Let Muddy Water Sit and It Grows Clear
It’s clear when, in membranous
predawn blue
I enter pines, mind on
embryo in amnion,
my tracks preceded
by those of the dog,
his by a doe’s, hers by six
hours of snow, it’s clear then
the distance between
my affections and ability
to touch their sinuosity
is itself a felt silence
called sun. Sun rises
without provocation
over a frozen stream that frustrates
reflection, but will
by the time a pulse is palpable,
have thawed and grown
clear again, permitting me to see
a tree surface, distort, flow.
Copyright © 2015 by Ted Mathys. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 16, 2015, by the Academy of American Poets.
“This poem was written when I was anticipating the birth of my daughter. It takes its title from a line in the Daode Jing, and I was drawn to this line’s implication that the messiness and murkiness of experience can clarify best through a combination of passivity and patience. So the speaker is in a state of following, moving through the palimpsest of daily time, seasonal time, and natal time.”
—Ted Mathys
Ted Mathys
