[Poem#15] My Mother's Sunglasses

I found them when I was cleaning out the old teal
Ford Explorer, handed down to me when I left home
for college and now waiting for the tow truck to be taken
to that final resting place - the salvage yard - due
to a cracked radiator hose and a faulty transmission.

While leaning across the driver's and passenger's seat
to the small pocket on the door, I pulled out old pens
from insurance companies in South Dakota, a pad of paper
from a funeral home in Washington, receipts from gas
in Oregon, remnants of travels taken and life lived.

They were at the bottom of the pocket, tucked behind a map
of Montana. Brown specs, rounded, tortoiseshell,
a little too outdated to be new, a little too late 80s to be retro.
When I put them on, I saw her: brown hair wavy and unruly,
short and stylishly unfashionable, her kind eyes hidden

in the mirrored lenses that warded off the Minnesota sun
that glinted off the white snow. For a second, her eyes
were mine, and I loved that 22-year-old version of herself,
edgy and lively, and I loved the 22-year-old version of myself,
because we were the same behind my mother's sunglasses.