The Underground

I am in London visiting my daughter and her family for the next three weeks, and my posts will reflect that. On the flight here I couldn't help but mull over the recent events in Brussels, and lest we forget, England has also been a target of the terrorists in the past.

The Tower of London has fascinated my grandson ever since they moved here. When he was younger he overheard a discussion about bombings at the affected Underground Station and the double decker bus on the street above.  Over the course of a few days he processed this information in reference to the things he knew, one of them being the Tower of London. Now a tourist mecca and no longer the formidable prison of earlier centuries. This poem is a result of one of his thoughts.



The Underground


we are going to take
this train    this train
         to visit
       the fabled
 Tower of London

my grandson guide
face pressed against pane

watching the platforms
checking graffiti framed posters
a pony-tailed man limping
away     the Jubilee Line down
change at Baker Street

thirteen color coded lines
crossing, adjoining, diverging
tunneled like the ant farm
in his room    plumbed through history

we pull out, plunge deep
into darkness    the window
reflects his trusting eyes    every
route burned into his brain

he counts the stops from here to Aldgate
        bombings

"Did Bobbies take
    the terrorists
to the Tower of London
    on this train?"

this train     this train



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Salty Language

Once a week I consider two or three options for stay-at-home dinners. A seafood choice is always a given since Andrew comes from Singapore, an island surrounded by oceanic waters and abundant crustaceans, his favorite type of food. It doesn't help that we live 1500 miles from the nearest coastline. But this is America and most everything is available, even shellfish flown in daily.

Apparently, I'm enough of a regular at the seafood counter that I was once asked how I fix the mussels I routinely buy. When I mentioned steaming them in wine, the fish-monger/meat-butcher nodded knowingly. Perhaps he hoped for a different take. Maybe a recipe for combining them with scallops in a black bean sauce which is equally tasty but much more complicated. Me? I'll stick with delicious and easy every time, if I'm the one in the kitchen.



Salty Language


The mollusks were talking last night. They remained mum in their mesh bag on the trip back from the market but started a sotto voce chatter in the 'frig. They clammed up tight when I rinsed them and scrubbed them and put them in a strainer. Restless, the pile shifted, squeaked, and caught the smells of a wine laced broth drifting overhead. Lulled by the warmth as if on a beach, they relaxed their jaw-clenched shells. And, I swear, one stared me in the eye, accusingly, as I upended them all into the boiling pot.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Morning Rituals

Up to the cabin this weekend, and a day spent reading outside in balmy sunshine. The weather warm enough to ignore stubborn patches of snow still clinging to low lying areas. Moderate temps and clear skies meant reveling in midnight's star filled heaven, undiminished by city lights. It's so easy to forget what incredible beauty hovers above us nightly. That alone was worth the journey.



Morning Rituals


Coffee black, muffins steaming.
Disagreements and stubborn streaks
with cream and sugar.

Conversation drifts
like a lily pad unmoored:
neighbor's politics but not our own,
the lake level and loons, weather a given,
comments on food from yesterday's gathering
called pot luck for a reason,
opinions about chancing a second bird feeder
versus tempting another bear.

Breakfast at home - hit or miss
but at the cabin - sacrosanct.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Growing Pains

Many years ago a cousin of mine who lives in Zurich suggested that he would like to visit Minnesota on his down-time in March. And I dissuaded him.

Of all the months to choose from he picked the one with mounds of dirty snow melting in mall lots, with trees still bare-boned and without buds, with wild weather swings from days in the 60s to plowable snowstorms, with winter's detritus of food wrappers and cups and cigarettes freshly exposed and not yet swept away.

In my opinion Minnesota is an incredibly beautiful state 11/12 of the year. And then there is March.



Growing Pains


March in Minnesota:
a junior high collection
of bad haircuts, forgettable
photos, and unhappy skin.

Hedging toward change,
it wears a winter coat
two sizes too small,
knobby wrists exposed.
New growth stumbles in boots
suddenly grown tight.

One ear flinches from winter,
fearing another swipe
but the other strains to catch
summertime blues playing
around the corner.

A time of brooding, a month of angst.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

The Problem with Bananas

I have long complained about "fresh" fruits and vegetables found in grocery stores with the onset of shortened days and frigid weather. Most of the produce trucked or flown a thousand miles and more to local stores. Strawberries come to mind, grapes, green beans, tomatoes, too. The list gets long.

Winter drags its feet at this time of year, making it difficult to visualize farmer's markets emerging on concrete still suffused with February cold. Meanwhile, I will have to rely on the consistency of bananas. With a caveat.


The Problem with Bananas


No matter how fresh
or firm they feel
as soon as I turn my back
brown spots pop up
on the sunny yellow fruit.

Before you know it
the guilty decision
not to bake banana bread
once again
dooms an entire bunch.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Out for a Walk

A water pipe broke in the ceiling of the condo's gym, causing major damage to many of the machines, and a month long closure of the facility. An inconvenience in the middle of February when indoor treadmills are more appealing than a hike in the elements. But I have convinced myself that a windchill above zero remains acceptable to brave a walk as long as I'm wearing the right clothes.

A lesson learned years ago when I moved to Minnesota for my Pediatric Residency. Early on, one of the docs informed us there were only two reasons to be cold in winter. "Either a person is too poor to dress correctly or they are too dumb." Then he looked at us pointedly and said, "I know none of you are penniless." With that he effectively dismissed our complaints about the morning's glacial weather. More temperate conditions can be found in the poem below.


Out for a Walk


I turn north and neglect the known.

Stumble upon a neighborhood
of tear-downs and rebuilds:
Gullivers on Lilliputian lots
shoulder to shoulder, brooding
over holdouts stubborn as native grasses.

On the street thirty-somethings
jog to a pace pulsed by earbuds;
afghans and labradoodles
fresh from obedience school, trotting in sync.

I picture my dog, if I owned one,
bounding as a springer, curly as a terrier,
schnoz like a hound's,
dragging me to Instant Messages at tree bases,
sleuthing the scents of entitlement,
straining to stay while I attempt to double back

and search for the lone road out.


Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Squatters

Just returned from a weekend up North. The thermometer registered -16 degrees yesterday morning, and during the night the bedroom's baseboard heating conked out. Snuggling becomes imperative in situations like that even with heat in the rest of the cabin.

Out on the lake hardy souls went ice-fishing all day.  Not for me, thank you, nor the snowmobiles. Who knows how low the windchill when flying on one of them. A warm fire and steaming cup of coffee, books and writing material held me captive and content. And now I'm back in the city, looking forward to next month's trip without the teeth chattering cold.


Squatters

On the unsullied banner of winter's lake
two forms hunker down: vagrants?
No, not human but animal.

Bodies rounded like rolled bales of hay
and dark as mama bear's fur.
Too small for Big Foot progeny.

Diminutive, milk-jug heads
tucked against the wind.  Aberrant wolves?

Before I can raise my eye-piece
they unfold, shape-shift:
a duo of bald eagles free-riding an updraft.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

On Loan

It pains me to show my ignorance but sometimes it's unavoidable. All along I assumed that both my musings and my poetry would stay in cyberspace in perpetuity. This week I realized my error. Hence, the change in format.

We finally received a typical Minnesota snowfall a few days back. Seven to twelve inches depending on where you were in the metro area. The kind of snow that quiets everything, slows people down, leaves a breathtaking landscape. Too soon the swath of white is sullied by snowplows and shovels and everyday life. If we're lucky, the magic lasts a few hours, sometimes overnight.


On Loan


Snowfall
satin-glossed, pristine gesso
overlays town and drive alike

My footprints
reveal the rube trashing a Rauschenberg
left at the doorstep



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

The Spider (After Calder's sculpture of the same name)

                           Suspended in space

                                    dangles
                                        a
                                     daddy
                                   long legs

                            of fairy wing grace,
                     black dancing shoes splayed
                                ready to jive

                                       and
                                      sway

                          on its fine metal lace.


                           Lean closer and see
                        some feet oddly shaped,
                             a thorax, a head
                             not really there.


                                       An
                                      idea

                               stirring the air.




Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Star Wars Defense

There is a black and white photo
of my fourth grade class with me,
hands folded politely as directed,
sitting in a coveted front seat.  I count
five rows lined straight for fifty-two
students.  These were days of ducking
under furniture when air-raid sirens
sounded.  But our school was ancient
and we only had old-fashioned desks
connected to each other like rigid
railroad tracks: cast iron and wood.
They were so cramped that precious
time would have been lost attempting
the impossible.  Instead, we were shielded
by the heavens above.  Even God wouldn't
dare defy Sister Mary Joseph as she led us
in prayer for protection from our enemies,
yardstick propped against the wall.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

The Lions in Winter

We would pelt the frosty glass
with snowballs to hear their roars
mingle with our shrieks

as we skidded down the slippery
service road certain they were
bounding behind us

escaped from their prison
of quartzite block, barred doors
and windows thick as fists

only to turn around at the far end
with frosty breaths and pounding hearts,
sneak back and pester them again.


Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Star Gazer

Comet-like axons light
my brain,
orbits protect my eyes
and two tiny moon bones
curve my palms.
Like a planet my body
harbors canals and gasses,
coronas and rings.
During a tempest, nebulae
may cloud my corneas,
penumbra lurk in my lungs.
Orion girds himself
with the Trapezium cluster
while I hold it in my hands.

The MilkyWay and DNA,
our elegant shapes.

Karma

Asthma thieving my breath and still I drag my feet before I start the steroids.  How can such a bland, aspirin-like tablet release the hounds of hell?  Okay, maybe not Dobermans with spittle enough to fill a spittoon but, surely, the vice-grips of a Pit Bull or two with snarls.  Nightly, they cramp my legs as I bolt from bed to shake off the demon pain before I collapse wide-pulsed and eyes pounding, shake loose an insomnia that careens between rattling 'frig and striking clock.  Yet in the ER I routinely prescribed these very pills to even the youngest of wheezers.  Perhaps the weary curses of midnight mothers with unnerved darlings pumped on prednisone carry some weight after all.


Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

How to Deal with Recalcitrant Plants

Weary of the pathos
brought by her brown thumb
my mother heard
plants respond to speech.

She turned to her orchid
bereft of the blossoms
it started with.
Lovingly, she coaxed,
stubbornly, it resisted,
persisted as scraggly foliage.

Next up, struggling philodendrons.
Every morning she praised
the stunted leaves clinging
to trailing tendrils
until they died of embarrassment.

Then an ivy caught her attention,
eyed her warily as she sidled close
and cooed,
"I have three little words for you."
Appraising its droopy runners,
she let loose with
"CHOP, CHOP, CHOP!"

Mom never did hold with small talk.