To British humourists Flanders and Swann, it was “Mud, Mud, Glorious Mud”
I always have loved spring, and daffodils, and especially the mud
Spring is definitely on the way. What a blessing to be where there is moisture in the land and mud everywhere. I always have loved spring, and daffodils, and especially the mud.
Mom said that when I was very little, and it was mud pie making time, while the other little kids would squat in the puddles to make their pies, I would sit right down in it. (I’d still do that if I could get someone else to do the laundry!)
One spring, in this sort of mood, I wrote an “ode to mud”. It’s meant to be silly but, still, it seemed particularly appropriate for now.
ODE TO MUD
And oh, what glorious substance this
That, overnight, it seems, hath come to be
While yesterday the world was cold and white
I now behold its changing wordlessly
To darker hues, yet fair to gaze upon, this transformation longed for yet so soon.
And I perceive within my breast
Wherein the heart of me doth beat with unrestrain-ed joy
At such a sight
What ancient, animal and primitive elements do compose me!
Aye, my body formed of good terrestrial stuff as such befits my very presence here
That I should sing
From soul to sun send forth a song which is returned to my delirious throat,
In warmth that gathers ever more each dawn
And clings, with grasping fingers of the light grown longer, daily longer, e’re their flight and slip behind the trees, ’til darkness blankets all.
I do digress
But still, ’tis truth I speak
For tho’ my ken be insignificant
(and ’twould be fuller had I but attention paid in class
when unto high school did I wend my slow unwilling way)
Yet this I certain know:
Our rounded home upon its axis many times hath spun, and orbiting,
Hath come to such a place in its ellipse
That sister sun
That yellow star
That swirling, boiling, plenteous ball of radiant gas — this very sun is in distance closer now
Than ever it will be.
Such consequence!
When, from my dust stained windows I behold
My outer world, most fair and fresh
The driveway, yard, and very streets around do teem with damp and sticky pools
Of soil, drenched recently by rivulets
From out beneath the mounded snow,
Enlaced with gravel warmed and melting thus by strengthening of sun
It sodden lies
Brown witness to approaching burst of life
Sprung forth in bud and bird.
Yet this do I prefer, its herald.
The slime that clings to even careful feet
Befouling boots, encrusting cars and bellies of white cats
Of floors, a sandy wasteland constant makes
And rending all that walks a soiled and splotched display of nature’s mischievous renewal.
Oh joy!
Oh childlike fierce desire
To jump, and splash, and spatter my most genteel Sunday dress
With slippery, sensuous filth!
And you, my friend,
My muddy true companion on the Way
Awash in newly moistened life
Which from your soul-fed eyes my heart receives
A gift most rare and glorious as soaking spring
Think not that earthy laughter, rooted thus and so in blackened loam
Rends unworthy thy dear name
Nor mars thy countenance from blessing or from blessed.
Indeed, while walking, we, from dust and clay again to dust and clay
The soil is she who feeds us and the more;
Fills up with richness; and to moistureless, antiseptic minds and hands cries Foul!
What honourable estate to reek and drip with evidence of growing things.
Anon. The mud awaits.
