It’s not just mud season,
but the season of sludge and slime,
the slippery slop at river’s edge
beneath the veil between the light and dark,
down underneath the hedge, among the roots
and warrens of the now undead,
where all that winter’s taken spring is taking further:
what once was frozen whole
is broken down in pools of brackish goop,
where grief is chewed and swallowed into hope.
Above the ground the thawing breezes, mendicant,
seek fragrance where it may be found,
and also reek of teeming fermentation in the soil.
Rebirth’s no lightning spark, a finger from above,
but deep below, a slow and smelly moil,
a churning of what’s lost—and it stays lost—
toward something fragile, rank, and new.
Once dead, now decomposing, death’s digested
by the worthy work of worm and rot and gut,
by grace’s blessed fungus, resurrection’s germ,
spurred on by longing, labor, and a kind of lust
where burrowings of bugs and beetles
make a womb where life is woven out of death,
and slowly seething, gravid earth gives forth,
gives joy, gives birth.
And you then, creature, will you wade
into the grave and puddle of this world
and venture into life‘s deep mud, and be remade?
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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