The Talk Before the Field Trip

My son asks in the barber's chair why the clippers sound angry. The whole shop laughs,

A child pins a paper poppy slightly crooked on her coat. She knows the word remember

Eight tail-lights mark the dark, each one keeping the next in sight. No speeches at sixty miles an hour.

Her old friends are four hundred miles away. At lunch she carries the tray past three tables of finished conversations.

On Sunday evening, my mother sets the comb, towel, and jar in order.

My mother signs her name on the final line, then reads it once more.