American Girl from the North Country: A Sonnet

 

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"It's very strange for me now," he would say. "I'll be talking to someone and I'll overhear people saying, 'He was married to Mary Pickford.' And then someone else will say, 'Who was Mary Pickford?'

   "And that hurts me."

 

                                -Charles "Buddy" Rogers, actor and husband/

                                widow of actress Mary Pickford (from "Mary Pickford:                                    America's Sweetheart" by Scott Eyman (1990))

 

She was sunshine flooding from celluloid,

  Sometimes sisterly, daughterly or maternal,

She cavorted through the bichrome overjoyed,

  Nell in the flesh, Pollyanna eternal. 

A Darling in a Cocksure Age,

  From childhood she soon took a bow,

When with shears she broke her girlish cage-

  Cut!-and declared "I am a woman now!" 

As a nation gasped in disarray,

  She took more pay in hand, 

United the artists, then faded away,

  And the sun shone less upon the land.

But we can, from a cold silver and blue disc trove,

Find her again--laugh--cry--smile--and love.

 

DB/2.2026 

 

Music: "Mary Pickford" by Katie Melua 

Happy Valentine's Day, all you Stupid Cupids and Psycho Psyches!!😊💓