The Underground

I am in London visiting my daughter and her family for the next three weeks, and my posts will reflect that. On the flight here I couldn't help but mull over the recent events in Brussels, and lest we forget, England has also been a target of the terrorists in the past.

The Tower of London has fascinated my grandson ever since they moved here. When he was younger he overheard a discussion about bombings at the affected Underground Station and the double decker bus on the street above.  Over the course of a few days he processed this information in reference to the things he knew, one of them being the Tower of London. Now a tourist mecca and no longer the formidable prison of earlier centuries. This poem is a result of one of his thoughts.



The Underground


we are going to take
this train    this train
         to visit
       the fabled
 Tower of London

my grandson guide
face pressed against pane

watching the platforms
checking graffiti framed posters
a pony-tailed man limping
away     the Jubilee Line down
change at Baker Street

thirteen color coded lines
crossing, adjoining, diverging
tunneled like the ant farm
in his room    plumbed through history

we pull out, plunge deep
into darkness    the window
reflects his trusting eyes    every
route burned into his brain

he counts the stops from here to Aldgate
        bombings

"Did Bobbies take
    the terrorists
to the Tower of London
    on this train?"

this train     this train



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Salty Language

Once a week I consider two or three options for stay-at-home dinners. A seafood choice is always a given since Andrew comes from Singapore, an island surrounded by oceanic waters and abundant crustaceans, his favorite type of food. It doesn't help that we live 1500 miles from the nearest coastline. But this is America and most everything is available, even shellfish flown in daily.

Apparently, I'm enough of a regular at the seafood counter that I was once asked how I fix the mussels I routinely buy. When I mentioned steaming them in wine, the fish-monger/meat-butcher nodded knowingly. Perhaps he hoped for a different take. Maybe a recipe for combining them with scallops in a black bean sauce which is equally tasty but much more complicated. Me? I'll stick with delicious and easy every time, if I'm the one in the kitchen.



Salty Language


The mollusks were talking last night. They remained mum in their mesh bag on the trip back from the market but started a sotto voce chatter in the 'frig. They clammed up tight when I rinsed them and scrubbed them and put them in a strainer. Restless, the pile shifted, squeaked, and caught the smells of a wine laced broth drifting overhead. Lulled by the warmth as if on a beach, they relaxed their jaw-clenched shells. And, I swear, one stared me in the eye, accusingly, as I upended them all into the boiling pot.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Morning Rituals

Up to the cabin this weekend, and a day spent reading outside in balmy sunshine. The weather warm enough to ignore stubborn patches of snow still clinging to low lying areas. Moderate temps and clear skies meant reveling in midnight's star filled heaven, undiminished by city lights. It's so easy to forget what incredible beauty hovers above us nightly. That alone was worth the journey.



Morning Rituals


Coffee black, muffins steaming.
Disagreements and stubborn streaks
with cream and sugar.

Conversation drifts
like a lily pad unmoored:
neighbor's politics but not our own,
the lake level and loons, weather a given,
comments on food from yesterday's gathering
called pot luck for a reason,
opinions about chancing a second bird feeder
versus tempting another bear.

Breakfast at home - hit or miss
but at the cabin - sacrosanct.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Growing Pains

Many years ago a cousin of mine who lives in Zurich suggested that he would like to visit Minnesota on his down-time in March. And I dissuaded him.

Of all the months to choose from he picked the one with mounds of dirty snow melting in mall lots, with trees still bare-boned and without buds, with wild weather swings from days in the 60s to plowable snowstorms, with winter's detritus of food wrappers and cups and cigarettes freshly exposed and not yet swept away.

In my opinion Minnesota is an incredibly beautiful state 11/12 of the year. And then there is March.



Growing Pains


March in Minnesota:
a junior high collection
of bad haircuts, forgettable
photos, and unhappy skin.

Hedging toward change,
it wears a winter coat
two sizes too small,
knobby wrists exposed.
New growth stumbles in boots
suddenly grown tight.

One ear flinches from winter,
fearing another swipe
but the other strains to catch
summertime blues playing
around the corner.

A time of brooding, a month of angst.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor