ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sally Allen McNall's poems have appeared in such magazines as Cincinnati Poetry Review, Cottonwood, New Letters, Prairie Schooner, Midwest Quarterly, Kansas Quarterly, Permafrost, Earth's Daughters, Room of One's Own, and Chariton Review. She was a winner of the National Poetry Chapbook contest from State Street Press in 1997 for How To Behave at the Zoo and Other Lessons. She has read her poetry widely in the Midwest and on the West Coast. In 1982 she presented her solo script "Willa Cather" in the traveling Great Plains Chautauqua. She was also a Fulbright Scholar to New Zealand that year. She lives with her husband in Paradise, California, and teaches at California State University, Chico.
From RESCUE winner of the 1999 Backwaters Prize, Judged by Greg Kuzma
Madeline in a Prospect of Flowers
We have Sunday, all of us, the first Sunday of a whole week off.
We drive an hour up the dirt road to Table Mountain, to see wildflowers
together, and the wild sky all around, the crazy colliding clouds.
Two and a half, you herded us out to the car for the ride
let's go let's go, and sing as we go, of mailboxes, chickens and pickup trucks.
We pass trailers of old couples who've staked out their days on five acres of hillside,
the whole Butte County Historical Society Annual Barbecue and plant sale,
and two women by a Buick in their Sunday clothes, having a serious argument.
We walk out on Table Mountain as if onto tundra, mosses, chunks of volcanic rock,
flowers like constellations. Whole families spread out picnics and try to get kites in the air.
Every grownup on this cold lava flow looks tired and alert for trouble.
We grit our teeth, grin, try not to think about prices or Congress or freeways
or Monday, or what we hate or fear about the jobs we have or don't.
We look up at the sky, down at the flowers, the kids this very minute.
You hunker down to poke we don't pick the pink, the blue star, white mallow,
little wild lupine, rock rose, primrose, daisy goldfields oh flowers oh look look.
In pinafore and hightops you squat and croon to the yellow stars about you,
get both hands into the soaked black earth. My blossom, you are not a bit like a flower.
You declare each day a flower and we believe you, against all evidence.
HEART FAILURE
I. 1991: Autobiographies
All morning I've been reading the novel again,
aching over it, alone in the old house,
trying to forgive Cather her terror of time.
Only "twenty good years" and the woman writing
already forty-two. How some hearts deny
their strength, pile years up like a circle of stones,
a firepit to burn in. Cather finally got out,
I think, sigh, and make another lengthy note
for a lecture about The Modern Artist.
But I want to go back again with what I know
now, to one of my childhood summers at the lake
when my great aunt Carolyn seemed strong and free.
I want to go back to another summer
when Carolyn's heart was so thickly swollen
her whole body was jarred by each beat.
"You can't be a writer now," said the letter
from the hospital. Then, in a phone call, "Please forgive
me that awful letter. Of course I don't mean it."
So now I close the book, and examine
the pain around my strong heart. I need that voice
again, needing, taking, giving- want to hear it:
II. 1976: House
Even after Marjorie's mind began to fail
she said she would stay in this house, she would give
nothing away- stubborn as always, the sister
they called the good one. Amy was beautiful. And I,
the responsible one. The one who year after year
paid the bills, hired help and repairmen, made plans.
Sold the lake cottage, saving only the books.
Here, the Chinese rugs have faded, the furniture
is scratched and dull. Tina can't stay long enough
to get things clean- to Marjorie she's a stranger.
But we can still be quite content! Last night we watched
a special on TV about wild ducks. We had
our hot milk in good cups. Our fights don't always end
in tears. Marjorie reads me her old letters
over and over, too pleased to throw them away.
The letters I keep are Sally's. She's so far from here.
I read them over in the long nights and write back.
I write about my old dream of living alone,
Sarton's Journal of a Solitude. Could I do
that? Could she? We don't know. We recount
our daily disasters and noble deeds as if
we were one age. "A flame the wind cannot blow out-"
That's Millay, I copied it to send. "Over dark
water the sun went down, a bursting heart." That's mine,
I won't send it. I'm often short of breath now-
on the stairs, and for fear I can't get it all done
in time. Lists, appointments with doctors and lawyers,
our friends' visits. Women only get one chance to escape
such duties, though I don't know when mine went past.
I wonder what Sally knows and doesn't tell me:
III. 1972: Biographies
The sun's an enemy in this desert country,
I hate it. Even at midnight the air's heavy,
and there's not much that's uplifting about our lives.
Every hour a chore- we drive through a white heat
to teach, to study, to take to school whatever
the kids forgot at home, then to get groceries home.
Trips, papers, parties, lectures, picnics, museums.
Like the machine on the ocean floor in the story,
grinding out salt salt salt. We run, we swim, for miles.
But I dream of a green lake shore, wake up to write
to Carolyn at dawn- who worries, and warns me
I can't have everything. I've nothing! Not true,
but neither are my wonderful letters to her.
She loves me in the same fantastical way I love
John Keats. But I'm not dead, not early dead, not yet.
I sit outside to write, before the sun can top
the walls. In winter months, sometimes, a cardinal comes,
bounces and flames on the olive tree. I can
tell her that. She wants me to be happy, and so
for her I am. Will be. I'm strong enough for that,
I think she is, but I don't know how to ask.
If I can imagine John Keats in Italy,
I ought to know what one day of her life is like:
IV. 1968: Lake
The second week of June, my job to check the cottage- stove
and plumbing, blankets, see what needs to be fixed.
See the grass is mowed, down to the pebbled shore.
New shingles here and there. Check the cupboards for food
they'll need, for signs of mice. The last visitors
in August will be Sally, her husband, the children.
In the largest bedroom, all the books I've given
her to read, summer after summer- Little Women,
later, Song of the Lark, this year, To the Lighthouse.
It can't be kept up another year, with so few
caring to come back to visit now. In fall,
I will close it for the last time. It takes my breath
away- no more nephews and nieces, all the children
in wet swim suits, hide and seek, new packs of cards,
reading The Tempest aloud, trooping out all together
to watch sunset kindle the lake. Just inside
the screen porch, I stop, the door half open, key in hand.
I hope I've forgotten something, stand there, wait.
This page last updated: November 26th, 2001