Caught

Spring is always a time of hope, and it won't be long until frogs call to each other in a nearby pond. I need to hear this insistence on life in the wake of reports out of Ukraine, and the dead insects I find cleaning the cabin.

Caught

A spider belly-up in the water pitcher.

A housefly garotted in a skylight web.

A chipmunk snookered by a mousetrap

                guarding the garage.

A smattering of Asian beetles like currants

              dotting the cabin floor.

A crush of frogs in flagrant delecto

croaking delight in a springtime rite.

Their serenades reaffirming life despite

the workaday carnage of critters,

        the blues of daily news.

Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

Ready, Steady, Go!

March weather can be all over the board in Minnesota. Right now winter prevails but the near forecast is for warmer temps, a stronger sun, and snow melting down to bare ground. But that can change with the blink of an eye. In other words, spring is coming.

Ready, Steady, Go!

Unsettled as a newbie player, messy March

careens between blizzards and ice out.

Produces sleet on Sunday then arranges

for a cookout on Monday.

Bounces between an open sun-roof

and cranking up the heater.

Pulls on shorts to skateboard one day but

laces up boots for shoveling snow the next.

Ricochets off pinball bumpers and tilts back

towards February before flipping

to win the bells and bright lights of April

with the maddening charm of the inept.

Marilyn Aschoff Mellor