Produced by Maine Poetry Central and Dennis Camire

This week’s poem by Alice Persons catalogs a number of feelings we all experience while enduring the Maine mud season.

Mud Season

By Alice Persons

After a brutal Maine winter

the world dissolves

in weak sunshine and water.

Mud sucks at your shoes.

It’s impossible to keep the floors

or the dogs clean.

Peeling layers of clothes like onion skins,

you emerge pale, root-like, a little dazed

by brighter light.

You haven’t looked at your legs

in months

and discover an alarming new geography

of veins and flaws.

Last year you scoffed at people

who got spray-tanned

but it’s starting to appeal.

Your only consolation is the company of others

who haven’t been to Nevis

or Boca Raton,

a pale army

of fellow radishes,

round onions,

long-underground tubers.

Dennis Camire can be reached at denniscamire@hotmail.com.