How to Deal with Recalcitrant Plants

Weary of the pathos
brought by her brown thumb
my mother heard
plants respond to speech.

She turned to her orchid
bereft of the blossoms
it started with.
Lovingly, she coaxed,
stubbornly, it resisted,
persisted as scraggly foliage.

Next up, struggling philodendrons.
Every morning she praised
the stunted leaves clinging
to trailing tendrils
until they died of embarrassment.

Then an ivy caught her attention,
eyed her warily as she sidled close
and cooed,
"I have three little words for you."
Appraising its droopy runners,
she let loose with
"CHOP, CHOP, CHOP!"

Mom never did hold with small talk.

Solstice Tonight

Daylight slips from the forest first
but lingers over the frozen lake
like a kerosene lamp dampened,
its waning flame reflecting
cobalt across the canvas taut
with snow.  A gloaming snuffed out
on a last turn of the blue planet
as it tilts back toward summer,
a gyroscopic toy of the gods spinning
a bowline through the heavens.


Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Christmas Gift

A forgotten photo
now reproduced, enlarged, found in a box
saggy with age, dampens your creased cheeks.
"It's my mother," you explain, unwrapped,
as if I didn't know.  Her funeral held
before Christmas on your fourteenth birthday.

Like the scattered Russian
                nesting dolls underfoot
                                   how do we fit together?

Grandma
forever young,
you unguarded as a child
absorbed with your present,
me now feeling like your mother
in this stack, somewhere, my own daughter.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Pompeii, 79 AD

A loaf of bread Italian style,
rounded, wedge sliced
by a practiced hand, found
intact.  One of eight left unsold,
brick-oven fresh and crusty
before Vesuvius scorched it,
wrapped it in volcanic ash
like the donkey out back
still in its traces, head tossed
in protest, nostrils flared,
no longer grinding wheat,
and the baker fleeing seaward.


Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Seagulls

searching

for an early morning meeting spot

          someone forgot to schedule

                         wander

like office workers

           without that first cup of joe

try an empty parking lot

before being rousted

                                by self-important wheels

      grumbling

committee members      leave in a flurry

      mill around across the way

                              agree to regroup later.

A few drift towards Starbucks

unruffled.

This week's blog is simply a beginning, and I will leave you with this to ponder:

On Leaving

Do snowbirds and black bears
use the same agent
for opposite winter arrangements?