Ms. Fixit, exhausted

After a couple more hours removing and replacing the cartridges, I finally got the printer to work. So I printed some poems to read at the meeting tonight, including "Virginia Woolf." January 25th was VW's birthday, and Dale S. posted a diary excerpt by her on Facebook. I posted this poem in response, and Dale said it was a treasure, and I should submit it for publication. So I emailed it to Jim and Liz Reed's Birmingham Arts Journal. The only prize it has ever won was an "honorable mention" back in 1994 or so.

Woolf had spells of intense depression, which she called insanity. One day in 1941, she put on a big overcoat, went out and filled the pockets with rocks, and walked into the River Ouse.

Madness or allergies? It should have been
investigated. I would have tried;
and I would have fed you sweet potatoes,
corn, and tender cabbages,
no lowing beef or crying lamb,
no bleeding beets or haunted cress
to wake the spectres in your brain;
I would have given you one strawberry
and, as you ate it, watched to see
if your great eyes began to spin
and see the fin beneath the waves.
I would have raised you on some hilltop
out of sight or sound of the sea,
on field peas and fresh onions,
sourwood honey and sassafras tea,
baked your bread in the old range oven
and smeared it thick with apple butter.
Apples never hurt anyone.
*

The fourth episode of Downton Season 3 was depressing enough. Beautiful Sibyl died in agony after childbirth, and Bates got set up for some kind of a showdown in prison. Last week, Strallan left Edith unmarried at the altar. Daisy likes Alfred, the ugly footman. As Nero Wolfe would say, "Pfui!"