Sure you’ve delighted in mud before,
slathered it all over your skin
beside the brown currents of the Gunnison
until the only unmuddied parts of you
are your teeth, your tongue, your eyes.
Sure you’ve been baptized before
with gray muck by your best friend
on the edge of the Blue Lakes Road,
her slender hands anointing your forehead
with the color of high mountain shale.
You’ve painted with mud on desert rocks
and rolled in mud with your son,
but that doesn’t mean you want
to get muddy now, not when you’re so clean
and on retreat, not when you’re so so very very
not not muddy. So you skirt messy ruts
and you gingerly side step, you pussy foot,
weaving your way on the spring-puddled road,
but one slip and one oops and you’re in it again, ankle deep,
and what to do now but laugh
and notice how the path expands
when you no longer need to watch
where you’re going—how much more open
the world has become, how available you are
to any step that comes next.