Crossing The Swamp

I had dinner with a dear friend tonight. We rarely see each other but keep in touch through email and phone calls. It's not distance that separates us but time and schedules and family commitments. We always pick up right where we left off and share what matters most. Life is complicated. There are questions that have no answers.

There is something about talking with a friend that helps.

As I was driving home I thought about how much I miss people.

I thought about how stuck I feel.

I thought about how I know that things will change but that right now it doesn't feel that way.

When I got home I wanted to write about how I feel. I pulled out a book of poems by one of my favorite poets, Mary Oliver. I don't always understand her poetry, but I love her imagery and her understanding of nature. Some of her poems are beautiful and some are raw. I wanted one that was beautiful.

The book opened to a poem that was unfamiliar to me. I read it and it gave me chills. It described how I am feeling, but it isn't what I wanted to find. It appeared when I was looking for something else ~

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.

From New and Selected Poems by Mary Oliver, 1992, Beacon Press.