Building Renovation

Some of the older buildings in the Twin Cities have been repurposed for other uses. Like the old Pillsbury Mill converted into apartments, and a smattering of antiquated brick and mortar schools into condos. But the original Children's Hospital? 

Building Renovation

Across the freeway

a mere home run away

from the "new" Children's Hospital

stands the old one.

Labs and wards converted to condos.

Juniper plantings, zinnia beds struggle

to soften the structure.

Tell me, who can live there

on units that housed the sickest kids

or in a repurposed operating room?

Does a whiff of phenol cling to lobby walls?

When did sadness first leach

into those dusty, coco bricks shading it gloomy

as a Charles Dickens facade?

And how can the new tenants,

even on the sunniest baseball days, not see?

Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

If We Disregard the Ditches, How Can We Survive?

Melting snow has exposed winter's detritus, and it is disturbing to see along the country roads I walk. Last summer's debris lingers.

If We Disregard the Ditches, How Can We Survive?

Dips and depressions hold

runoff pockets, pesticides

and herbicides.

Tangled in goosegrass

beside thistles and ragweed

columbine plants poke through.

Scrapped plastic bags flutter

alongside the creeping vine

of Coronavirus.

Bullfrogs, tree frogs and turtles

find refuge here. Deer and fox

dart across the unmarked there.

Swales too shallow to swallow

police injustice reflect the rage

of George Floyd's murder.

Monarch butterflies, gossamer

dragonflies and uneasy neighbors

take flight.

Black-eyed Susans replace False

Indigo. Urbanites eager to escape

flock to cabin country but only add

to the cache of crumpled water

bottles hurling lasting indictments

at people with ears to hear.

Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

April Ablutions

I confess we drove to the cabin last week, and I forgot to bring recent poems of mine. So, what I'm posting is undoubtedly a repeat. But it's also apropos to the traces of leftover snow and the cold rain we've endured here these past few days.

April Ablutions

Like a curved blade

with shaving cream

recently scraped from a face,

a stubborn scrim of snow

hugs the ground in front

of a newly rinsed car.

The rest of the lather washed

away in a morning shower.

Marilyn Aschoff Mellor   

If Galileo Were a Gardener

The poet, Charles Tomlinson, wrote about Bach as a beekeeper. I then speculated about Galileo as a gardener, and came up with this.

If Galileo Were a Gardener

                    after Charles Tomlinson

If Galileo were a gardener

he would have seen the sun

as a benefactor, bestowing

life and fine wines, but also

as a troublemaker spawning

heliocentric thoughts, dry days

and drought-disturbing rows

of ripening grapes, a Milky Way

of vines stretched across Tuscany,

producing withered berries

on branches good only for burning,

scorching as the rhetoric coming

from a Church condemning

his carefully made observations

concerning heaven's famed luminary.

Marilyn Aschoff Mellor