Singapore: Dog Days on the Equator

It's hard to imagine, especially in this cold, that there's much difference between summer and winter in Singapore, since it lies just 1 degree north of the equator, but there is.

Singapore: Dog Days on the Equator

My umbrella and I unroll as one.

Relentless

summertime throbs,

forges lasers

which excavate glass,

even the clouds on the horizon

                                                glint.

Workers fell thousand-year-old 

                  rain forests for skyscrapers,

drag the isle into a first world country

       with Prada and Louis Vuitton.

Singaporean law retains caning for street

spitting and hanging for drug dealing.

I sweat freon, ambivalence

                             in this land of high heat.

Marilyn Aschoff Mellor

January at the Cabin

This poem has always spoken for itself and so it is today.

January at the Cabin

Early this morning

the sun stepped out

before it realized how frigid

the air

then tucked itself

uner a handy throw of clouds.

So far, only a lone raven

and two jays

brave the winter breezes.

Outside our window

no chickadees or finches

forage for food

despite the newly seeded feeder,

our sporadic handouts too erratic.

Two weeks of no sunflower seeds

and skepticism prevails

before they spot our time limited,

all-you-can-eat buffet.

Marilyn Aschoff Mellor