Fallen Leaf Lake

(for JKM, 7-7-84)

Now in our thirty-fourth summer
We come childless to the Bassett Cabin:
To dip our thickened frames in the Lake
As if to slake old puritan aches;
Could witch's water been colder,
More purifying than this noble Lake?

Bill's boat skims over the snow-fed
Water, clear to the secret bottom,
As steady goes our prow
Like Susan's crayon to draw the shore,
Setting it now once more
In memory's bank -- our Fallen Leaf,
Against the winter's lack
When the Big Dipper's dimmed
By the Bay's ruinous light.

At dusk we watch the Falls
Which feed so well our Lake,
Its fish, its ducks and ducklings,
Its continuous, Wordsworthian roar,
Reducing the Ski-Nautique
To puny mosquito-power.

Sated with spray, we stop
At St. Francis of the Mountains,
Bonnie and Marvin's place,
Beflowered in Columbine and Queen Anne's Lace,
To read in brass again the names who died in war --
Allen, Bassett, Brett, Canning, Culver, Etcheverry,
The words: "They will not grow old"
And we make bold to add our names
To those who also cannot leave this Lake.

[Poem by Virginia McKinnon Mann, presumably written in July, 1984. Photo by Steve Jurvetson.]

From the Market

The woman carries the cantaloupe in her palm,
Protruding like a proud pregnancy.
Her fingers turn up, become a bowl;
Each foot dances to ripeness.

Was the cantaloupe singing
As she made her way to home and mate?
Would she dare to eat
The golden flesh when she woke
With cravings in the night?

[Poem by Virginia McKinnon Mann. Dated "July, August, September 1997". Photo by Kabsik Park.]

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".]