Wet Season

I say it’s the mud.
Mud that I hate.
It’s bothersome stuff, glue/sticky/slime
that gets everywhere.

Feet and ankles heavy with the trudge,
wheels slipping and digging down.
Inside/outside slow-motion drag.
I cannot avoid it.
Slog/beat/inertia saps the heart
and makes the legs unwilling to move.

It isn’t the cold.

The cold it can be hard, whipped windy chapping skin
and blemish hard goose/flesh/shiver.
The woolen/warming/cloth cannot keep it out.
It slips like a lover’s fingers under the sweater and
invites the skin into balls of muscled tightness.

But mud is the Culprit.
Mud brings us down.

Give me snow and frozen ground.
Layered freezing jackets stiff.
Here is motion valued – Quick/stepping/march
Across frozen tundra to places hiding by
Fires. There we try keeping warm
with mugs of steaming tea.
Hot fire defrosting, dripping ease upon tiles
and wrapped in blankets shivering.
Crystal breath unfurled in stillness air.

Winter is hard, but mud is harder.

Spring mud is painful to behold…
In Northern clime when frost abates the mud advances.
‘Tis there always.
A rotted clumping, bumping bog that’s
bug infested at its best.

But Winter mud is harder,
Winter mud can kill.

Cold and plastic/plaster casting
it wraps around and around my shoes.
Boots become lead.
Shortens the tread.
Slip-footed concrete goo I dread.
Goosepimple anticipation
DON’T TOUCH ME WITH THAT STUFF!

Give me summer so I can complain about the sweat.

Stuart Andrew Marshall Tanner