The Body

My mother would have celebrated her birthday this coming week, if she were still alive. Always a very proper person, she would have been dismayed with the following poem. But it reveals that human side to her found in us all. Here's to you, Mom.



The Body


Your puffy lost ankles carry your failing
self through the moonless morass.
The sound of midnight pee

against porcelain, an unfettered belch,
a belly-deep sigh. Your sense of propriety
shed like a tiresome robe at the end

of the bed. You would be embarrassed
if you knew I heard, your overnight guest
already forgotten in the balm of sleep.

But even ninety-year old ladies have bodies
that revel when free from polite restraints.
I roll over, holding my pillow close.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Hunting Season

We just returned from the cabin, and it is definitely hunting season in the northland. Most pick-up trucks carried either hunters in blaze orange, or deer already taken.

Some years game is plenty; others not so much. Judging from today's drive, I would venture that this season left the hunters happy, unlike a few autumns back.



Hunting Season


A shooting star slides
November's sky,
wavelets freeze into silence.

Ears twitching, deer forage
attuned to tuneful twigs.
A chorus of wolves

across the lake raises fine hair:
the herd needs thinning.
But the Browning oiled next door

roils my gut. Bullet wounds
from ER shifts still haunt:
I prefer the wildlife alive.

Come dawn a lone shot
echoes leafless. Those
in deer-stands curse

the lack of game. At dusk
a buck lopes the road,
behind my eyes, almost smiling.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Relentless Rainfall

This has been a very wet year up north. No disastrous floods or destructive downpours but rain steady enough to raise water levels all year 'round.  Even come fall, a season with usually dry weather.

Lake Superior, 20 miles north of our cabin, sits at an all time high. And our small lake seems to be following in its big brother's footsteps.



Relentless Rainfall


Late October and all should be dusty
with brittle foliage, not soggy
with spongy leaves, matting the forest floor.

Surrounding wetlands produce de novo
ponds between cabin and brimming lake,
waves the color and feel of winter steel.

Ankle-deep water traps a low-lying shed,
requiring boots and backwoods ingenuity
to shift it, lift it away

from impending icy handcuffs, certain
to blackmail the structure, hold ransom
its rusty rakes and shovels, the well used grill.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

A Familiar Tale Reworked

The cold temps and dusting of snow remind me that it really is November here in the north country. I've become accustomed to the warm, lingering falls of late, and shouldn't be surprised by the need for winter coats and gloves, already.

Most of the trees around here have lost their leaves, but some hardwoods cling to foliage that dulls and becomes brittle as time advances. Eventually, even they relinquish any pretense of grandeur.



A Familiar Tale Reworked


The cottonwood stands stripped
of leaves except at its crown
where a dusty few continue to flutter.

Indian summer days downplay
coming changes as the tree holds
tightly to faded former glory.

Tall and regal, and like the emperor
with no clothes, naked,
sporting a diadem grown dim, slipping
one leaf at a time.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

From the Corner of My Eye

We drove to the cabin this weekend in the face of an October snowstorm forecast to be bad by local meteorologists. Usually, the more dire they sound, the milder the weather event in actuality. We payed them scant mind although, occasionally, they are spot on.

This was one of those times. The further north we went, the more accurate their predictions. I'll leave it at three and a half hours of "limited visibility" due to strong winds and snowfall.

Today's poem originated in a trip taken under similar conditions a few years back.



From the Corner of My Eye


Highways hum
with 4 x 4s and SUVs heading north,
cabin bound.

November sleet slamming down,
sodden woods waiting.       For what?

Then
from a pickup
a glimpse of blaze-orange.

Intense as my brother's
baseball cap              sweat stained
                           with sunrise pursuits.

Unmoved from its place
on the coatrack, tossed there
                                         insouciantly
following his last hunt,
four seasons past,
                 
               a month before the diagnosis.

Otis, his yellow lab,
nosing the deep-worn chair.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Autumn Takes

A few observations as the beauty of the season starts to wane here in the north country.



Autumn Takes

I

Many of the trees drag
this fall. The usual show-stopping
scenes already faded
from the trunk.

Their vaunted season finale
subdued and lackluster.
A chorus line weary from too long
a run. The enthusiasm
of the director dissipated
in the rain.

II

Overnight
the uppermost branches
of a holdout maple
dipped into a cask of ruby claret.

Telltale tips stained
like a paint brush upended
and left in the breeze
by a distracted designer.

III

Some hardwoods
swiftly strip themselves of foliage
except for the very top.

In naked delight
they shimmy in the wind,
high leaves dancing with abandon.

Like a long-ago lover of mine,
stocking feet wiggling happily
in the air and all else bare.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Black Sheep

Fall now, and the trees are lovely. Some streets hold nothing but hardwoods turned gold, and some play host to only Crimson King maples. But most of the city is flooded with a mix of vibrant autumn hues, and steadfast evergreens act as the perfect foil. A beautiful time in the Northland.



Black Sheep


I fretted for the tamaracks, naively.

