Mud Season

It is nigh on to mud season here,
when the snow is half melted
and the roads and lanes turn to mud
and the grass, nearly dead from winter
sinks beneath your feet. It is cold
but not cold enough to freeze the ground.

Mud season, almost spring.
Not as beautful or solid as winter
nor close enough to spring that limbs bud green.
A few weeks of seasonal purgatory,
not long enough to be a true season,
but the locals know, it is indeed a season,
pedictable and unique and inevitable,

At my age, I have been through many mud seasons.
In the landscape I have chosen, and the life I have chosen.
Muddy. Murky, Long enough both winter and spring
become hard to imagine and you just slog through
knowing it will end, but never quite sure when.

About this poem

I discovered Mud Season when I moved to Vermont about 15 years ago. It is a thing here, Everyone knows it. It is also good metaphor for all the ways we find ourselves stuck in life. The inbetween times.

The picture was taken just down the road from me in West Pawlet, Vermont.

Tom