Mud Season

Rain has stopped
after all night dropping
on us and ground and roof,
falling into gutters, clattering down
to puddle the sunken end of the driveway.
It’s going to madly green out there
once it warms two more daily degrees
or so.  We call this Spring —

or, more often, “mud season,” 
the season when we notice
how filthy our cars are.

Spring here is a half-minute of breathing room 
between ways to suffer,
a half-second to knock crap off your boots
and your life — 
a half inch deep undrinkable lake 
in the scant soil 
of the backyard.

Season of slop — 
our city’s not pretty,
not clean, not bright.
Our roads are holy and pitted
like the path to Heaven, even as
we’ve been dreaming
of Hell’s heat
all cold season long,

and now it’s coming.  

It’s coming
in faster bloom than last year.
It’s coming
in smaller snow piles than ever before.
It’s coming
in our unease at how easy
winter was, how little mud
there is to mud season
this year.

It’s coming
as we get around to washing off
toxic grime from our wheel wells,
scrubbing at caked,
kicked up road salt
that’s tearing hell
out of metal. 

A warmer world
is coming,
perhaps the warmest one ever;

it’s coming, and
no one’s ready for the heat;

though we all say,
as always,
that we can’t wait,
soon enough

we’ll be staring at that depression
in the backyard,
marveling at the memory of it
full of water, wondering
if  we will ever see mud season again.