<\/p>\n
People with ponds in their backyards<\/p>\n
often have quiet houses with tight windows.<\/p>\n
I wonder if you have standing water?<\/p>\n
There are twisted lists I could present,<\/p>\n
On a picnic table, in the sun, but the<\/p>\n
farther we get from the warm October<\/p>\n
day surrounded by confidential pines<\/p>\n
The harder it becomes to dig deep down<\/p>\n
And find the folded paper tucked in<\/p>\n
My long moist pocket.<\/p>\n
He used to go to her house for the water.<\/p>\n
The hot Ohio sun turned the pine needles<\/p>\n
into puddles of mayfly nests, floating<\/p>\n
to the edges, always seemingly calm.<\/p>\n
It was an almighty sun that offered<\/p>\n
cruel lyrics, howls, to the present. The<\/p>\n
pines watched the drama passively and<\/p>\n
exhaled sap, whispers, some shade.<\/p>\n
The days have turned tired gray. You<\/p>\n
run away from water, you head west,<\/p>\n
toward the border, the towns from before,<\/p>\n
I see you outside your body, driving, not<\/p>\n
thinking about intersecting choices. I see<\/p>\n
you watching the tall trees, not individually but<\/p>\n
\u00a0as clusters across farmless fields.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t defend myself well. I instead<\/p>\n
walk steadily into the murky warm water<\/p>\n
as if walking into urine.\u00a0 I hear you call<\/p>\n
for me from the porch but your voice<\/p>\n
projects from the pines, causing cones<\/p>\n
to rattle in fear at what I might do next.<\/p>\n
I thought you said, \u201cIt\u2019s lucky to have<\/p>\n
the meadow, the grind, that starling\u201d but<\/p>\n
now I\u2019m not so sure.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
.<\/p>\n
.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
People with ponds in their backyards often have quiet houses with tight windows. I wonder if you have standing water? There are twisted lists …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":2869,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Sunday Edition Live, with\n\nPines | poem by Lori Morgan Flood\n\n","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[170,213],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","category-poetry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/IMG_1826-scaled-1.jpg?fit=612%2C459&ssl=1","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2794"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3271,"href":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2794\/revisions\/3271"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lineriderpress.com\/headlinepoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}