Grand Canyon Tour

I recently spent a week in Arizona. As I flew back to Minnesota, the pilot made mention of the Grand Canyon off to our left. His comments brought back memories of another flight taken years ago over that very site. I never did fare well in small planes.



Grand Canyon Tour


A small, fixed-wing plane
bounced like a striped ball
from updraft to cold current
over plunges and pinnacles.
The pilot smiled, settled in,
but a few of us cringed.

Rivers and ridges and bands
of rust layered out below
but its grandeur could not
compete with the focus given
a ragged white sack clutched
by me seated in the back.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Lessons Learned from the Flood

In the news, videos from the terrible flooding in Nebraska this spring. Unfortunately, I can commiserate with those caught in the mess. The land around our cabin up north remains under water nine months on. A total loss but, fortunately, not our primary residence.



Lessons Learned from the Flood


All manner of footwear floats. I expected flip-flops to greet me on slow moving currents in the inundated cabin. But fleece scuffs and work boots? Like pop-ups in a Fun House, they jangled my bare legs, nudged my nerves. And so did the bobbing ant-traps, forlorn as empty life rafts. Wreckage everywhere: non-closing, swollen doors, a soggy futon turned mutant sponge, and defunct appliances moored in water. That's when I heard the lapsed flood insurance policy laughing from a bureau drawer. And forget FEMA; we failed even their basic disaster parameters. Outside, the lake swirled over the lawn, eliminating the option to take a break on the grass and absorb some sun. A survey of the damage from the kayak or canoe might have distracted us, but they washed away along with the dock. And then there was the propane tank. More dangerous than a jellyfish on the loose, it floated off, trailing tendrils of vapor until the gas guys hauled it away. Did I mention minnows darting in the drive? Perhaps I can set a rod from the kitchen window, and snag a perch in passing.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Navajo Blanket - Circa 1860

I spent the past week in Phoenix with an afternoon in Old Town Scottsdale. Native American pottery and blankets abound, but few are old school. Those artifacts can be found in the Heard Musuem, promoting the cultures and arts of American Indians in the Southwest.



Navajo Blanket - Circa 1860


I am the soft wool
of the shorn sheep
spun once for yarn,
twice for strength.

Steamed berries, bark
transformed me
into warrior red
and starless black,
colors of a chief's blanket.

A dark-eyed woman
in an Arizona canyon
with hands tough
from grinding corn
and soft from mothering,
patterned my soul
into a storyteller.

Long after she tied the last
of my four corner knots
my voice remains witness.

I warmed her children
in chill desert nights,
protected them
from pitting winds
but could not save them
from the wrath
of government soldiers.

I was rolled, tied
behind the saddle
of a rifleman,
roamed the high deserts,
was lost to a gambler
from Denver
who had no use for me.
Nor did his sweetheart.

Years of neglect
in a dusty back room
fixed my memories:
smoky grey streaks
from campfires,
ground-in dust
from arid mesas,
a rusty brown stain
from the Indian wars.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Supplication

In the forest surrounding our cabin lives a special pine. But unless the floods of last summer recede the normal life span of this tree is threatened once again.



Supplication


Sacred tree, holy pine
I am speaking to you.

My friend rescued you from the storm spirit
which uprooted your neighbor

slammed it to earth,
crowding your young trunk

bending your spine like a crone's.
He learned to use a saw as an old man

to save you from the intruder's dead weight.
Each summer he cut further into its girth

worked to angle through the log
and split the encroaching fir,

his blade slowed by gnarled hands.
Three years of puny dreams

before you sprang free of the wind god's curse.
These days I find you in a forest

regal as a young lord,
see the breadth of your branches

hiding the c-shape in your back.
Remember how he helped you as a sapling.

Sacred tree, holy pine
I am speaking to you.

Impart, now, strength to his granddaughter
whose spine, they say, is curved.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

The Breezy Confidence of the Untested

I subscribe to "Lake Superior Magazine." Occasionally, the editor slips in pictures of young couples on their wedding day in the deep winter of the far north. One photo in particular stays with me. The joy of this pair shines like a beacon through the swirling snowfall.



The Breezy Confidence of the Untested


They stand in the beginning
of a blizzard,
this wedding couple.
The wind carrying her veil,
lifting his lapel, their cheeks ruddy
as the crimson lodge behind them.
Laughter tweaks their smiles
like eager kids told to pose
but ready for sledding and snowballs
and games like King of the Mountain.
Mulled wine waiting within.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Shrouded Bird

In this unending winter the days are perceptibly lengthening, and a few new warblers chirp from trees on my walk around snowbanks and into the bite of windchill. But this last round of wintry weather leaves me concerned about these forerunners of spring.



Shrouded Bird


A songbird
in frosted February
sings spring too soon.

A memo misread
or tossed off? A coat
of hope his sole protection.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Down Time

This past week saw the one year anniversary of the Parkland, FL. shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. A painful day, along with countless others, many of us wish to let go.



Down Time


What do we do
with days we wish to forget?

An anniversary
of a marriage now scrapped,
a date in April
capped by a fatal flood,
Mother's Day
without a reason for flowers,
the final workday
of a plant shuttered for cost,
a sibling's birthday
with no further candles to count,
a sunny September morning
exploding a nation's sense of security.

Like duty bound, humorless aunts
they reappear each circle of the year

and never do they not come back.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Winter Break

It's definitely still winter in the north country. The windchill no longer reaches -50F but it continues to register below zero on days even with only a mild breeze. And snow remains in the forecast.



Winter Break


A skyline with vapor plumes,
columned and Grecian white,
attracts no tourists toting Nikons
to film the absence of drift.

Rather, those of us bundled
against February's pillars
weigh the morning stillness,
mark the blessed lack of windchill.

Not quite the same as ambling
in strappy shoes
surveying cerulean seas,
but, for today, close enough.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Slip-Sliding Away

This has been a crazy winter. A windchill of -50F this past week to a predicted high nearing 40 today. A noticeable lack of snow all season but plenty of icy walkways and parking lots. And despite the relative balminess of the last two days, we'll plunge back into the cold of a Minnesota winter by tomorrow night.



Slip-Sliding Away


Sidewalks and grass glazed like glass,
deceptive enough to pull me down. Twice.

Chagrined, I glanced around, ready
to reassure any witnesses, but no one else
signed up for this fool's outing.

Once, I would have shown off
my bruises. Not so now. I wished
to avoid any talk about broken bones

and walking the halls of shopping malls,
instead. Boring as a treadmill.

Like a kid I hid the blueberry swirls
under my jeans until a pedicurist spied them
without even a shake of her head.

Only kind words bubbled-up, soothing
as the warm water around my feet.

Sympathy in a nail salon. What took me
so long? The discolorations had already
passed their peak.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Obsidians

Despite last week's hype, a total lunar eclipse imposed on a super moon isn't nearly as rare as a month with no full moon at all. Something that only happens in February every 19 years. I should have paid more attention last winter.



Obsidians


February folds into Jack Frost's cloak,
and refuses to host a lunar fanfare.

Like a storyline from a fairy tale
I wander through witching hours
for 28 days shadowed in trance

until the orb of March
surfaces like a freed pearl, luminescent
in the waves of a star-crested sky.

A blush fires my cheeks,
not from the presence of a prince

but from my neglect of the heavens
in the hands of a black moon month.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor  

Late Night Squall

I am a daughter of the prairie and limitless skies. My heart sings whenever I travel west to the Dakotas, open land and unending horizons before me. Sky views from the expanse of windows from where I live, ten floors up, soothe my soul bound by the city. And when I pay attention, the heavens tell endless tales.



                  Late Night Squall


A bruised dawn awakens puffy and purple,
     the corner of the horizon sanguinary

                               as

       Sol struggles to peer through slits
                      in the overcast.              



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Dark Days

Sometimes people let you down. But despite all, you simply move on.



Dark Days


The cold seeps into my feet
and double socks don't help.

The cold lingers, leeches into my arms
from kitchen countertops of stone.

The cold hides in corners, sneaks down
the chair back, shrouds my shoulders.

The cold burns when I breathe
a friend's pointed lie.

I find it infinitely harder to reheat
my core than to warm my limbs.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

May This Marriage Be Full of Laughter

Winter weather is not what it used to be. Instead of typical icebox readings, we've enjoyed a run of days in the 40s. Instead of shoveling a foot of white stuff a week or so ago, we saw snowfall turn into record amounts of rain.

Need I say, usually the rain changes to snow around here, and not vice versa? Like the crazy weather accompanying a friend's wedding early last spring.



May This Marriage Be Full of Laughter
                                                            Rumi


Charcoal smeared clouds
leak like sagging party tents
before rain rends their seams.

A twenty degree temperature drop
conjures a wave-of-the-wand whiteout.

At the Country Club
young men maneuver trucks equipped
to hustle growing drifts off to the side

before the bride arrives.
Her dark, Persian tresses dusted
with disappearing diamonds of a wintry day.

The ruination
of my sparkly new shoes complete
in the snowbanks of celebration.

By night's end
parked cars like wavy lines of petit fours
chill beneath dollops of bridal cake frosting.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

January 1st, Any Year

Happy New Year, Everyone! I feel as if New Year resolutions have almost become passe. And if we do make some, how many of us really follow through when it's so much easier to moan about problems than tackle them? We can change that.



January 1st, Any Year


A day of reckoning, a time
for resolutions, another chance
to challenge troublesome headaches:

put down the smart phone, clean up
your corner of the earth, use less,
lose the extra cookie, take a walk,
be open to all.

Or stick with the usual aspirin,
and don't call me in the morning.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor