A Yuletide Nod to Dr. Seuss

It's Christmas week again. And in the aftermath of last year's diminished season, I wrote this poem while thinking of the Grinch. May all of you enjoy far better Holidays this year!

A Yuletide Nod to Dr. Seuss

Last December in Minnesota

the prospect of rain reigned.

Scant chances lived for a white

Christmas or even a sit-down

with a stand-in Santa.

Come the Day itself no Nana

and Papa, but parcel post presents

under the festive tree.

No Uncles Bob and Jake,

Aunts Kelli and Kate, nor any 

cousins with new games to play.

Instead, a novel stage set:

a Zoom gathering with herky-jerky

movements and faces frozen

before folks signed off, retreating

to a dinner of discontent, featuring

downsized roast beast.

Still, the people sang the season

but ended their chorus on a sigh, and

from somewhere a catcall floated by

for the virus that stole Christmas.

Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

 

 

If Dickens Were a Ditch Digger

A while back I posted "If Galileo Were a Gardener" after Charles Tomlinson's poem "If Bach Had Been a Beekeeper." I wrote a series of poems in this vein, and from time to time they will crop up. Today is such a day. 

If Dickens Were a Ditch Digger

                     after Charles Tomlinson

If Dickens were a ditch digger

he would have shoveled the muck

of London, manure and mud clinging

to his clothes, as he uncovered a child's

broken crutch or exposed a tattered

piece of wedding veil beneath layers

of earth harboring ghostly reminders

of splintered lives while pesky

young pickpockets marked others

as he worked, quietly mulling over

his finds and shaping tales to entertain

his children at home, mesmerize

his mates at the pub.

Marilyn Aschoff Mellor