Ode To Mud
The silent ground has meditated
all these months with the stillness
of monks, until now, lowly singer
of spring, you swing us slowly
toward lilacs and loosenings,
O, rhapsody of mud!
Revelation of worms,
ancestral household of bulbs
who brew their fresh repertoire
in your darkness,
Most grand sogginess,
we place one careful pastel foot
with grace, to stay clean,
only to step in a plotch
of softened earth
our winter eyes have missed,
and we come fumbling
into your wet wisdoms.
High musician of murk,
teach us to move deftly
as a jazz player's fingers on a fretless bass
through your moist improvisations
while winter's kittens in the fresh outdoors
explore moist-mysterious paw-disturbing grass
before they slip with legato stealth
through indigo thickets of April's iris.
The grand divas of mud-country, pigs,
play your twelve-tone textures
on their bristly backs;
sodden-swaying cows
sink deep in the fluent fields
where sap-tappers slog
toward new-running maples
each wet step emerges
heavy, heavier, until they arrive,
a crowd of Wisconsin big-foots
to gather the pure-flowing crystal
that tastes like bliss!
O, divine lowliness,
reservoir of rain in the park
where a child dressed in violet boots
and a pale blue sky tries out her first mud-legs,
before the torch-song sun
warms you to dust
we surrender
to your humid delights.
We are winter stones
released at last from the clutch of ice
tossed in strong winds
above the flood-swollen creek
wild and lost
until we fall
we return,
to a full-bodied waltz
in your damp embrace.
