Unnerving

The sound of gunfire in the city scares me witless, but not so in the countryside. Conversely, the wail of a siren, so common in urban areas, frightens me while at the cabin.

Unnerving

Dawn spreads like a freshly

cracked egg over the rim of the world.

A red-bellied woodpecker tattoos

a tired oak, a pair of trumpeter swans

                                      pulsate contentment

and the surreal calls of loons croon.

Above all this

                          a whispered sigh

                                                         of a siren.

                   From my days in the ER

            too many minutes clutter the clock

               in the wake of a rural calamity.

That wavering hum,

                   the deadliest sound in the forest.

Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Mid-November

Fall lingers even here in the north country. I find it hard to reconcile bare-branched trees with the warm weather that has hallmarked our days.

Mid-November

Fall pulled a fast one,

absconding with all the foliage

while we reveled on picnic shores.

Leaves drooped, orphaned underfoot

until streets of naked trees jolted our gaze.

But nature thieved more than raiment

pinching extra days for a summer

grown disastrously fat, filching our sense

of seasons. Only light wraps at sundown;

we crawl into night exposed.

Marilyn Aschoff Mellor