Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, MARYLAND MUD, by CAROLINE M. LORD


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

MARYLAND MUD, by                    
First Line: In rapture and despair
Last Line: To feel the color of a muddy pool.
Subject(s): Lakes; Maryland; Pools; Ponds


In rapture and despair
I stood beside a pool
Where showers had been caught
Then strained away at dusk,
As floods of words are caught by poets
Who let them flow away
To leave a filtered mood.

In rapture I stood there
Because the softened clay
(Red mud, some would have called it)
Smoothed in a satin finish,
Gleamed like the flush of a dusky rose,
Too soft to touch, too hard to flow, like molded cream,
Then in velvet mauve
It echoed the sunset sky.

And in despair I waited there
To feel the heart of it,
To find the words or name the hue
That would accord with iron dust,
Mellowed, oozing in a pool,
Words that could forever live
Because a rusty soil
Had blended with its tender glow
The taper light from a late-burning, curtained sun.
In vain I stood in rapture and despair
To feel the color of a muddy pool.





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