Leap Year

In love letters to my father from her college dorm, 

my mother professes to love only him, proposing 

to him during leap year when custom allowed 

women to make the first move.  She wrote, 

“You, my love, cannot say no.”  They eloped 

soon afterward.  In the sepia photo I now hold, 

I see that young woman before they married. 

She hangs off a ladder on the back of a brown 

freight train boxcar.  She smiles, leaning away

from the car with one foot on a rung, the other 

extended, pointing to the ground.  Her left hand

grasps the ladder, her right arm stretches out 

to meet the hand of a friend standing with her.  

Both wear white lace dresses, pearls, stockings, 

leather dress shoes.  A hat covers her friend’s head.

My mother’s hair flies free, bobbed in a roaring

twenties cut.  Her stance creates the illusion of 

flying with the train as it rumbles down the tracks. 

But the train is not moving.  Dressed in such finery,

was she playing her role of the party girl all boys 

wanted to court, hearing the tune she claimed they

sang for her, miss “five foot two, eyes of blue,” 

while the train’s horn echoes in the background,

and the young woman fades into her future?