V-Sign

The shape of birds
like an open scissor
against a length of cloth.
It is gray cloth today,

as the sky is often gray
in rural Pennsylvania.
The scissor lays its V
across the sky unfaltering,

an expert seamstress
like my Aunt Sarah,
who worked at the hosiery
on Herbert Street.

She darned the ends
of stockings for women,
the flattened legs stretched out
on the table,

and when the whistle blew,
she just left them
where they lay, all night,
in the shape of a V.