Mud Season
Joseph Coleman
My head is broke today; winter roads
have turned to mud. Cow fields,
bordered with pine, slant to the sea.
I’m drawn here by a set of tracks,
stretch a wire fence so my dog
can pass. She balks and looks at me,
remembering her skin caught a barb
last fall down–wind of a grouse.
“Come on, you’re fine!”—she bounds
dull fields, slush, and jags of stalks.
The tracks turn west towards
the feeding troughs; no time to chat
with a Turner, not today, so east I turn
and soon I’m on my knees in brush
and black mud on a southerly slope.
I find dry ground to rest my head.
Above the gray, whirring beats of wings.
They sound like mergansers, maybe
pintails? Maybe buffleheads?
Joseph Coleman is a poet and short story writer with an MFA in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College 22’. He’s a registered Maine Guide, a Wilderness First Responder, entrepreneur and holds a blue belt in Jiu Jitsu . His poems have been seen in various forms in; The New Yorker, Esquire, The New Criterion, Casa Vogue and a Chapbook – 45° North Latitude. Instagram @josephpaulcoleman) He teaches at the Ella Fitzgerald writing lab for middle schoolers in Yonkers and tutors kids in an after school program in the Bronx.
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