Three days before what would
have been your 94th birthday,
as I’m driving home with newly
pedi’d toes, relaxed and happy,

I pull up behind a waiting-to-turn,
arrest-me-red Corvette with
a shiny Texas license plate
that stops me.

N-R-G, it says, as I look through
the windshield of your former
NRG FLO Elantra. “Hi, Ma!”
I holler, as though you

might hear me, having to
stop myself before I wave.
Not your style—red or
the ‘vette—but I’ve

so rarely seen other NRG
plates that it feels like a
visitation. Who knows?
Perhaps in your new

incarnation, your energy flow
runs to red. Here in mine,
gratitude revs through me
once again, driving

your sweet ride in
which I drove you,
which you left to me,
to carry you through

the rest of my days.

•••

Happy (woulda been) 94th birthday to my mother, Dorothy Haag,
whose NRG, as she’d predicted, is still with us.