Weighted Sky

We traveled to the cabin this weekend. It remains snug and warm despite surrounding snow and daytime highs in the teens. A sky full of sunshine always helps, too. This morning we woke to flurries, creating a pristine world once more, but certain to cause problems for the unwary.



Weighted Sky


Finally, sunshine through winter pines.

But skulking across the lake
stratocumuli like streaks of ash
smudge the tree line's edge.

And the north wind,
moody as a stepmother, threatens
to blow the pile of them into a mess
even Cinderella cannot sweep away.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Flashback

Like so many combatants back from war my peers who fought in Viet Nam would not speak of it. Then Ken Burns released his ten episode series on PBS about those hostilities, and the spectacle/specter returned in living color. That whole period continues to haunt me.

Flashback

Buried in the paper:

Agent Orange causes cancer

even in vets who worked

the desks in Saigon,

never fought on the frontline.

My friend pushed papers

there, shot skeet for action,

came home alive.

I thought to call him

with this news then realized

he died twenty years ago,

a fast growing renal tumor

taking him down.

Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Wrong Again

Even in deepest January with its unrelenting cold, if I listen, I can hear the calls of birds that overwinter here, especially, when the sky is clear and sunshine abundant. And that is enough to make me smile through these interminable layers of winter.



Wrong Again


Cardinals lift my spirits whether those feathered bits of pleasure sing summer or greet winter on branches blanketed with snow. Their enchanted call and response easily identified among avian scores. Or so I thought. Then I downloaded a birding app, discovered this refrain did not come from the throats of those resplendent songbirds. News almost as disturbing as the truth about Santa. Black-capped chickadees had copyrighted the three note melody, suddenly making the tune less delightful. Now I must reprogram my ears to hear the song sung by the scarlet warblers. A refrain almost as intricate as a Mozart passage. The intro to "Three Blind Mice" was so much easier to recognize.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Vespers

Recently, I attended a retirement party for one of my ER colleagues. Being retired myself, I no longer feel the gravity that comes with the responsibility for the lives of pediatric patients, and it is freeing.

While I worked in the ER my escape valve was the cabin up north, and to this day remains a source of serenity. On more than one occasion, my professional life and north woods life felt vividly juxtaposed.



Vespers


A ten-year old girl covered with hives

                   Miles into midnight countryside

Wheezing hard, unable to speak
Blood pressure levels slipping fast

                   Winter solstice weather
                   Crystalline and cold

In the ER a dance of rescue unfolds
Drugs slam home, infuse, relax

                   The wrap of blackness broken
                   Beneath a billion star sky

Breathing slower, a faint smile: good signs

                   Looking up, we almost feel divine.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Forbearance

Like most of the country it is very cold up here this weekend. Unlike most of the country our high temperatures have not found their way above zero the past couple of days. Enough said. Happy New Year, Everyone!



Forbearance


At dawn Sol arcs his arms,
balancing crystalline patches of light
on his left and right,
adroitly rising from the stage floor
like the superstar he is.

Icebound January his backdrop,
a tableau designed
for the sun dogs he steadies.

Offstage and bedded down
his brutish dog-days of summer pay no heed.

Polar opposites tolerant of one another.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Solstice in the City

I know this is the Christmas weekend, but another event celebrated religiously through the millennia occurred three days ago - winter solstice. And this is my take on it. Happy Holidays, Everyone.



Solstice in the City


Winter's opening night buried in a flurry
of holidays. The stage readied
for a story pitting gloom and Borealis

against a weakened Sol
and his straggling bands of luminance.
The shopworn play dusted-off annually

despite the certainty of mixed reviews
and an empty Presidential box.
But there exist those of us

who gather this drama into our bones,
know the dialogue of each par-sec of light,
hold tight to Tolstoy, Chekov

and winter's untouched script,
drink Rachmaninov and Liszt.
But rewrites cut short the soliloquy

of spiteful cold, shave lines from arctic ice.
And audiences everywhere protest
the relentless revisions.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Unexpected Guest

We live relatively close to a sprawling city park complete with a lake and walking paths through a heavily treed area. Last week I watched as a stately hawk landed on a high, leafless branch.

I reached for my camera but he would have none of it, and flew away. Somehow I suspect he was the same bird come to visit me earlier this summer.



Unexpected Guest


Perched on my balcony
ten stories high,
a red-tailed hawk, unperturbed,
undisturbed, surveyed the city scene.

Mid-step I froze like Lot's wife,
mesmerized.

Snowy breast streaked with chocolate,
head swiveling, searching, noting me,
winged wildness content to sit for a spell.

But not I, I itched for something more,
a photo for show. A fool's dream.

My least motion left me bereft.
Yellow-light talons in flight, warning
"Stay away!"

Across the sky
he circles on distant thermals,
a drifter on a solitary course.

The two of us never meant to be.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Hallway Prop

Andrew and I live in a condo that is a neighborhood of its own. Every Christmas Season many of the residents celebrate with a holiday dinner, providing everyone the chance to meet newcomers and catch up with old friends.

Last night's get together brought to mind the quiet couple who once lived across from us. At the time I wrote this poem, I still harbored the hope that they could continue to be our neighbors.



Hallway Prop


A hum-drum vignette dominates
the end of the corridor on our floor:
faux flowers set
beneath a Flemish water scene

belonging to George and Edna
across the hall, undisturbed

until the year I volunteered
to change the decor for Christmas.

But Edna moved to Memory Care,
and during the Holidays
George left on a medic's stretcher,
confused.

Come New Year's Day
Santa and his sleigh packed away.
The bare glass table more disquieting
than Sunday papers waiting for Monday

until those familiar posies ambushed me
once again, strangely handsome. George restored.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Lost Lives

Six weeks back I took a road trip to South Dakota, my home state. It's a lonely drive across the flat prairies of southern Minnesota with only scattered farmhouses, outbuildings, and the occasional tractor, plowing a field, to keep me company.

Most of the homesteads contained the spark of busy lives. But some appeared broken down and deserted, causing me to speculate on their fate.



Lost Lives


My eye catches a cluster of farm buildings
abandoned and weathered grey
on a vast stretch of open fields.

Who delighted in calling this place home?
Was the cropland rich, the rain plentiful,
or the soil meager and the sky stingy?
Who butchered the hogs, plucked the chickens,
stewed wild rhubarb for cobbler in spring?
Did a school bus battered by gravel stop
at the drive, scaring the barnyard cats?
How many years were the yields good
before the books, branded by overdue bills,
dried up like drought?
Did neighbors shift their feet, mumble bids
at a foreclosure auction?
Or was the land productive, sold at a price
too good to pass up, structures no longer needed?
When did the windows first gape in collapse,
and do frugal buildings implode more quickly?
Will later generations dig deeper, or remain
content with stories passed down?

Close by, a grove of gnarled trees huddles
to protect a fading house, some sheds from blizzards,
still blasting out of Canada come winter.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

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