Sunny

Rain drenched the north woods this past week, dumping over ten inches one stormy night, flooding roads and cabins, our own included, and claiming two lives in the process. It is hard to remember the dryness of the forest and the unexpected sandbars uncovered by the lake only a few years back. If only that were the problem now.



Sunny


A lazy pontoon day
on a lake grown smaller,
leaving mudflats and marshes
beneath extended docks,
revealing the island's geological
layers, exposing the nests of loons
and geese, water grasses gone.
Four years lost already,
slippery minnows through a net.
The old-timers talk of cycles,
the cabin owners shake their heads,
the water ripples carefree as bare feet,
plovers still play along the shoreline
and For Sale signs take root out front.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Tracking Time in Singapore

Singapore was in the news this week. And since Andrew claims this island nation as his home, I have traveled there multiple times. Until I arrived there I had paid scant notice to its location on the equator and what that meant beyond implicit heat and humidity. Unvarying, year round daylight/nighttime hours without any prolonged twilights or rosy dawns.



Tracking Time in Singapore


Jet lag paints my eyes open, unblinking
as a china doll tucked in bed, searching
for smudges of light still hours away.

Regimented days - twelve hours
of fierce sun, twelve hours of lampblack -
etched in island bedrock.

No pre-dawn display of color,
no lingering dusk, only equatorial
equilibrium orchestrated by the ocean.

The globe creeps closer to the same
seven o'clock sunrise snapping up
like a shade, day after day

as if government mandated. An intrusion
on my unruly northern latitude attitude.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Six Legs, Eight Legs and More

On our last trip to the lake I noticed both the high number of mosquitoes and the lack of an army of dragonflies normally keeping those pesky buggers in check. Whatever the cause, crazy weather or something more nefarious, I truly hope this year is just an anomaly.



Six Legs, Eight Legs and More


     Who knew some insects molt, cling to twigs then wiggle out of themselves, leaving behind shells that crumble at a withering glance or a cutting remark? Scores of hollow carapaces hidden in branches of a bush counted on heavy rain to wash away traces of prior lives. Did the arthropods shed this intricate layer to free themselves of hidebound wraps or to escape past acts, old bosses, former paramours? Maybe gangs of bigger bugs bullied them, forced them into fedoras, compelling them to hide in plain sight like those in witness protection. Of all the field guides in the cabin not one devoted to entomology, nothing to decode the discarded casings. This lack of info on insects a reflection of my swat now, look later approach to all things creepy crawly. Not unlike the bashed false-eyelash that once terrorized my bathroom floor.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Limited Visibility

This past week I woke up to fog as dense as I've ever witnessed. Not only was the street in front of my windows invisible, the lawn, itself, had disappeared.

At seven in the morning on a workday, it was eerily quiet on this busy thoroughfare because of the lack of traffic. I counted myself lucky not to have to contend with such dismal driving conditions. And highway travel? The same set of problems only on speed.



Limited Visibility


Wind turbines, pale giants swallowed
by ghost clouds, spin layered vapor
floating over the plains.

Warning signs and raised crossbars
prepared to halt highway traffic
loom and recede like prairie phantoms.

Drifting snow and blizzards trigger
extended arms/alarms, but diaphanous fog,
famous for pileups, holds no leverage.

                              *

Uninvited passengers,
a throbbing headache and white knuckles,
slide in for the ride.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor