Drinking Honeysuckle in Palo Alto

Walking near Gamble Garden we came upon
Young girls hovering over honeysuckle blooms
Like bees, biting off tips and sucking
The sharp sweetness--drop by drop.

My just such girlhood pushed up from
Mind's bottom and fought for air:
Kicking and flailing to break water's surface
And beat off bully Time, whose fat palm
Shoved against my face until lungs gave out and
Memory dropped back like an old tire
Into the silt of Welika Lake.

For a moment, before we resumed our conversation,
I was overcome by humidity and the trickle
Of sweat running down pancaked legs
Blurring white shoes with hopeless longing
For Dr. Moore to stop praying for life after death.

[Poem by Virginia McKinnon Mann. June, 1993.]

Robins in January

Against the puny frost of winter's clime
The cat benignly waits upon the Nelsons' mat,
Not cold, but cowed by raucous swarm
Of birds demented, flying blind
From Pyracantha hedge to Toyon wild,
Eschewing sober meals of insects plain:
Fermented berries muddle our poor Robin's brain.

For once the feline eye does fail to charm
These drugged and shameless stunting birds:
Their nobler instincts gone astray
They swoop and cry like banshees
Loosed upon the cul-de-sac, this saintly Place,
Our leased home, their captures space;
For when they dive like fighter planes,
They drop their blood-red berries where they may
And once again out mother Nature does her dance
With robins turned to bacchanal
And gardens sown by happenstance.

[Undated poem by Virginia McKinnon Mann. Undated, but I suspect it was written in January. Under the title was the legend, "for Corinne and Lyle Nelson of San Rafael Place".]

Children

Sonya

Sonya walks
Like the bamboo leaf
Holding the water droplet
Until it falls.

Sonya walks
With dancing hands,
Planting each foot
Towards those she loves.

Kevin

Today a tiny seed
Floated on my breath,
Moving as Kevin moved,
Our second son,
Who saw the world
So small and cried,
"A beauty, a beauty!"

[Two poems by Virginia McKinnon Mann, printed on the same page. August, 1995.]

Found Money at Bodega Bay

Who can resist the sand dollar,
Its circled star and tiny dove
Between each hollow spine?
Pick up this treasure trove
Before the tide comes in
Stripping the beach-bed clean,
Before the silver seekers
Appear with detecting machines.

They cannot see the sand dollar
Which does not rudely beep
But lives in silent symmetry
Inside my castle keep.
As I am motionless at sea
By captive childhood's dream,
Remembering another ocean,
Another beach to glean.

[Undated poem by Virginia McKinnon Mann. Photo by Rachel Hathaway.]

Sylvia

My neighbor of three years, off and on,
Calls me Sylvia although my name is Virginia.
I like the sound and do not correct her.
No one else will know for she speaks
To no one, complaining that all
Are cold and unfriendly.

How did she know that Sylvia would please,
That I would carry it all day
Like an old postcard found in a library book
Imagining Sylvia's life?

After dinner I tell my husband
That he may call me Sylvia if he wishes;
He slyly replies, "Who is she?"

[Undated poem by Virginia McKinnon Mann.]

No. 64

The bus driver, Black Mother, waits
For the train to arrive,
The passengers to become her children:
She remembers me, calls out my stop,
"Santa Clara and First,"
Not far from St. James' Park,
Historic San Jose.

She watches me leave and carries
The other children of her run
To their appointed places,
Heavy in her heart
For the daughter who suffers
From surgery, from chemo, from surgery.

Dear Mother of God, how beautiful
You are in the Cathedral of St. Joseph:
What street of this besainted city
Will you name for the Black Mother,
Who cannot save her daughter from pain,
Who drives her bus so kindly,
Speaking gently to the old White Woman,
Who, like herself, cannot save her
Daughter from pain?

[Poem by Virginia McKinnon Mann. May, 1995. Photo of the Virgin of Montserrat via Wikimedia.]