Wading in a Marsh

Nothing here in this rain-fed marsh

Has known the sun on the far side of the mountain

Except by the hearsay of the moon

Or the glinting of clouds and snow through cedar boughs,

And by this hand-me-down light I wade,

Uncertain of every surface preoccupied

By milfoil and watercress, the floating

Intricate uncannily green beds

Of water starwort whose leaves allow

No reflection of mine, not even their own.

My rake-handle staff goes first, searching

For footholds in the moss under the water,

In the soft debris of needles and spikerush

And mud and the good lost lives of burreeds,

And my feet follow, slow as the spawn of tree-frogs.

The water-logged hemlock logs give way

Underfoot as easily as the earth they've turned to,

And my staff, at times, reaches down to nothing

As deep as I am tall. I don't go there.

Even with something seemingly lasting

Under me, I sink if I stand still,

Learning the underlying answer

Of swamps as unforgettably as my name:

To stand is to sink, to move is to rise

Again, and nothing at all has died in the winter

Without being reborn. The duckweed

Drifting against my thighs is rootless, unnerved,

Immortal, a cold companion

To be cupped in the palm and then let go

Here in Barr Mountain's permanent shadow.

I see what to say: this marsh that holds me

Is the climax of a lake, shallowing, dying,

Filled with the best endeavors of pondweeds,

The exploring and colonizing shapes of a world

Too good at living for its own good,

But in this man-made silence, while wrens and kinglets

Decide what I am and slowly excuse me

For being a moving object with much less use

Than a stump, I learn why I came here

Out of order: in order to find out how to belong

Somewhere, to change where all changing

Is a healing exchange of sense for sense.

I start to sink, I take a step,

The mud puts up with me momentarily,

And three wrens at once from three directions

Burst into songs as beautifully interwoven

As white water crowfoot tripling itself in shade.

I have to stand still to listen. By the time

I've heard the blue grouse drumming and drumming

Under the wrensongs, vibrant as memory,

I begin to sink. One winter wren

Appears from a literal nowhere: in her beak

A stark-green writhing caterpillar

Airborne ahead of its time. In an instant, she scans

The parts of me still above water,

Then vanishes among a tangle of roots

To feed her young. Far overhead

Sunlight crosses the treetops like crownfire,

And the last snow of a new spring

Melts as it falls, turning to other stars.