Morning Twilight

Autumn is coming, and everyday the sun rises later. On two occasions I have been lucky enough to observe a magical, very early predawn at the cabin. But the old saw of the spirit being willing, and the flesh being weak held true.



Morning Twilight


Twice up north
when predawn stirrings
dissolve shadows before 4:00,

I witnessed
the sum of the sky softened
with a misty, conch shell pink.

But neither time did I pause
to let my skin absorb its blush
nor linger in its flux.

Instead, sleep pulled me back to bed
like the siren call of a lover,
promising a more tangible caress,

whispering the certainty of parallel
mornings to come. Or so I heard.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Optics

The sky fascinates me. The storms, the stars, the sunrises and sunsets, the moon, the clouds. And recently I discovered something about our moon that I didn't know before.



Optics


The planet-shine of Venus and Jupiter,
close as kissing cousins today,
studs the brightening sky

but nowhere do I spy
the wisp of a waning moon,
fellow traveler of these morning stars.

I scan my windows without luck,
reach for an astronomy app
to pinpoint her. But nothing lights up.

Earth's satellite slipped away.

Her presence enlivens midnight's vault,
and retreat implies a curtain of clouds
or a crescent gone early to bed.

But, no, this day she simply
doesn't show, vanishes like a lady
in a magic act.

My dusty handbook of the heavens
concedes her disappearance
once each lunar month.

Then "Sim Sala Bim" and she's back
as a slivered bow, stage right
the following night.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

North End Blues

A few weeks back I made a trip to my hometown to see a good friend of mine. It's been years since I drove through my old neighborhood, and time has not helped the memories I carry of it.



North End Blues


Time is a hula hoop
around my waist, swirling
faster with each loop.
On the street where once I lived
Elvis now impersonates himself,
croons "Cold Kentucky Rain,"
and smells of homelessness.
I see the notes of his song slip down
a dirty white shirt, catch in the ragged
edges of his bell-bottoms.
Down the block Etta James
lingers from a radio,
slows the spinning world,
her sorrow leaking out a torn
screen door in a dissonant
duet with the King on the corner.
Fledgling years turn and slide
down the alley, their soprano shrieks
bounce between buildings, a ghost
game of hide and seek once played
among grand dames of innocence
and peppermint, now houses without heart.
I scale the walls of a Four Square,
stare into my bedroom but a woman,
not my mother, glares back,
refuses to recognize me. Someday
the same will happen to her,
no keepsake view. The years change
everything but me, and la dolce vita
melts away. At least the mourning dove
in the old maple tree nods a greeting.
Elvis, Etta, and the bird in three part harmony.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Balm

Last night I had dinner with a good friend of mine, a medical colleague in town to present Grand Rounds at the U of MN. Later, prior experiences as an ER physician peppered my dreams. And I saw the Northern Lights once more.



Balm


Depleted after an ER shift branded
by chaos, I turn north in the night:
a pulsing emerald sky.

My heart spellbound
as a child cupping a butterfly,
my head hammered by horns honking.

                         *

On my balcony I wrap
against witching-hour air

eyes wandering the lime-lit cosmos
until Hypnos, god of sleep,
brushes my cheek

and the image of a mother
cradling her lifeless infant
recedes into my closet of sorrows.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor