{"id":280,"date":"2018-11-16T19:33:06","date_gmt":"2018-11-16T19:33:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thecatbirdsang.com\/www\/?p=280"},"modified":"2018-11-16T19:33:06","modified_gmt":"2018-11-16T19:33:06","slug":"black-snake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecatbirdsang.com\/www\/black-snake\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Snake"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Black Snake<\/strong><br \/>\nOften it would scare me&#8211;draped on the mower handle<br \/>\nor hiding underneath it&#8211;sometimes just its skin on the brick wall.<\/p>\n<p>The dog would bark in high alert.<br \/>\nCoiled, it was prepared to strike.  With the dog in the house,<br \/>\nI would escort it outside the fence with the rake.<\/p>\n<p>But today, the dog did not bark, only the loud crash<br \/>\nof tubs, buckets and wood told me something was wrong.<br \/>\nHe, shaking the lower half of the torn snake,<br \/>\ndanced with pride in the yard.<\/p>\n<p>I searched for the rest of the it, mangled in the dirt.<br \/>\nIts ripped lung fluttered like a red flag in the wind.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\tTar River Poetry<br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\tFall 2016<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Black Snake Often it would scare me&#8211;draped on the mower handle or hiding underneath it&#8211;sometimes just its skin on the brick wall. The dog would bark in high alert. Coiled, it was prepared to strike. With the dog in the house, I would escort it outside the fence with the rake. But today, the dog&hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/thecatbirdsang.com\/www\/black-snake\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Black Snake<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poems","category-published-poems"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecatbirdsang.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecatbirdsang.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecatbirdsang.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecatbirdsang.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecatbirdsang.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thecatbirdsang.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":281,"href":"https:\/\/thecatbirdsang.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280\/revisions\/281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecatbirdsang.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecatbirdsang.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecatbirdsang.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}