New Cap

Ted Kooser

(1939 - )

New Cap

Brown corduroy,

the earflaps tied on top,

the same size cap he bought

when he was young,

but at eighty-six

a head’s a smaller thing,

the hair gone fine and thin,

less meat to the scalp,

and not so much

ambition packed inside.

He squints from under the bill

as if the world

were a long ways off,

and when he tips it back

to open up his face

to conversation,

it looks so loose

you think that one of them,

the cap or he,

might blow away.

Just the kind of poem I have come to expect (and enjoy) from Ted Kooser. It is simple in

the sense that it makes observations about an ordinary object and yet complex in how

we are invited to consider how these observations change how we see others and

ourselves.

Aging is a part of life and it often sneaks up on us. It can go unnoticed until we see

ourselves in a mirror and then we are confronted with what time has done. A once snug

fitting cap is now loose and we are left to make sense of it. Poems like this one are a

help in such moments.

As an aside, I have a cap like the one used in this poem. The next time I put it on, I'll take a long look in the mirror.

About the poet: Theodore J. Kooser is an American poet. He won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 2005. He served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004 to 2006. Kooser was one of the first poets laureate selected from the Great Plains, and is known for his conversational style of poetry.