And consider, always, every day, the determination of the grass to grow despite the unending obstacles. - Mary Oliver

Sometimes I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed.

only if there are angels in your head will you ever, possibly, see one.

"Crossing the Swamp"

Here is the endless
wet thick
cosmos, the center
of everything — the nugget
of dense sap, branching
vines, the dark burred
faintly belching
bogs. Here
is swamp, here
is struggle,
closure — pathless, seamless,
peerless mud. My bones
knock together at the pale
joints, trying
for foothold, fingerhold,
mindhold over
such slick crossings, deep
hipholes, hummocks
that sink silently
into the black, slack
earthsoup. I feel
not wet so much as
painted and glittered
with the fat grassy
mires, the rich
and succulent marrows
of earth — a poor
dry stick given
one more chance by the whims
of swamp water — a bough
that still, after all these years,
could take root,
sprout, branch out, bud — make of its life a breathing
palace of leaves.