Filé

Spartan Race, "Muddy Shoes," 2014

The way gumbo mud on your shoes balls up, too
thick and clinging to scrape, the way it grabs your
feet and ankles like a monster might, and you kick
a clotted shoe off, lose another in the suck of soft
clay, run tangled with natty dreads of retted straw,
wet dirt. I look for patches of oxalis, play a game of
trail run hopscotch—jump to the dense green mats,
crush their sorrel tartness underfoot, brush against
and pop those tiny okra-like seedpods. So hard not
to sink further, but the eastern wind pushes, blows
me a rootbeery vanillin kiss through the sassafras.