Intern's Lament

Last night I attended a farewell party for a colleague of mine now headed south to a new job in New Orleans. I couldn't help but recall the very beginning of my own career as a bright-eyed doc ready to take on the world.

Little did any of us know what awaited that first year on the pediatric wards with no defenses against even common viruses that kids harbor. By the second year our force shields were almost impervious.



Intern's Lament


How many sneezes in the face
does it take to take down
a pediatrician in training?

How many doorknobs harbor
dastardly pink-eye, waiting to pounce
like a villain from an action cartoon?

How many tummy upsets
turn the tables on newly minted docs
causing them to bolt from the room?

How long 'til the mucous man
rooms with a resident,
unpacks a sack of sniffles and snot?

How many hours turn into a staycation
on the couch, fighting a fever,
sleeping through precious time off?

How many kid diseases rule
before antibodies activate superpowers,
and this rite of passage passes?



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor  

Limited Visibility

The I-90 corridor along southern Minnesota stretches across open prairie. Easy to drive on nice days, and a bugaboo during bad weather of any kind. Heavy rain dogged me this trip but thick fog has haunted me on more than one occasion.



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

Summertime Riff

It's mid-September and the noisy cicadas have gone but the crickets continue to natter. It's mid-September and still the heat of extended summer makes for sweltering nights. It's mid-September but it feels like the dog days persist, heat advisories and all.



Summertime Riff


The jazz of crickets
lulls me to sleep on sticky
August nights. Like the steady
thrum of a Bourbon Street beat
it floats through my wide-flung window
long past "Last call."

When the sultry sun rises
I wake to these jam sessions
finally winding down
as one by one the players pack it in,
amused by the ants already hustling
at first light.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Uncle Ben

My father came from a farming family, and I remember summers spent in the country with two uncles and an aunt, siblings all, still working the land. Of the three of them, Ben left the biggest impression.



Uncle Ben


A wide-mouthed jar brimful
with change, and sitting out
in the open on his dresser
proved to me at age eight
what a wealthy man he must be.
I paid scant notice to his worn
overalls and the back-firing tractor.

He taught me my first salty words,
how to milk a cow without getting kicked,
that Kool-Aid without sugar was only
colored well-water and just as bitter,
exactly the way he liked it.

I acted as his co-pilot when we drove
to town. He surveyed the crops
while I watched the road, gravel pinging
all the way to O'Toole's Bar. A beer
and a bump for him and without asking
always a mouth puckering Squirt for me.

He cursed the noon market reports,
swatting at the airwaves with his thick,
calloused hand, thought it a joke
to toss my straw hat into the hay baler,
and bluffed strangers with his gruffness.

More grizzly than teddy bear, he once
let me hide in his arms during a hailstorm,
and I think I saw him smile.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Linguistics in a Nutshell

It's been a few years since my grandson gathered medieval looking conkers, but I clearly remember their prickly appearance. Last I checked, no chestnut trees menace our neighborhood. It's only the black walnuts we contend with.



Linguistics in a Nutshell


My grandson collected conkers
fallen from a chestnut tree
on a leafy street in London.
And I puzzled over the odd,
British moniker for this glossy nut
bundled in a spiky shell
until acorns, elfin in comparison,
pelted my head from an oak
found at home three months
and a turn of the globe later.

At least the black walnut held its fire.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor