Yes, It's Still February

Despite the six-day-run of record breaking warm temperatures it really is still February. And that was brought home to me this weekend up at the cabin. Highs of 20 degrees and snow squalls.

Secretly, it pleased me to see the ground blanketed with white once again since it's definitely winter no matter how you dice it. But I am done with the month of February. That taste of 60-degree days spoiled me, and I am hoping for the arrival of an early spring.



Yes, It's Still February


In this mini-month
the days drag their feet
over blizzard slag heaps
beneath clouds of wet wool
velcroed to the sky.

They schlep carryalls filled
with sniffles and coughs
and their own guarded secret
which I finally intuited:
each of them is 36 hours long
like the Dantesque days of residency.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

The Accidental Coffin Maker

On our last trek north we ran into major plumbing problems. The toilet tank cracked and drained, and in sympathy its neighbor, the sink, started to leak. Luckily, a jack-of-all-trades lives down the road.

His temperament can be irascible at times but underneath the crustiness beats a generous heart. More than once he has come to our rescue. Last summer we caught up with him in his workshop, sanding a small box, a carefully crafted piece of workmanship.



The Accidental Coffin Maker


The northwoods whiskey-swilling
carpenter builds wicked-good cabinets
when not nursing a grudge
or in the thick of a bar-provoked fight
over some perceived slight.

His neighbor wedded to a woman
with Alzheimer's looks beyond the bluster.
Commissions a handcrafted box, cross
planed on the lid, sized to sit on a dresser,
contain a bag of ashes.
Knows it will be polished with care.

Somehow, word will leak out,
and woe to the local who snickers.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Burma Shave Country

We traveled to the cabin this weekend, three hours north and east of here, wondering whether or not we would need boots given the mild winter and scarcity of snow in the Cities. But we knew better than to leave them behind. Minimal snow covered the landscape all the way there.

Once at the cabin, deep in a shaded forest, maybe six to eight inches of the white stuff awaited us. Enough for boots but woefully short for this time of year.



Burma Shave Country


Abandoned by the winter barber
and stuck in a February chair
the scavenged fields of corn remain
shadowed with husks itchy and dry.

Their wrap of moisture missing
the croplands pray for a late lather,
defenseless before April plows,
scraping clean their contours.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor  

Reflection

As some of you know, my daughter was diagnosed with breast cancer 14 months ago. She survived her horrible, not so good, very bad year, and has returned to work unbowed and positive spirit intact.

Of course, I had to write about her plight, viewing it from both a mother's and a physician's perspective. An uncomfortable position to occupy. With her blessing I am posting the first of an occasional poem about this journey.



Reflection


Grandma,
a tumor hijacked your ovaries, slackened
the drape of your dress, loosened the fit
of your rings, traveled with you
to a new land, filched your final breath.

And you, only 47. The age of my daughter
now fighting breast cancer, hitching-up her jeans
as she walks the heath, wedding band snug in a pocket.

Is it a spun thread of DNA embedded with shards
that snags the two of you?

Like facing a mirror darkly, one to the other familiar:
two women ex-pats by choice
two women petite, stoic, gutsy
two women shadowboxing on their own.

You with prayer and morphine,
she with chemo and surgery.

The silvering behind the looking-glass grown cloudy.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor