Mud Season is a Mood

poems for preparedness and a balm for every season

Laundry Night//Against the Change Machine 


He held up the sliver of green bottle glass he’d just squeezed from the pad of his foot
“Bingo.” 
he pinched it out one-handed, never loosened his grip on the can of high octane that made him fly down 25 at an easy hundred on the straight stretch beside the river to get to his AA meeting on time. He saw the cops he dropped the anchor he hoped they didn’t clock him, they sailed on, though, so he sped up, to see, they had the whole block blued off, listerine lights doused any warmth in the night, he parked at the church, held his shadow’s hand to the end of the alley choked with crabapples, and he sees long guns, shouldered, the doves on the steeple shift. He turns hard, runs behind the barn and through the door to the laundromat where I’m thumping my forehead against the change machine, he doesn’t wait to tell me everything, the whole story in one breath, tallboy sloshing, reliving the chase, we wince, a lance of cold light in the eye, standing side by side we watch three counties worth of cruisers slip cool and blue over the bridge and are gone. He feels the pain in his foot. He sees he has no shoes on. He sits and begins squeezing. It came out clean like how a coyote eats a whole hare and out comes a snow-white rope and a song, and if you hear one singing that means there are three and if you hear three singing, it’s one, it came out clean like this but green glass, he’s grinning like everything is going exactly according to plan, he makes it look so easy, letting things come and go, he tells me I’m a good listener and heads for the door, I don’t want him to leave, I want him to tell me again. 
I’ve learned nothing.
He runs across the road like he’s never stepped on anything sharp, eyes to the sky, can tipped high to the lips, to the church, someone opens the door. 

I wrote that poem a few days ago. I just went back and read all the poems I’d written in March the past few years and found a clear theme — it’s muddy —underfoot, but also in the mind - everything newly bare and soft and scufflable. I found some comfort in this — seeing, again, that I’m just a thing of seasons, like every other thing I keep notes on. March is predictably merciless. It’s like a doorway between winter and spring that I can’t seem to pass through without busting a toe or raking an arm on a nailhead. Most animals, when they experience pain, will remember and avoid whatever caused it. I seem to be lacking this adaptation. Not that I could avoid the whole month of March if I wanted to, but I don’t ever seem to remember the feelings that come with it, even though I get mired in them year after year. My capacity for forgetfulness makes me pretty great company if you like to tell the same jokes or stories over and over again - every time is like the first time for me - but it makes me real shit company if you are trying to move through life in any kind of strategic way. I should probably try to use my poems for seasonal preparedness so I’m not perpetually stunned at how much different seasons effect me, like how I use field notes and photos to improve on previous year’s hunting and foraging seasons. I’ve just started mulling over last spring’s trout fishing, turkey hunting, and bitter-green eating, maybe I should be reading poems from April and May to brace myself for whatever sunshiny surprises my spring-green mind has in store for me. First, though, on this last evening of March, I’ve got a few more hours to hunt snowshoe hare, then that season will be over, too.

One more mud season poem I wrote this week with a little less angst and a little more light, a few from deep mud seasons past, to round out the mood, and a recipe for balsam poplar salve, for licking our wounds.