The Mud Room

Lyrics

In from the cold. In from the wet.
Every arrival pays a debt.
The rain on the shoulders, the wind in the face.
Bringing the outside into the place.

I start in The Foyer, where the light is polite.
Marble floor gleams, a placid white.
And I walk the long spine of the house, heels clicking time.
Past the closed door to The Parlor, a stillness sublime,
but not for me, not today. I need the friction, the grit.
I turn down The Back Hall, where the real work is writ
on the scuffed wooden floors, in the air thick with use.
Away from the stillness. No time for a truce.

Here's the door, here's the stop, here's the line in the sand.
The threshold of dirt, the shake of the hand
between the wild garden and the polished floor.
This is the Mud Room. This is the door.
The scrape and the stomp, the shedding of skin.
The ritual moment you let yourself in.

First, the cast-iron scraper, bolted to the stone.
A growl of iron on the boot's leather bone.
And that sound, it has a taste on my tongue—cold metal, rust.
A flavor of winter, of righteous disgust
for the dirt that you carry. Then the row of six hooks.
Porcelain knobs, cold and clean, judging your looks.
They take the weight of the wool, the soaked canvas jacket.
Fourteen slots in the boot rack, a beautiful racket
of order imposed on the chaos of feet.
A single child's galosh from 1918, incomplete.

The mud on the slate isn't just mud, you see.
It's a map of the grounds, in miniature, for me.
This wet clay swirl is the creek bank's collapse.
This darker smear holds the garden's green scraps.
The room holds the world that it's built to deny.
The energy of every single goodbye
and every hello. The ranch hand they forgot,
the children, the dogs. A charge in this spot.
A friction so constant it feels like a hum.
The pleasure of leaving. The joy of having come.

Here's the door, here's the stop, here's the line in the sand.
The threshold of dirt, the shake of the hand
between the wild garden and the polished floor.
This is the Mud Room. This is the door.
The scrape and the stomp, the shedding of skin.
The ritual moment you let yourself in.

The coat is hung. The boots are clean.
The boundary held. The world unseen,
left outside the door. 
A puddle spreads on the slate gray tile.
A temporary map. For a little while.