Weighted Sky

We traveled to the cabin this weekend. It remains snug and warm despite surrounding snow and daytime highs in the teens. A sky full of sunshine always helps, too. This morning we woke to flurries, creating a pristine world once more, but certain to cause problems for the unwary.



Weighted Sky


Finally, sunshine through winter pines.

But skulking across the lake
stratocumuli like streaks of ash
smudge the tree line's edge.

And the north wind,
moody as a stepmother, threatens
to blow the pile of them into a mess
even Cinderella cannot sweep away.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Flashback

Like so many combatants back from war my peers who fought in Viet Nam would not speak of it. Then Ken Burns released his ten episode series on PBS about those hostilities, and the spectacle/specter returned in living color. That whole period continues to haunt me.

Flashback

Buried in the paper:

Agent Orange causes cancer

even in vets who worked

the desks in Saigon,

never fought on the frontline.

My friend pushed papers

there, shot skeet for action,

came home alive.

I thought to call him

with this news then realized

he died twenty years ago,

a fast growing renal tumor

taking him down.

Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Wrong Again

Even in deepest January with its unrelenting cold, if I listen, I can hear the calls of birds that overwinter here, especially, when the sky is clear and sunshine abundant. And that is enough to make me smile through these interminable layers of winter.



Wrong Again


Cardinals lift my spirits whether those feathered bits of pleasure sing summer or greet winter on branches blanketed with snow. Their enchanted call and response easily identified among avian scores. Or so I thought. Then I downloaded a birding app, discovered this refrain did not come from the throats of those resplendent songbirds. News almost as disturbing as the truth about Santa. Black-capped chickadees had copyrighted the three note melody, suddenly making the tune less delightful. Now I must reprogram my ears to hear the song sung by the scarlet warblers. A refrain almost as intricate as a Mozart passage. The intro to "Three Blind Mice" was so much easier to recognize.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Vespers

Recently, I attended a retirement party for one of my ER colleagues. Being retired myself, I no longer feel the gravity that comes with the responsibility for the lives of pediatric patients, and it is freeing.

While I worked in the ER my escape valve was the cabin up north, and to this day remains a source of serenity. On more than one occasion, my professional life and north woods life felt vividly juxtaposed.



Vespers


A ten-year old girl covered with hives

                   Miles into midnight countryside

Wheezing hard, unable to speak
Blood pressure levels slipping fast

                   Winter solstice weather
                   Crystalline and cold

In the ER a dance of rescue unfolds
Drugs slam home, infuse, relax

                   The wrap of blackness broken
                   Beneath a billion star sky

Breathing slower, a faint smile: good signs

                   Looking up, we almost feel divine.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor