Memory

My mother suffered a stroke a dozen years before her death. It robbed her of the capacity to form new memories but left her physically intact and irascible as always. She retained the ability to remember people and events up until the day of her stroke. If Mom knew you before, she clearly remembered you afterwards. If you met her after that time, you forever remained a mystery to her except in the moment.

The same conditions applied to happenings around my mother. The recollection of any affair, be it joyful or calamitous, simply did not take root. With the uproar of provacative headlines now coming at us daily, there are times I envy that fugue.



Memory


Old woman,
what is it like to live with a decade
of images that failed to gel?

You recall waving at the Kaiser
but do not know your neighbors,
reminisce about your aunt's hand-dipped
chocolates while breakfast remains
an enigma. Dad's last stroke and his year
in long term care slip through your neurons
like water through a porous flowerpot.

Unable to retain today's raw dispatches
you live easier with the past's softened edges,
reconciled to a son's attempted suicide,
a daughter's teenage pregnancy,
your children's divorces.

You have no need of headlines.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Webster's Unabridged Dictionary

A while back I stumbled on a very large/outdated unabridged dictionary. The kind that once rested on a stand specifically crafted for those tomes. I admit I love books, and my idea of a blissful afternoon is wandering through a bookstore, preferably independently owned, chock full of unusual and interesting titles.

When I came upon this lone volume used as a prop in a fusty antique furniture store, I couldn't believe my luck. The shop owner had it priced at only $10, apparently to make it disappear quickly. I happily obliged him.



Webster's Unabridged Dictionary


Discovered like a once lost friend, it sat
silenced by dour furniture in an antique store.

Stiff-backed as a queen's guard,
its prime shape belied a 1935 print date

as it waited to flex its vocal cords
anew from aal to zyxomma.

Filled with funky words such as frab
and forswonk. Peppered with phrases

that sound as if I should know them:
King of Swat and the Roaring Forties.

Laced with lingo blowing through the 30s:
Hooverize, Jersey lightening, and Okie.

On page nine fifty-three under "P"
a parade of found nouns: pavon, pawk

and payen. Trounce words for tight
corners and scrabble's tough letters.

Dismissed by today's generation
as the man with a dusty bow tie

it remains the charming uncle now home,
regaling us with stories to rival Odysseus.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Rumplestiltskin Enterprises

As I travel west across the Minnesota prairies, I have noticed fields of wind turbines sprouting where acres of corn and soybeans once grew. I watched as a nascent line of five burgeoned into hundreds like dandelion fluff spreading on the breeze, unstoppable. A sustainable crop of energy even in deepest January.


Rumplestiltskin Enterprises


First there were five then ten,
now clusters of lithe maidens
tall against the horizon harvesting
the wind, slender arms turning,
endlessly spinning the rush of air
into platinum threads of electricity,
and no firstborns need be relinquished
nor the world as we know it.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Transformations

Janus has always fascinated me. With one face remembering the past and the other foreseeing the future, he endures as a symbol of change. Legions of soldiers invoked his name when they went to war but so did farmers, married couples, and countless others facing transitions. Considered a major Roman god, he ranked alongside Jupiter.

Our closest likeness remains a weary Father Time and the fired-up New Year's Infant as they cross paths each January 1st. To my mind, Janus conveys a much better image.



Transformations


Janus,
two-faced deity of ancient Rome,
youth and age back to back,
god of good beginnings,
triumphal endings.

Should we then look to you
as we grow older
for a grand closing to our years?
Or do you prefer to preside
over warring soldiers?

But isn't life a battle, aren't we
warriors, all, and doesn't time
pick up power and speed
as the days advance?

What strategy do you hold
for mortal man? How do we stand
strong when memories betray us,
endurance flags, and illness nips
at our heels?

Or are these end points too difficult
even for you? And is that why
the Greeks had no one equivalent
in their pantheon of gods?



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

January 1

It's New Year's morning. The sky is gloriously clear, carrying the hope of sunshine all day - enough to hold onto and remember when the clouds of 2017 inevitably appear. Stay positive, my friends.



January 1


Smoke shadows stream
across cottonwoods cleaned
of sojourner leaves

A slight-of-hand incense swirling
through arms held high
beneath a morning glory sky



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Remembrances of Christmas Past

With apologies to those of you who already seen this, below are some of my Christmas memories as a kid. Happy Holidays, Everyone!



Remembrances of Christmas Past


The crunchier the snow the colder the air.

The month dragged  i  n  t  e  r  m  i  n  a  b  l  y.

Discovering Santa's stash early
                       guaranteed disappointment.

The closer the holiday
the more cookies and goodies to be found.

Midnight Mass and a choir singing
Silent Night
                       invited
                                     droopy
                                                   eyelids.

Waking to the aroma of roasting turkey
     produced pure olfactory pleasure.

But the house jam full of family and friends
outmatched even a stack of toys beneath the tree.

May only good memories surround you this season!



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

How to Deal with Negative Numbers

Here in Minnesota a November with routine highs of 60 or more, spooky in its warmth, lulled us into thinking that winter would once again be a non-event like those in the recent past. Scant snow and chilly days, nothing really COLD. You know, the type of weather that comes with bragging rights. Let's just say the month of December reminded us, and not so gently, of what winter deals to those who live in the north country.

Granted, this morning's low didn't set a record, but -20 degrees, not including the windchill of -31, is not a pleasant way to greet the day. Even ensconced in the warmth of home the bitter temperature brought back memories of a very frigid weekend once spent at the cabin.



How to Deal with Negative Numbers


Sixteen below, pines up to their knees in snow,
and tucked into the trees a thin-skinned cabin.

The fire in its belly a half-lit sputter, listless
as a hibernating bear. Under comforters
hip-aching cold despite bodies close as velcro.

Come morning the siren's song
of a false sun. Snowshoes hung in the hall
hover with the reproach of friends ignored.

One night outside and our coddled car surrenders.
Next a search for jumper cables, nearby neighbors.

The price for help: a locals' jibes
as we juice the motor. "Nothin' but a bunch
of trouble ..." "If you didn't drive such a sissy import ..."

The gravelly voice no match for the twinkle in his eye.
The offer of coffee better than an extra sweater: the cold
no longer a bottomless crevasse.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Winter Port

I have long been fascinated by trans-Atlantic ships traveling from Rotterdam or Gdansk or any European port across the ocean, down the St. Lawrence Seaway, through a string of Great Lakes, and on to their final destination at the western tip of Lake Superior - Duluth, Minnesota. An inland waterway journey over 2400 miles long.

The Great Lakes, especially Superior, tend to ice-up in winter, closing down far northern shipping for about three months of the year. Though my travels have not taken me to Duluth in December, I once saw a photo of one of these "salties" materializing from a snowstorm, crusted in ice, and headed for her winter's berth. December snow never fails to remind me of that breathtaking image.



Winter Port


The iron ore freighter burdened
with frozen rime sprayed thick
by Superior's water and set
by December's cold emerges
from a stinging fog. Three throaty
blasts announce her late arrival.

The empty canal walkway covered
in ankle-deep, blowing snow
no longer harbors
greeting committees of waving
kids and curious tourists.

Only the lone operator of the lift
bridge the ship must clear
for a safe haven smiles in welcome.
He sounds a matching trio of salutations
as great heaps of splintered ice
close in behind her.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Christmas Gift

This week holds the birthday of my mother, and if she were still alive, she would be very old, indeed. Never one to reveal how many years she actually had lived, Mom responded to more than one query with "A gentleman never asks a lady her age." And I will honor that.

She emigrated to this country as an adolescent with her parents, and, unfortunately, lost her own mother to a fast moving cancer within a year of their arrival. I'm sure December remained a bittersweet month for Mom throughout her long life.



Christmas Gift


A forgotten photo
now reproduced, enlarged, found in a box
saggy with age, dampens your creased cheeks.
"It's my mother," you explain, unwrapped,
as if I didn't know. Her funeral held
in early December on your fourteenth birthday.

Like the scattered Russian
                nesting dolls underfoot
                                   how do we fit together?


Grandma
forever young,
you unguarded as a child
absorbed with your present,
me now feeling like your mother
in this stack, somewhere, my own daughter.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Victorian Lady

I confess. I was out of town for an extended Thanksgiving Holiday in northern California. Even with the population density around San Francisco you don't have to travel far to find rugged, tree filled terrain. The height of the redwoods remains forever astonishing to me as does the pounding Pacific Ocean far below wooded hills along the coastline.

Closer to home there stands a tree in my old neighborhood that routinely catches my attention but for entirely different reasons.



Victorian Lady


Hewn from a hundred year oak
she stands impossibly elegant,
carved from the trunk of a tree
firmly grounded in the present.

Poised in bustling skirts
and commanding hat, she carries
a parasol fully open but lowered
as if lingering, listening to echoes
with head turned and chin tilted.

Her stance suggests
a resigned waiting for someone
who disappeared down the streets
of a different century.

But hers is a tight-lipped demeanor,
an unhappy tree spirit caught out.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Precipice

Cold weather finally caught up with us two days ago. Yesterday's stiff breezes brought biting wind chills in the teens. A shocking difference from the 60 degree highs that dominated the past week.

Even as late as Thursday morning a flock of inland gulls continued to gather at dawn and leisurely ride the air currents. Circling, gliding, they reveled on the warmth of an extended autumn. Had they been paying attention, perhaps their departure wouldn't have been so hasty.



Precipice


A gathering of gulls
wheels, luxuriates in thermal edges.

But lengthening shadows
cut short the light, and the egrets have fled.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Too Far North

Sixteen years ago Andrew bought a cabin in far northern Wisconsin. Being a native of Singapore, he held no preconceived ideas about what "cabin life" should look like. He had never heard of septic systems or well-water. Couldn't understand why people scoffed when he placed a trolling motor on his canoe. Then one day he decided to plant a fruit tree in a climate where they generally don't do well.

The crabapple thrived. In springtime its blossoms of deep pink surrounded by a forest of evergreens makes it the most stunning planting on the lake for a brief few days. But that was not the main reason for his foray into horticulture.



Too Far North


September roots of a young crabapple
grapple with dirt and the mirth of woodsmen.
"Deer will make lunch of its trunk,"
they chuckle, "or winter will break its back."

The newcomer nods, continues to shovel,
city-hands freshly calloused.

Late May a raiment of rouge
debuts in the pines, quiets the naysayers.

By summer, berry-sized apples produce grins
again from locals. "We told you
no good eatin' could come from that tree."
But woodpeckers and grosbeaks disagree.

Behind autumn binoculars the rookie smiles,
"Bird-Friendly Plantings" dog-eared on a catalog pile.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Longest Growing Season on Record

This past week has been impossibly warm with temps running 15 to 20 degrees above normal. Daytime highs have topped out in the upper 60s and yesterday a record set at 73 in November, in Minneapolis. Had this extended warmth been a one-off occurrence I wouldn't be as concerned, but I fear this is the new normal as each autumn grows longer and milder. There remains a niggling worry in the back of my brain about the future and climate change.

By the way, if we don't dip below freezing at least once in the next four days, and no forecasts predict that, another record will be shattered: the longest growing season on record this far north.



Longest Growing Season on Record


Ginkgo gold a dull mustard,
sugar maples babushka dowdy,
and yet they linger.

Weather reporters channel
Bobby McFerrin, "Don't Worry, Be Happy."
Predict an abbreviated winter.

On the map a high-riding ridge of warmth,
no mention of mittens, no talk of cold fronts.

Precipitation? A slight chance of rain
so keep the umbrella handy, put away the ski wax.
Plenty of time left to dine al fresco.

And the elephant in the room eyes the spin masters.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Royalties

Clouds and intermittent rain showers have dogged us this past week, damping the beauty of autumn. Still, when I turn a corner and drive down a block of red maples, I can't help but think "fantabulous!" Of all the color changes in fall, it is the scarlet leaves I love the most.

I once lived where these trees dominated my yard, suffusing my kitchen with a rosy hue for two or three weeks each October. And I marveled daily to see them.



Royalties


My backyard is not filled
With the shifting gold
Of coins or cottonwoods
Nor does the bright
Yellow gingko drop.

The scarlet cloak
Of a Crimson King maple
Lies folded ankle deep
In chocolate tipped cherries
Ruby slippers and port wine.

Luxury.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor