CROSSING THE SWAMP - by Mary Oliver Here is the endless wet thick cosmos, the center of everything—the nugget of dense sap, branching vines, the dark burred faintly belching bogs. Here is swamp, here is struggle, closure— pathless, seamless, peerless mud. My bones knock together at the pale joints, trying for foothold, fingerhold, mindhold over such slick crossings, deep hipholes, hummocks that sink silently into the black, slack earthsoup. I feel not wet so much as painted and glittered with the fat grassy mires, the rich and succulent marrows of earth— a poor dry stick given one more chance by the whims of swamp water— a bough that still, after all these years, could take root, sprout, branch out, bud— make of its life a breathing palace of leaves.
Posted on: Sun, 14 Dec 2014 19:25:15 +0000
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