Mud Season Revisited

Mud Season starts where the pavement ends,

where a country road, lush in summer’s months

and autumn’s color’s a rustic charm, softens,

where now the frozen earth thaws in the snowbanks’

melting, banks of ice and snow pushed back,

these long winter months of cold and isolation

giving way to warmer temperatures lingering,

rising well above freezing, into the 40s,

a warmth we’ve longed for, spring’s arrival,

forgetting again in our eagerness this country road

turned to mud - mud and muck and mire - mud season,

and we aim the car to get away, escape the winter doldrums,

dropping now to the lowest gear to pull us through,

aiming where the hill seems less muddy, less slick,

less rutted, a guessing game, jerking the wheel left

and right in a zig-zag course, pulling the car

this way and that, opposite to the oozing grab of sodden earth,

away from the edge that would stop us still, mired

in a fine mud, steering now a course for the other side

where the road dries out, flattens, a brief respite

before the next hill and mud and muck and mire returns;

but slow and steady, heady at the end of the day,

we course a cautious drive to home again,

home at the end of a country road in mud season.