Three Yellow Jackets

A new rain washes plum petals
Onto the freeway and you are dying
Now while the petals fall:
"Spring has come early,"
We say that every year in California,
Far from the cold news of the East,
The middling South, the Sunbelt,
Where it's always cold in March,
Touch and go for trees that
Show their fruit, nipped in the bud.

You will never taste another peach
Just picked from overripe culls
Of Loma Lou orchard, rooted in
Our sandhill county, far from the
Atlantic, but certified to have been
Underwater once, the ocean's floor,
Apt history for Lord Anson's land.

Stroking your forehead and murmuring
My last words over and over, my good
Mother, knowing no other, no better,
I remember gathering peaches when
Three yellow jackets flew up your
Dress and set you dancing, frantic:
How did they dare, I wondered, then and now,
Assault my God-fearing, widowed mother,
Whose body even I had never seen.

[Undated poem by Virginia McKinnon Mann. Photos by Sarah Sammis (above) and Susie Wyshak (below).]