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Posts Tagged ‘mud’

Mud-Puddling

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on May 4, 2025| 8 Comments »


                  after James Crews, “Mud-Puddling”
 
 
Those were the years we gathered dark mud in our hands,
slathered it all over our legs, our bellies, our arms,
our faces, our hair, until only our lips and eyes
were not coated in thick river mud.
We did not know then we were mud-puddling
the way butterflies do, gathering essential nourishment
from what is fusty and damp and messy.
Is not pleasure one of the greatest nutrients of all?
How I loved going from clean to filthy, the slick mud heavy
on our skin before it dried and cracked in the sun.
We’d peel it off in chunks or in flakes,
then jump into the brown waters
of the Gunnison River and emerge less caked
but no less dirty. Perhaps this was training
for the heart, learning to let the self roll in the mess,
to treat the great muddle like a playground.
Then I still believed in a shiny version of happiness,
but fifteen years later, haven’t I come to trust there is something
nourishing in death, in ache, in turning toward fear—
something necessary I need to sustain me?
It is no surprise when I read that butterflies seek not just mud
but dung, rotting fruit, urine and carrion.
Oh heart, bless the wings of your intuition.
You know it does no good to fly only toward the beautiful.
Still it is not easy to choose what is messy, disordered, dank.
Perhaps it helps to remember now how much joy we once found
in that cold, blackish mud. When we were fully covered, I remember
how brilliant they were—our flashing eyes, our smiles so wide.

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The Morning Before What Would Be His Twentieth Birthday, I Dream of My Son

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 11, 2024| 9 Comments »



 
 
He is young, and it’s raining,
and we are playing on piles
of mud with his sister
the way we often did.
There are channels
of rain water beneath us.
We’re covered in mud.
Mud on our clothes.
Mud on our faces.
Our eyes shine bright
through the mud.
I don’t remember he’s dead.
Our laughter weaves
through the rain
as if it has wings.
And we splash.
How I love
the mess of it all.
When I wake,
I’m too clean,
but all day I feel it,
the way the dream mud
has stuck to my thoughts.
I do not try to wash it off.
 

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One Tracking Joy

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on September 18, 2022| 2 Comments »




thigh high in mud—
somewhere down there
a footprint we can follow

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Walking Past the Mud Puddle

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on February 19, 2021| Leave a Comment »


for Michelle


Today I feel too clean to play,
but oh there was that day
when you and I
walked past the mud puddle,
all slick and ooze, a miresome mess,
and we reached our fingers into the sludge
and smeared the muck
onto each other’s faces—
thick mud, gray mud, slippery
and unctuous mud,
wide swaths of heavy mud
that slashed our cheeks,
bedecked our foreheads, mocked
our love of spotlessness.
Not war paint, but joy paint,
cool liquid earth on our skin.
Besmudged and besmirched,
we baptized each other
in the dirtiest of water,
a murky blessing,
our laughter blossoming
between us in the air,
a many-petalled prayer,
a jubilant lotus
startlingly (how?) so pure.

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One with a Mud Pit in the Middle

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 22, 2020| Leave a Comment »

playing tug of war—

my future

my past

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Springing

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 23, 2019| Leave a Comment »

 

 

 

I am reborn into the world of radiance—

crystalline icicles, glittering reaches of snow—

and whatever in me is old brown stick,

whatever in me is withered rose hip,

whatever is desiccated and dead takes notice

of the shine and says, Teach me that.

 

I am reborn into the world of drip

and melt and streets of mud,

and whatever part of me is muck-squeamish

and sludge resistant goes walking anyway

and wallows and squishes and slips and laughs.

 

In that slippery moment, the part of me

who has died becomes lotus.

And who is it in me that scoffs

and says Who are you to be lotus?

I show her diamonds in the field,

the big blue dome of sky, the vast

expanses of glistening mud,

and I ask her, Who are you not to be?

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One Reality Check

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on March 18, 2019| Leave a Comment »

 

 

 

cleaning off my shoes

before walking through the mud,

and Love says to me,

what? do you think

I am going to carry you?

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Falling In

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on March 12, 2017| 1 Comment »

 

 

 

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.

 

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