Wisconsin Dog Days

Chicago was pounded with rain from Beryl even though it sits nowhere close to the ocean. Sometimes we, too, get the moisture associated with remnants of a hurricane this far north and this far inland.

Wisconsin Dog Days

A deck wet not with the dregs

of an overnight shower but simply

the humidity. Too far removed

from the rain tentacles of the season's

first hurricane - Beryl. Dew point

at dawn over 70. An Eastern Wood

Pewee languidly greets the day.

On my right, a sweating sun dipped

in molten gold emerges past

the horizon. To my left, wildfire haze,

drifting from half-a-continent away,

advances with the wind.

Marilyn Aschoff Mellor 

The Year of the Dragon

I initially wrote this poem 12 years ago, and it's as applicable today in this Year of the Dragon as it was then. The only difference is that California's the state I decided upon.   

The Year of the Dragon

Fireflies patrol the woods

like members of a signal corps.

But, as of now, no hint

of a fire-spewing dragon

despite dragonflies dining lakeside.

This is not to say

one may not be slumbering

off the old logging road

grown brittle with underbrush.

The lightening of July jumping

the horizon, August's heat

pushing it forward,

and his beast of a brother

already stomping through California

with an eye to other states,

his greedy breath licking mountains 

of forested land.

Marilyn Aschoff Mellor