Spring Sprung Swamp

 

Welcome Spring. Here is a poem by Mary Oliver

Crossing the Swamp

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.