(In memory of my dad, Robert Thomas Wilkin)

Flattened wild grasses
flash beneath me
As I hold on to the seat
in front
My feet spaced widely
On either side of
the hole.

The Volkswagen engine roars
As my father lets out the clutch,
And we careen over
the mounds
Joyously bumping through old
Farmer's furrows
Long since left fallow
Is the farmer looking over his shoulder?
Can he see us flattening
the flax and the thistle
and the chicory
that will now shrug at his plow?
Does he care that his field
Is being defaced
by a ferocious Beetle?

My heart flips at the thought
that he just might-
Might pull my father aside
and in quiet adult dignity
Say
So...
And....
Therefore....
And we would never again run over
the high green stacks of
that abandoned field,
That meadow of delight,
A sea of butterflies
That saunter away from the
windows
Giving room to that large
Beetle in flight.
My brothers, my sister, my dad
And me,
In our rusted out
Red '64 bug.

--Ellen A. Wilkin