In old age, parents flutter like moths
\nat the edge of sight. You know they\u2019ll be gone
\nin the morning. They leave a smatter
\nof wing-colored dust, tiny scales that don\u2019t wash off.
\nAre they waving a white flag? Am I? I remember
\nonce, I asked my father<\/p>\n
why I had brown eyes when theirs were green
\nand blue. He said it had to do with something
\nabout the Spanish Armada and I shouldn\u2019t worry.
\nHe taught me to change the oil in the car, check
\nthe tires, loosen a nail or frozen screw with pliers
\nand a quick spritz of WD-40.<\/p>\n
A train ran behind the house on the farm
\nthey bought in Virginia. You\u2019d wake in the night
\nto the heavy hopper cars rumbling down
\nfrom the coal mines in West Virginia. Next day,
\nthey\u2019d clank and rattle back empty,
\nas if to break loose, to fly right off the track.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In old age, parents flutter like moths at the edge of sight. You know they\u2019ll be gone in the morning. They leave a smatter of wing-colored dust, tiny scales that don\u2019t wash off. Are they waving a white flag? Am I? I remember once, I asked my father why I had brown eyes when theirs … Continue reading Derailed<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"issue":[6876],"class_list":["post-2163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","issue-6876"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-11 00:44:12","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2163\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2163"},{"taxonomy":"issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue?post=2163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}