In old age, parents flutter like moths
at the edge of sight. You know they’ll be gone
in the morning. They leave a smatter
of wing-colored dust, tiny scales that don’t wash off.
Are they waving a white flag? Am I? I remember
once, I asked my father
why I had brown eyes when theirs were green
and blue. He said it had to do with something
about the Spanish Armada and I shouldn’t worry.
He taught me to change the oil in the car, check
the tires, loosen a nail or frozen screw with pliers
and a quick spritz of WD-40.
A train ran behind the house on the farm
they bought in Virginia. You’d wake in the night
to the heavy hopper cars rumbling down
from the coal mines in West Virginia. Next day,
they’d clank and rattle back empty,
as if to break loose, to fly right off the track.
Virginia Sullivan is a poet and design educator interested in family history, place, and our changing relationship with the natural world. She is working on a chapbook and lives in Northampton.