We’re still in the season of rain and mud that some call spring. This week’s poem teaches us how to revel in it. You will notice that this prose poem uses slashes that act like em-dashes or line breaks to leap from one instruction to another.

Maya Williams lives in Portland and has poems in glitterMOB, Soft Cartel, Underground Writers Association, Occulum Journal, Maps for Teeth, Frost Meadow Review and Black Table Arts.

Revel in Filth

By Maya Williams

Rake yourself in the mud without wondering how you’ll get every twig and moss and other earthly gunk out of your hair later/Immerse yourself/Overwhelm yourself in the rain that caused all of this mess/Call it a dirty baptism/Call it a heavenly mud bath/Call it reclamation of the body amongst this circumstance not in spite of it/Roll around and cake yourself in the substance that will crust itself gradually/Encase yourself into a cocoon of filth you consented to/Sing Hallelujah for this slight amount of freedom you have before the sun returns/Sure, sunshine brings life, but so does the rain/It’s okay to let it rain sometimes

Gibson Fay-LeBlanc is a poet who lives in Portland. DEEP WATER: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Poem copyright © 2018 Maya Williams. It appears here by permission of the author. For an archive of all the poems that have appeared in this column, go to www.pressherald.com/tag/deep-water.