The Body

My mother would have celebrated her birthday this coming week, if she were still alive. Always a very proper person, she would have been dismayed with the following poem. But it reveals that human side to her found in us all. Here's to you, Mom.



The Body


Your puffy lost ankles carry your failing
self through the moonless morass.
The sound of midnight pee

against porcelain, an unfettered belch,
a belly-deep sigh. Your sense of propriety
shed like a tiresome robe at the end

of the bed. You would be embarrassed
if you knew I heard, your overnight guest
already forgotten in the balm of sleep.

But even ninety-year old ladies have bodies
that revel when free from polite restraints.
I roll over, holding my pillow close.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Hunting Season

We just returned from the cabin, and it is definitely hunting season in the northland. Most pick-up trucks carried either hunters in blaze orange, or deer already taken.

Some years game is plenty; others not so much. Judging from today's drive, I would venture that this season left the hunters happy, unlike a few autumns back.



Hunting Season


A shooting star slides
November's sky,
wavelets freeze into silence.

Ears twitching, deer forage
attuned to tuneful twigs.
A chorus of wolves

across the lake raises fine hair:
the herd needs thinning.
But the Browning oiled next door

roils my gut. Bullet wounds
from ER shifts still haunt:
I prefer the wildlife alive.

Come dawn a lone shot
echoes leafless. Those
in deer-stands curse

the lack of game. At dusk
a buck lopes the road,
behind my eyes, almost smiling.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Relentless Rainfall

This has been a very wet year up north. No disastrous floods or destructive downpours but rain steady enough to raise water levels all year 'round.  Even come fall, a season with usually dry weather.

Lake Superior, 20 miles north of our cabin, sits at an all time high. And our small lake seems to be following in its big brother's footsteps.



Relentless Rainfall


Late October and all should be dusty
with brittle foliage, not soggy
with spongy leaves, matting the forest floor.

Surrounding wetlands produce de novo
ponds between cabin and brimming lake,
waves the color and feel of winter steel.

Ankle-deep water traps a low-lying shed,
requiring boots and backwoods ingenuity
to shift it, lift it away

from impending icy handcuffs, certain
to blackmail the structure, hold ransom
its rusty rakes and shovels, the well used grill.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

A Familiar Tale Reworked

The cold temps and dusting of snow remind me that it really is November here in the north country. I've become accustomed to the warm, lingering falls of late, and shouldn't be surprised by the need for winter coats and gloves, already.

Most of the trees around here have lost their leaves, but some hardwoods cling to foliage that dulls and becomes brittle as time advances. Eventually, even they relinquish any pretense of grandeur.



A Familiar Tale Reworked


The cottonwood stands stripped
of leaves except at its crown
where a dusty few continue to flutter.

Indian summer days downplay
coming changes as the tree holds
tightly to faded former glory.

Tall and regal, and like the emperor
with no clothes, naked,
sporting a diadem grown dim, slipping
one leaf at a time.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor