out of the mud

to endure

I find it amazing
that everyone isn’t made crazy
by what life throws at us,
the setbacks to our own dreams,
the empathic pummeling we can feel
when disease & disaster visit those close to us,
the arms of doubt that pull at our optimism
and make us wonder if the mud
is where any just fate would have us be,

I’ve spent a lot of my life
with my ear cocked for the call
that will tell me the results are in, and they’re bad,

no wonder the reserve of the English appeals to us,
the challenge to “buck up” and persevere,

I’ve learned to be less judgmental of my forbearers
who clamped down on their reactions and persevered,
so the Depression and War should not rule the day alone,

I think of Faulkner and how “to endure” was a vital skill
of the downtrodden in the South,

I want to hold as much as I can
of that which seeks to pull us down,
while I also hold to life’s prime imperative
that calls us out of the mud into the light.

by Henry Walker
February 29, ’12