Notes Regarding John Donne

John Donne, that favored poet,
Thought Death a fraud,
Uncommonly proud,
But he was given to metaphor
Wildly extravagant, indiscreet.
Why must I be dug up now
And later in self-reproach
To hear rock and roll,
The tortured young writhing
Like dying dogs, scratching
On the window glass.
"In this room, was John Donne, undone."

[Undated poem by Virginia McKinnon Mann. These lines were scrawled on a scrap of paper, not neatly typed like most of the others. I edited the capitalization and punctuation in accordance with Virginia's established style. Portrait of John Donne (below) via Wikimedia.]

Ripening Pears

Walking in Grandfather's old, untended orchard,
We find the trees grown taller than our reach,
The aged trunks too thick to shake,
Stubborn as Grandfather himself,
Thinking we women have no need for pears.
You climb and shout as wild as a boy,
"I'll toss them down, you catch;
Pretend each one's a china egg."

A furtive skill we practice then,
Filling our aprons when baskets fail,
Treading softly on the attic stair;
No need to tell our Jack and Will,
Whose bed and board we richly serve,
How pears lie wrapped in hidden rooms,
In secret watched and gently turned.

Long past their natural life
Our summer hoard grows slowly ripe
As daughter turns to mother blessed
And smiles across the cloth are passed
While, lips upon the mellow skin,
We catch each other's glowing eyes
Setting our teeth against the fruit.

But Jack and Will cry out for knives,
Pearl handles glow, stilettos flash,
Quick work is made of stem and core,
Only a crescent remains, a wasted moon.

A fall of snow shakes down the leafless trees
Like Leghorn feathers whitening nests
Of brooding hens: our orchard stirs
And waits for Nature's fresh assault.

[Undated poem by Virginia McKinnon Mann. Photo by Chris Walsh.]

Registered Nurse

The old nurse moves among her patients
Checking their linens and watching
Their visitors for signs of tiring,
Duty to her patients clear when
All else is muddled in her brain:
To women hanging by a thread,
Trying to breathe their last,
She brings her comforting words,
"When you need me, I'm a maternity
nurse. Just call me anytime."

[Undated poem by Virginia McKinnon Mann.]

Activity Time

Returning from the travelogue,
Weekly escape when Death is slow,
Does the professor's wife remember
Florence where she was bride
And raw with love and love of art
Or is it all fresh to her and the
Professor she can no longer recall?

At music hour three times a week
Does the old pianist play by rote
Hear Mozart plain or does he prefer
Musak so low he hardly hears a note.

Your fight against this alien corn
Where February feels like spring
Is almost over now.

[Undated poem by Virginia McKinnon Mann. The first verse was heavily edited, but I typed it up in the original. The edited version follows below...]

Returning from Tuesday travelogue,
Weekly escape when dying is old,
Does the Professor's wife recall
Florence where she was bride
And bold with love and art
Or is it all new and interesting to her,
Like the Professor she longs to meet.

Play Like

A girl from another town, near my age,
Came to visit her grandfather every summer
And her sweet double step-grandmother.
We played at being grown-up movie stars
With names no one local could claim kin to.
I like the sound of Stone,
And she chose Cavendish.
It was a year when calm beauty was admired:
Remember Rochelle Hudson?

My friend's mother, beautiful and divorced,
Looked exactly like Norma Shearer.
I could easily see the resemblance
And was relieved not to be her daughter.

[Undated poem by Virginia McKinnon Mann. Pictured above: Rochelle Hudson (left) & Norma Shearer (right).]

The Cowgirl

       My first memory of myself before I started school as a six-year-old is set in my grandfather's bedroom. He has struck out for his daily constitutional and I am sure he will not return before lunchtime. I will not disturb anything in his room. When I leave, my image will disappear from his mirror.
       I am standing in front of his bureau with my pistols pulled, wearing my cowboy outfit, practicing the tone of voice in which I will rid the earth of "one more yellow dog". But I am perfectly harmless. My six-shooters do not even have caps. They have been cast off by my two older brothers, as have the chaps and the red bandanna around my neck. I have left my stick horse outside, as he has come to seem ready for pasture. I try different positions for my elbows, different stances for my boots, old ones I found in my brothers' closet.
       I am tired of being the little sister playing with dolls. I want to go alone into the woods. I am not afraid. I can take care of myself. I am looking straight into the mirror--but something moves and I hear a snicker and giggle before the door shuts. I hear my mother, my aunt, and our cook whisper, "Don't let her see us."
       They have vanished from the hall before I can see them eavesdropping. I have been taught that eavesdropping is not polite, that it is sneaky.
       I run upstairs to get rid of the ridiculous clothes and the pistols. I will never again let myself be made fun of. I go outside and find my stick horse. I say goodbye and put him out of his misery.

[Recollection by Virginia McKinnon Mann. December, 2006. Photo (below) by Philip Howard.]

A Prayer for the Word Processor

Oh word of God, bestowed to man and woman,
Chiefly woman now, protect us from the machine
That wants to think for us, to remember for us,
To remember the errors of our ways and erase
Them before the impulse exists (to put all our
Works into one access, random if possible)
To know not the paragraph, for it may transfer
To another page or the scratch of the pen,
For it is slow and leaves the sign of old ideas.

Protect us Lord God from preserving our printouts
Forever, for they are not worthy;
Protect us from believing that all words are spelled
Equally, that electronic impulses are more precious
Than rubies, more meaningful than the handwritten note.

In our late middle age we have learned to eat
Bread without salt, drink coffee without cream
For thus we mean to live forever.

Preserve us from processing the words of our hearts
And knowing not whereof they came.

[Poem by Virginia McKinnon Mann; dated May, 2006. Photo by Haris Awang.]

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).]

Look Alikes

"Mr. Meier, a 49-year-old Swiss native with a craggy-boyish resemblance to the late actor Anthony Perkins..." Suburban Journal, NY Times, Friday, July 9, 1993. (A16)

For the third time I have been told
By strangers that I resemble
A famous actress: each time
I am astounded for I know that
We are not related and furthermore
I am twenty years her senior, shortish,
And never dressed smartly,
Downright slovenly at home, though
Not quite "grunge" (I like my
Fingernails to be clean.)

An expression comes over someone's face
As I am told how something about me
Is like this famous actress.
It is certainly not my figure
They have reference to or my speech,
A North Carolina Piedmont drawl
Unhurried by years in the West.

Wanting to laugh out loud,
I smile instead and look pleased.
The cited resemblance is surely
Meant to flatter--fatuous as it seems.
It would surprise the famous actress
To be told, by friends or strangers
That she and I are look alikes;

I peer in the mirror for some clue
To this puzzle and finding none
A way to accept it for what it's worth,
Knowing no one means to insult me
By association with a movie star.

[Poem by Virginia McKinnon Mann. I suspect that these verses were written not long after July 9th, 1993. The article quoted in the beginning can be found online: "Down-to-Earth Methods On a Back-to-Earth Farm".]