Man with the Hat

There was a man with a hat,
Sitting at the end of the bar.
Not too close to anyone, but not too far,
He kept his coat folded over his knee,
Like he was waiting for a reason to leave,
But he never moved.

The saxophonist played low,
Like the city whispering in a language I couldn’t know.
Smoke curled, voices murmured, glasses clinked,
Yet the man with the hat never blinked.
His eyes were shadows beneath the brim,
Like he was staring into another world within.

No one ever asked his name,
But if they did, I doubt he’d answer the same.
For some, he was a ghost from the war.
For others, just a drifter who’d seen too much
And wanted nothing more.
Some said he played the blues once,
When his hands were still young,
But the truth, like his face, was veiled
In memories spun out of rhythm and smoke.

He never sipped his drink,
Though the glass stayed full,
A reflection of the night half-empty, half-whole.
His presence was soft, almost a dream.
A figure you’d miss if you blinked too slow,
But unforgettable, like the moon’s glow
Hanging over a street you’ve long forgotten,
A place where shadows grow.

The jazz bled into the midnight air,
Sweet, somber, with a quiet despair.
People swayed, lost in the notes,
Yet his stillness echoed deeper.
I couldn’t shake the feeling he was waiting—
Not for a lover, nor a ride—
But for the silence that comes
When all the music dies.

Once, a woman approached him,
A beauty with hair like the night.
She leaned in close, whispered something light,
But he just tipped his hat in her direction,
And she moved away, as if she’d lost
Some unspoken connection.

The piano trailed off into the slow hum of dawn,
And still, the man with the hat lingered on.
No one saw him come, and no one saw him leave,
Yet, there was always the sense he had a story
Tangled in the web of his sleeve.

I wondered, was he running from something?
A past that wouldn’t let go,
Or perhaps a future he didn’t want to know.
His silence felt like an answer to a question
None of us dared to ask,
As if his very existence was a mask.

He never laughed, never cried,
But in the saxophone’s cry,
I thought I heard him sigh.
A note too low, too deep to catch,
Yet lingering, like a secret etched
Into the walls of that dimly lit place.

Some nights, when the fog rolls in thick,
And the city hums with its own kind of sick,
I think of the man with the hat,
Sitting at the bar, never looking back.
I wonder if he was real, or just a dream
That jazz played on the keys,
A haunting melody born of loss and time,
A face hidden in the edges of rhyme.

No one saw him leave,
Yet no one forgets his name.
A mystery wrapped in shadow,
An untold flame.
The man with the hat—
Still waiting, still silent,
Like a rhythm only the night could know.