingertips over the felted fur
Tugged on his leather gloves and pocketed his keys
Stepped out into the weather
Slid carefully into the driver’s seat of his Desoto
So as not to dent the crown

For he was meticulous, incurious, obsessive, tight lipped
For he erupted when the girl defied him
For the Depression was a black cape dragging behind him
The Shoah, a ghost sea troubling the shore
And the fedora kept its secrets