Patches of yellowed pines
dropping needles on October breezes.
A study of struggle in sepia, wasteland
tableaus within evergreen forests.

Searching for bark beetles or blight,
I thumbed my Field Guide, discovered
instead, a fibster, a faker, a mocker,
and the truth of this imagined disaster.

Come autumn these trees
follow a beat of their own - shed bowties,
cummerbunds and all, unlike stately cousins,
and much to the family's chagrin.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Mid-Autumn Delights

Each October Asian cultures celebrate the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, a major holiday kindred to Thanksgiving. These festivities feature traditional foods and focus on family gatherings. At harvest time mooncakes have been known to appear on our own table here in Minnesota.



Mid-Autumn Delights


Around the curve of a night road
a rising moon
wide as the street-way, itself,

golden as the mooncakes in the box.
A harvest treat filled
with lotus paste, a taste of your past,
a foreign flavor on my tongue.

A total turnabout
from yesterday's fresh apple pie.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Stills

Back to the cabin this past week. It was unusually warm for late September, and rainy. But that didn't stop us from hiking the woods where we startled a doe and her fawn into statue-like stillness before they turned and loped deeper into the forest. Their presence reminded me that hunting season draws ever closer.



Stills


The camera catches
the unseeing eye of a felled deer,
a small slit in the lens.

Did a twig snatch it, scratch it
as the warm brown body
stumbled?

The color blue
bending into black
pools under thick lashes.

I have seen quiet eyes
like this before
on a wild ER night.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

The Flying Horse

Occasionally, I spy a red Pegasus on an older gas station, but more frequently I see the logo on diverse items and in various states of neglect displayed as collectibles for sale. I am told that this trademark still adorns some ExxonMobil products. The last time I spotted the mythological horse, I had to learn more.



The Flying Horse


Pegasus,
how did the ad men capture you,
fix you in flight, deem you red,
rework you into an icon of oil and fuel?

You who fought battles to the death
in ancient Greece, brought thunder
and lightening to Zeus at his request,
ranked foremost among his steeds.

You who flew with a mortal on your back
but threw him in his greed. You who
could not be easily reined in.

Were you not paying attention,
lost in old glories, comfortable living
in the past?

Eighty years now
and the wind still carries echoes of anguish
as the lasso of commerce snared you.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Incorrigible

September and some trees already manifest a color change. The contrast with their summer-green neighbors invariably grabs my attention whether here in the Cities or up north as the forest takes it first steps towards autumn.

Such a tree in my own yard captivated me daily with its beauty and a sense of autonomy a few years back. Enough to leave me with a lasting impression.



Incorrigible


In my backyard
breathes a young maple
who streaked a solitary branch
crimson red.

Tosses it
to contrast her birthright green.
Flounces her defiance
before old firs and hardwoods.

Not for her
the group makeover in October,
marching lockstep to winter.

Rather, a rebel's sauciness
before shortened days and north winds
bend her will.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Kaddish

The opioid crisis occupies much of the news these days, as well it should. Roughly, 64,000 people died because of opiates in 2016 here in the U.S. The number of deaths is shocking, and yet we remain  blasé about the 88,000 lives lost due to alcohol in that same time frame.

As with almost everything, statistics only hit home once they turn personal. And, yes, the individual in the following poem was a friend of mine.



Kaddish


Headstones worn soft
sit close together, tilting
a bit toward each other
like old folks gathered
in rockers.

Discussions of weather,
bits of gossip about visitors,
judgment of children
who come and those who don't
pass between them.

A midday funeral hushes all
as the hearse rolls past.
Out of the lead limo emerge
a silver-haired man and his wife,
puffiness around his eyes,
faltered steps as she turns.

News goes grave to grave:
the casket cradles the body
of their son sober, now,
for five years, three months
and fourteen days until yesterday's
freefall.

Down the rows the old ones
sigh while the earth splits in two.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Spooning

It has been an unexpectedly cool August here in the north country. Usually, the Dog Days of summer roam freely, dragging heat and humidity with them. But not this year. As I overheard someone say, "It's as if we lost a month of summer." And if nights are nippy here in the city, they turn downright brisk at the cabin.



Spooning


Mid-August up North
and fall already rides

the lopsided smile
of bodies curved

quilted skin to skin
suffusing night air

dreams, chilly enough.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Pilgrimage

Late August, and inland gulls already assemble in empty parking lots at daybreak. Their numbers increase weekly as the earth rotates toward the coming fall. This convergence of birds turns into a hypnotic spectacle as they swirl overhead, practicing for their long trek south.



Pilgrimage


Would I blaspheme
if I compared an autumn gathering of gulls
to a group bound for mecca?

Churning, turning like a fan
jubilant, orbiting, a pirouette, a shimmy.

White as the sky of dawn,
almost lost as they circle aloft
as if to prepare
for seven times 'round the Kaaba.

Mystical as a group of whirling dervishes
mesmerized with motion
about to start a second-sighted journey.

Standing at the periphery, I ponder why
I cannot soar even as they fly.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor